chief meme officer

Joined December 2017
Most people are going to fumble the biggest narrative of the cycle bc they don’t like pumpfun.. some haven’t been around along enough to know what a hate rally looks like.. and likely get rinsed on the sideline.. they’ll jeet every move and forever stay putting the fries in the bag while the rest of the gang ascends to Valhalla.
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This kimchi token giga sent yesterday and I see many ppl full ported or sized into the top.. curious, what is the thesis for up?
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crypto has a flywheel problem.. most tokenomics are designed to make people hold something nobody actually needs to use. staking, buybacks, burns, token gating.. none of these alone creates a flywheel. there are levels to this.. 101 — holder incentives. staking, buybacks, burns, gated access. 201 — transactional utility. tokens used for fees, settlement or collateral. 301 — liquidity infrastructure. tokens become trading inventory across markets. 401 — economic coordination. traders, LPs, market makers and apps benefit from shared liquidity. 501 — network effects. more activity brings liquidity, better execution, more users and more volume. ETH became infrastructure. USDC became a settlement asset. HYPE combines fee-driven demand with staking utility. LUNA showed what happens when reflexivity works in reverse. the part most people miss.. volume isn’t necessarily demand.. and demand doesn’t always translate into value capture. a token can process billions in volume without retaining much value. a protocol can generate millions in revenue without its token being essential to the business. the real flywheel starts when using the token makes the product better.. which brings more users, more activity and more reasons to use it. if your token disappeared tomorrow and the product worked exactly the same, you never built a token economy. you just built a business with a ticker.
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somewhere along the way, crypto forgot what made the OG memes special.. for a lot of people it was never really about the money. crypto was an escape from everyday life. somewhere you could forget about everything going on and feel like you belonged to something. i remember going out with the doge guys back in 2017, way before elon. nobody talked about price or market caps. we talked about life and had a good time. it felt more like a club than a group of people holding the same coin. people from completely different walks of life who probably would’ve never met otherwise.. all brought together by a stupid dog on the internet. that’s what made those days special. the friendships were real and the coin was just what brought everyone together. now GCs are flooded with CA spam and everyone talking about how to find the next winner. every conversation turns into another trade or someone trying to push their bags. what happened to just hanging out? talking about life? laughing at stupid shit with people you’ve never even met? not everything needs to be about making money. that’s why $BATON reminds me of those glory days. not because it’s trying to be the next doge, but because i see a chance to bring back that feeling of being part of something. bag working isn’t staring at charts all day. it’s showing up for the community even when the chart tests your conviction. when people genuinely enjoy being there, they keep coming back. they bring friends. those friends become part of the culture and eventually start bringing their own people. that’s the ripple effect everyone is trying to solve through onboarding and incentives. you can pay people to show up.. but you can’t pay them to care.
The normie always was onboarded with delulu community bagworking event Like GameStop, Doge, Pepe, and others. But the game have changed and it will need some big pairs of bollocks in the space to bring back that mindset I used to live bagworking, now it’s mostly a pain in the arse but we keep believing and hoping
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pumpfun’s biggest threat isn’t another launchpad. it’s a competitor that understands culture, retention and how to build a market people actually want to stay in. the original post highlights how tone deaf their strategy has become. nobody outside CT knows Kimchi, and nobody wakes up wanting to trade internet trends. but the problem goes deeper than marketing. pumpfun has built a market where supply expands alongside demand. every bullish wave brings new capital, but also thousands of new launches competing for that same liquidity. instead of sustained rallies in established communities, attention and capital get fragmented across an expanding supply of coins. their revenue incentives reinforce this cycle. pre-bond trading carries higher protocol fees than many established post-bond pools, rewarding turnover over longevity. traditional brokerages prioritize established companies and market leaders. pumpfun has the model backwards, making new launches the center of discovery. as discussed in our retention research (thread linked in comments), nobody is sticking around when their first trade goes negative in 2 seconds. the WIF moment (thread linked in comments) showed how culture creates communities, organic distribution and reasons to stay beyond the next trade. instead, pumpfun keeps chasing CCM, ICM, Mayhem Mode and Pokémon packs. different narratives, same concern.. recognizing attention without understanding what makes these markets sustainable. meanwhile, deeper liquidity through pump pairs and stronger communities could reinforce its existing revenue engine. the opportunity resembles Google’s Gemini strategy. OpenAI and Anthropic spend heavily expanding AI adoption while Google leverages existing distribution to compete for those users. a competitor could let pumpfun fund retail onboarding, then win those users with better infrastructure, social graphs and communities built for longevity. pumpfun profits from the constant creation of new supply, while its users need sustained demand. eventually, someone will recognize that misalignment and build around it.
Pumpfun has officially lost the plot. I'm not sure what their endgame is here, but I know for a fact that nobody is going to read “Be the next Kimchi” and suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to sign up for Pumpfun and start buying shitters. I never thought we'd reach the point where this needs explaining, but absolutely nobody outside CT knows who Kimchi is. And a good chunk of CT knows that the whole “made $40M trading Trump” story is straight up larp and what he was actually doing, was deploying and rugging coins 24/7. The fact that, out of every ace this multibillion-dollar company could have up its sleeve, they chose to make Kimchi their poster boy speaks volumes about how out of touch they are with the space, the community that made them what they are, and the outside world as a whole. I'm telling you, there isn't a single normal adult who wakes up in the morning wanting to “trade internet trends.” Not a single one. Because what the fuck does trading internet trends even mean? These guys made their bread from memecoins, and whatever name they built for themselves in this industry was a direct consequence of coins that actually went somewhere. Pumpfun wouldn't have taken off the way it did without Sharkcat, and it wouldn't have captured the market share it did during AI season without GOAT and Fartcoin launching there. People buying “internet trends” with a lifespan of 24 hours, only to get thrown into endless PvP against increasingly sophisticated players across a dozen different pairs, is precisely why Pumpfun struggles to break into the mainstream and onboard retail that actually STAYS. And these absolute idiots have somehow decided to make that their entire selling point. You genuinely couldn't make this shit up. The average person Pumpfun is supposedly trying to onboard is drowning in bills, trying to make ends meet, and navigating a society that's becoming increasingly isolated. He doesn't give a fuck about speculating on internet trends. He probably doesn't even recognize most of them. What he wants, whether he realizes it or not, is to feel like he belongs somewhere. A place where he can make internet friends who share his humor, aesthetics, and beliefs. Somewhere he can log in after a shitty day, talk shit with like-minded people, and actually feel like he's part of something. A fucking community. And the funny thing is that memecoins, of all things, can genuinely provide that. I think people massively underestimate how many guys are sitting at their desks right now, aimlessly scrolling the internet, who would happily spend money to be part of an online community where they can make friends, share jokes, and rally behind something together. Take NEET, for example. I'm convinced that if you explained the whole “not open to work” movement to a thousand normies, a surprisingly large percentage would find the idea of joining a global community of people who share that attitude genuinely appealing. Now imagine telling them there's also a coin attached to that movement, and that if enough people rally behind it, they can potentially make money together. That's a much easier sell than asking them to gamble on whichever celebrity happened to tweet something stupid fifteen minutes ago. And it's not just NEET. Think of all the internet subcultures, recognizable characters, aesthetics, and movements that people can actually identify with. Things that give someone a reason to hold a coin, talk about it, make content around it, and bring their friends into it without needing a new catalyst every six hours. That's how you build something that lasts. Instead of building their campaign around any of that, Pumpfun decided to spend millions telling people they could become the next Kimchi, a complete nobody to the audience they're supposedly trying to attract, and inviting them to gamble on internet trends. They actually spent millions of dollars on this stunt. It's genuinely incredible how disconnected they've become from reality, their own customer base, and seemingly basic common sense. My father used to always tell me to never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity. And I'd genuinely love to attribute Pumpfun's incompetence to stupidity, but that's not the case here. They've made hundreds of millions from coins that people actually wanted to own. Coins that went to hundreds of millions in market cap, made entire communities rich, and brought thousands of new people into the ecosystem. They know this model works because it's the very model that made them rich. But if having everyone PvP the same Elon tweet through twelve different pairings and launch modes means they can squeeze another 10% out of trading fees, I'm increasingly convinced they'll happily sacrifice everything else to get it. And at this point, it's becoming pretty difficult to pretend otherwise. I think there are fatigue signals everywhere, and every day we're getting a little closer to the end of the Pumpfun dynasty despite a bunch of terminal badges trying day and night to convince you otherwise. Someone will eventually build a place where people actually want to stay, where communities are worth more than the fees generated from destroying them. And when that happens, I genuinely don't think Pumpfun will understand why everyone left.
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Wif moment
one breakout meme might be the most effective marketing campaign an entire blockchain never paid for.. look at solana pre wif vs post wif. monthly dex volume.. oct 2023.. $2.9b (pre wif) nov 2023.. $8b (wif launches nov 20) dec 2023.. $28b jan 2024.. $22.5b feb 2024.. $22.5b mar 2024.. $60b (wif breakout) that’s a 20.7x expansion in monthly trading volume in five months. and it didn’t stop there.. nov 2024.. $130b jan 2025.. $258b (trump launches) solana was already recovering before wif.. but what followed illustrates something much bigger about crypto distribution. a breakout meme gives people a financial incentive to discover an ecosystem. early winners spread the narrative, new traders arrive, and capital begins rotating across other assets and applications. the chain doesn’t need to own the meme or pay for its promotion.. yet wallets, dexes, liquidity providers and trading infrastructure can all benefit from the activity it attracts. the real opportunity isn’t just acquiring attention.. it’s converting that attention into recurring economic activity. wif didn’t cause all of solana’s growth, but it helped demonstrate how powerful meme-driven distribution can become. sometimes the most valuable thing a meme creates isn’t its own market cap.. it’s the market that develops around it.
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Retention
take a look at your old crypto GCs. people who used to be online 18 hours a day have gone quiet. twitter accounts that posted nonstop haven’t tweeted in months. entire groups of traders have seemingly disappeared. the onchain data raises a similar concern. a 2026 Bitquery investigation found that only 11% of newly observed, non-bot-like solana DEX wallets traded again the following month. we celebrate new wallets, launches and volume as growth, but those numbers don’t tell us whether we’re building a lasting user base or constantly replacing the one we’ve lost. there’s a reason netflix and roblox obsess over retention. harvard business review has cited estimates that acquiring a new customer costs 5–25x more than retaining one, depending on the industry. now consider the incentives in crypto. platforms collect fees whether traders win or lose. a platform can have its best month while its users have their worst. but every trader who leaves takes potential future trading activity with them. short-term revenue and long-term customer value aren’t always aligned. and frictionless onboarding introduces another challenge. historically, newcomers often started with btc or eth before moving into smaller alts. today, someone with zero experience can download an app and buy a $50k market cap meme coin in minutes, without understanding liquidity, volatility or how quickly their capital can disappear. we’ve made the most unforgiving corner of crypto the front door for newcomers, then wonder why the industry struggles with its reputation. another 2026 Bitquery investigation found that 79% of pumpfun coins never traded again after launch day. new launches are essential for discovery, but a sustainable ecosystem also needs coins that survive the initial hype and develop lasting liquidity, communities and demand. otherwise, we’re getting better at creating markets without necessarily building markets that last. the next phase of crypto growth isn’t just about onboarding another million traders. it’s about giving existing participants a realistic opportunity to preserve capital, build conviction and keep participating. because there’s a fundamental difference between growing an ecosystem and constantly replacing the people you’ve lost.
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I feel like pump is just trolling everyone.. I hope this is the case at least.
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crypto has spent years optimizing how quickly people can buy.. but almost nothing on helping them figure out what they should buy. that’s why i think the market is looking at fomo through the wrong lens. trading fees are the obvious business. se yong’s social graph could become something much bigger.. financial social graphs connecting the people making investment calls, the research behind them and what actually happens afterward. his vision of measuring speculation through real financial outcomes is what makes this interesting. i think there are three social graphs that could take it further. KOL reputation. one 20x can make someone famous while their other 19 trades go unchecked. like sports betting handicappers, KOLs should have verified onchain track records measuring returns, consistency and risk. popularity creates attention.. performance should earn credibility. but knowing who’s worth listening to doesn’t mean their thesis is right. research credibility. think academic peer review with a scoreboard. i spend hours on dune, defillama, whitepapers and X researching projects. why should 100 people repeat the same work? let researchers collaborate, challenge assumptions and score predictions against actual outcomes. over time, you build a history of who consistently identifies opportunities early and whose analysis holds up. and that research needs independently verifiable evidence. protocol fundamentals. give every project public dune-style dashboards and defillama-style financial sheets covering revenue, users, liquidity and tokenomics. protocols can share their data with communities while gaining exposure to fomo’s existing investors. the opportunity is connecting all three social graphs. KOLs become the signal, research provides the context and onchain data provides the evidence. instead of blindly following whoever wins the popularity contest, investors come to fomo to DYOR and validate opportunities themselves. this is also where the distribution advantage starts. every protocol gets a reason to bring its community onto fomo through its own research dashboard. those investors discover other projects, contribute analysis and build track records. each new protocol brings its own distribution while benefiting from the investors and research already there. fomo could become shared research and investor-onboarding infrastructure for the entire ecosystem, rather than paying to acquire every trader individually. and the moat wouldn’t be the dashboards or public onchain data.. anyone can replicate those. it’s the accumulated history of who made each call, what evidence supported it, who challenged it and whether the thesis held up. a competitor can copy the interface, but rebuilding years of attributed research, verified outcomes and the communities relying on them is much harder. the opportunity gets even more interesting as execution automates. bitquery estimated bots accounted for 66–77% of solana DEX swap transactions in studied periods, by count rather than volume. that isn’t necessarily AI trading, but it shows how automated execution has become. AI agents could eventually consume fomo’s scored research, verified performance and protocol data through APIs. the same intelligence serving both humans and machines. robinhood’s tokenization push could bring more assets requiring fundamental analysis onchain. fomo already reports 625k+ users and 110m social interactions to build on. facebook built its social graph around relationships and attention. se yong’s speculation graph could build the financial equivalent around reputation, research and investment outcomes. trading fees monetize execution.. the social graphs could eventually monetize the intelligence behind investment decisions. that’s the business i’d be paying attention to.
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my two biggest theses this cycle are built around the same idea.. distribution is becoming more valuable than attention. $PUMP is a repricing bet. pump pairs could direct trading activity toward tokens backed by one of crypto’s largest revenue engines, giving the market a reason to value them beyond speculation. robinhood chain is an adoption bet. $HOOD already has 28.6m funded customers and $384b in platform assets. if tokenized securities become usable DeFi collateral, robinhood could bring an existing investor base on-chain rather than build demand from scratch. one is about capturing more value from an existing crypto economy. the other is about bringing an entirely new pool of capital onchain.
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at some point, you have to question pumpfun management’s allocation of time and resources. you’ve built one of crypto’s strongest revenue-generating businesses, yet PUMP still hasn’t established a valuation premium that reflects its potential utility. and now we’re opening pokémon packs. $2m in day-one openings sounds impressive.. but that’s gross activity, not revenue. across the gacha sector, only 12.3% of july’s volume remained after buybacks. collector crypt’s jupiter integration saw daily activity decline 68% within 3 weeks. meanwhile, meteora DLMM processed $4.74b in 30-day trading volume, competing for liquidity in the same ecosystem as pumpswap. not all of that is recoverable.. but at 5bps, every incremental $100m in daily volume captured represents $18.25m in annualized protocol fees. the bigger opportunity isn’t even the fees. pump pairs could establish PUMP as a widely used quote asset, creating demand for liquidity, settlement and trading beyond its existing platform economics. BATON is an early example of that thesis.. but without competitive LP economics, concentrated liquidity and better execution, there’s little reason to assume that liquidity will remain in PUMP pairs rather than migrate toward competing SOL pools. that’s the strategic opportunity management should be prioritizing. i’m not against new features.. i’m questioning whether they create meaningful incremental value for PUMP holders. gacha expands the app. liquidity infrastructure could change how the market values the entire ecosystem.
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comps are useful until they become the ceiling on your imagination. most people value assets by comparing them to something that already exists. but the biggest mispricings happen when a new narrative forms and the market has no established comp. pumpfun evolving from a launchpad into an app layer changes how you value $PUMP. $BATON, as the first PUMP pair, introduces an entirely different valuation question. when the market is still trying to figure out what something should be compared to, that’s often where the biggest opportunities exist. the market can’t price what it doesn’t understand yet.
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they say all wicks get filled eventually.. $BATON just left a reservation at $4 billion mc
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crypto has this weird stigma that taking profits makes you a jeet.. there’s a big difference between jeeting out of fear and responsibly selling into strength. i’ve seen too many of the biggest believers round trip life-changing gains because they feel morally obligated to hold after everything they’ve put into a community. if you’ve made it out of the trenches, pay yourself. you’ve earned it. take small profits on green candles, keep your conviction and leave yourself ammo for the dips. too many communities die because everyone is overallocated. nobody has buying power left, and eventually even the strongest believers are forced to sell because life doesn’t stop for a chart. an army with realized profits, dry powder and members who genuinely want to be involved is far stronger than one held together by financial dependence. that’s actually a bull signal i look for in communities.. people taking profits while continuing to show up, build and support each other. i’d rather see you involved for years than round trip everything proving your loyalty.. only to chase another play to make it back. don’t be a jeet.. but don’t confuse conviction with refusing to pay yourself either. the goal isn’t to never sell. it’s to never be forced to.
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for years i believed the natural evolution of a successful crypto application was to launch its own chain. own the infrastructure, capture the fees, control the ecosystem. but the economics are starting to suggest we had it backwards. abstract processed over 325m transactions, yet at one point generated only ~$3,900 in daily chain fees. igloo reportedly lost tens of millions building the ecosystem. blast attracted billions in tvl before eventually winding down. celestia helped make launching chains cheaper, but cheaper infrastructure doesn’t manufacture demand. the problem was never whether we could build more blockchains.. it was whether anyone actually needed them. l1 launches were effectively the large-cap version of pumpfun launches. create a new token, sell a new ecosystem narrative, subsidize activity and hope demand eventually justifies the valuation. but blockspace keeps getting cheaper while distribution remains scarce. which brings us to pumpfun. why would an application with existing users, liquidity and revenue need to build its own chain when solana already handles execution and settlement? the more interesting opportunity may be capturing economics at the application layer rather than recreating the infrastructure underneath it. we spent an entire cycle betting on who would own the rails.. perhaps the next one belongs to whoever owns the passengers.
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low-cap coins remind me of rockets trying to escape earth’s atmosphere.. at the bottom, the atmosphere is thick with jeets. every move higher gets sold into, every dip shakes out another group of weak hands. but as the rocket climbs, the atmosphere gets thinner. early sellers slowly disappear, supply changes hands and resistance begins to fade. the hardest part isn’t always how high you can go.. it’s surviving long enough to break through the atmosphere. of course, you still need fuel to reach orbit.
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some of the best counter-trade signals on pump app come from people who can’t hold. they’ll write a book on why a coin goes to $100m, buy more at every top, raise their cost basis, then panic jeet the bottom. thesis unchanged. markets move in waves. take profits on strength, keep ammo for the dips and size so you can play both sides of the chart.
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pump app has a lot of great features, but the mute button might be the biggest trading edge.
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what’s $BATON’s market cap rn? between 6 and 7 million 6 7
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dips are where you find out who’s trading and who actually believes in what they own. if nothing has changed about your thesis, getting more at a discount should be exciting. that’s the beauty of a selloff.. traders see a reason to leave, believers see an opportunity to own more.
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It’s fine
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