Original author: YBB Capital Researcher Zeke
Preface
On the eve of the inauguration of the US President, on the evening of January 17 local time, Trump announced the launch of his personal token, TRUMP coin, through his own social media platform Truth Social. Initially, many people mistakenly believed that this move was the result of a hacker attack on Trumps account, but dozens of minutes later, Trump used his personal main account on X (formerly Twitter) to retweet the promotional information about the token, officially confirming the authenticity of the news.
What followed was a surge that was enough to be recorded in the history of cryptocurrency. A large amount of funds began to pour into it. TRUMP quickly climbed from zero market value to a maximum market value of 80 billion US dollars in just two days, almost completely siphoning all the liquidity in the market. The spread of this incident is no less widespread than the assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania last year, and its magic is no less than that he dodged the bullet by turning his head. I also have some simple thoughts to share about this incident.
Meme
In this big country in the East where I live, the final realization of private traffic is often completed through live streaming of goods on an app called TikTok. On the other side of the Atlantic, the 47th President of the United States did something unprecedented. The head of the world beacon is using an electronic token to measure the value of his influence and power and accumulate huge wealth for his family. There is no doubt that we are entering a special era, an era where Crypto can be officially called Web3.0.
The original intention of the Internet was to end those radio and television stations that monopolized the attention economy and return it all to users, but in the end its development path deviated from the original route. The early Internet companies that held chat platforms and search engines in Web2.0 have developed into the giants we see today, such as Google and Tencent. They have completed the original accumulation and achieved long-term monopoly by controlling a large number of traffic entrances. Today, ByteDance almost dominates social media in China and the West. Although it is undeniable that short video platforms have brought many opportunities for grassroots to turn over, this benefit is still shared by Internet celebrities and platforms in most cases, and the platforms have absolute voice.
No matter how the form changes, the monopoly of traffic is the eternal theme of Web2.0 giants. Ordinary people have very limited opportunities to benefit from it. Users can only continuously contribute traffic and money in this feast. Meme Coin may be a new opportunity. It is true that participating in Meme PVP is dangerous, and there are also scams. You even need to accept the absolutely unfair distribution of 2:8 like TRUMP, but how many opportunities do ordinary people have to benefit from the traffic of the US president? TRUMPs process from 0-80 may be the only time.
In the past, I couldnt explain what Meme Coin was. But now I think I can explain it in a few simple words. The value of Meme is the pricing of something, someone, or a certain meme in a certain period of time, just like the initial market price of President Trump was 80 B a few days ago. On the other hand, Meme is also a division of the traditional Internet attention economy. People are keen on these things that can make their eyes stay, and Meme gives users an opportunity to participate in the value distribution in hot events.
Pump
I mentioned in a previous article that the best form of SocialFi is not a Dapp like Friend.tech that has set rules and regulations, but Pump. The coin issuing team behind the president also chose Pump. The reason is very simple. People have the need to belong to a certain group, but it does not mean that they have to accept unfairness for this need. Friend.techs pricing of Key and the subsequent complicated gameplay around Token are the main reasons for its limited ceiling and ultimate failure. Looking back at the past SocialFi projects, dividing people into different levels according to the number of Tokens held to allocate empowerment and services is also the reason for their failure.
Small and fine will never work for Crypto that relies on community culture. Similarly, this applies to many tracks outside of SocialFi, such as the NFT that Trump has issued. The huge supply of Meme often enables it to quickly gain a giant community. Whether you hold 100 U tokens or 10 WU tokens, you belong to this group.
In the past, we needed to promote a project on social media using Twitter, and then introduce users to Tg and DC to build a community. In the distant past, for ancient memes like Doge, you could only find organizations through some forums. Pump integrates the advantages of traditional social media on the basis of AMM, and returns the rule setters to Creater, which is the main reason for its success. It compresses countless fitting processes, and you can always find your sense of belonging behind the countless token icons on the Pump homepage.
Retro
No matter how you look at Trumps personal tokens, we are entering an era where memes become mainstream and many things are tokenized. In fact, this is somewhat similar to the coinage rights in medieval Europe that I mentioned in my article on stablecoins last year. Compared with the Chinese dynasties, which have unified the same standard currency system for most of the time, Europe has always been a bulk style, and each country and even each noble and bishop has the right to mint and issue their own currency.
Although TRUMP is not a practical currency backed by gold or silver, the president has set a precedent after all, and many European and American celebrities will inevitably join this medieval retro trend in the future. Another point worth pondering is that Trump owns 80% of the tokens. Will the token really become a pure meme as announced on its official website: Trump Memes are intended to be an expression of support and participation in the ideals and beliefs embodied in the symbol $TRUMP and related artworks. They are not intended to be, nor should they be considered as the subject of any form of investment opportunity, investment contract or security.? An asset used to realize rights?
Among many conspiracy theories, I actually prefer that this is a grand beginning for the Trump family to completely switch from real estate to cryptocurrencies. Using the influence of the media is an ability engraved in the DNA of this family member. A nonsensical event can quickly create momentum, and choosing Meme as this beginning is more appropriate. There are not only eye-catching myths of getting rich quickly, but also a sense of contrast with the presidents high position. I think that in the end, most of the remaining tokens (according to the token release diagram, there may be three uses) can be airdropped to voters, donated to the United States to repay debts, and used for construction. It will help consolidate Trump as a cultural totem in the United States and reverse the publics stereotype of Crypto after the FTX incident. The familys transformation from industrial capital will start with this IP worth nearly 100 billion. (According to the report of Jinshi, Trumps understanding of the familys crypto projects or even his own tokens is not high, which further confirms that the team behind and his children are operating around Trumps IP.)
Ethereum
Solana is undoubtedly the biggest winner of this crypto weekend, achieving a new high in SOL price and a daily transaction volume that is many times higher than Ethereum in just two days. In contrast, the Ethereum community seems very lonely, and the core OGs are increasingly protesting against the Ethereum Foundation and the development of the second layer.
However, judging from the dozens of times surge in Solana’s fees and failed transactions, cryptocurrencies are still some distance away from true mass adoption. So on the issue of Ethereum, I still maintain the same view as in the past. The route of advancing around Layer 2 is just too fast and too advanced. There is almost no social heat in the entire Ethereum ecosystem that can compete with Solana. Yes, even Base is extremely reluctant. The small and high-frequency demand of the first layer has completely shifted to the second layer. The Dapps of the second layer have not ushered in any breakthroughs. A large amount of idle block space has no one interested in it, and the handling fees are pitifully low. This is the current situation of Ethereum, and it is also a microcosm of the former ETH Killers.
The paradox of public chain development is not only the triangle problem, but also the problem of the contradiction between gas income and technological development. To use a very popular metaphor, Ethereum can be assumed to be a casino that requires tickets. In the past few years, the business has been very busy, and the tickets are in short supply. Some people even keep increasing the price to buy them for investment. The price of this ticket began to rise continuously. The boss realized that the casino was indeed not big enough and spacious enough, so he built a casino 100 times larger. In view of this scale, he lowered the admission price by 100 times. In the past, one ticket could be used 100 times. It turned out that there were still so many customers, and the existing equipment did not require such a large venue, so the ticket price began to sluggish.
This is the conflict between the advanced development of Ethereum technology and the price of tokens. In addition, Ethereum has never relied on its influence on social media, but on the moat accumulated from the ICO era to the DeFi Summer, so the problem of lack of fresh blood continues to magnify.
In addition to the urgent need for change in the foundation (I have talked about this issue in the article Why is the King of Copycats Besieged on All Sides?), how to gain an advantage on the social level (make it easier for users to understand Ethereums various obscure technical concepts, and integrate them into traditional social media), how Layer 2 can better feedback (buyback, modify DA pricing, and ecological feedback to the main chain), and how to better support the development of emerging dapps (Ethereum Grant is no longer the only core of infrastructure projects, and various L2s should have better interoperability and compatibility). When the application layer is stagnant, the public chain often competes on details and differentiation.
Encryption 2.0
Trump ushered in the 2.0 era, and the next era of encryption will also be influenced by this family. What do they want to do? Although the family’s first project, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), has not yet been launched, we can still get a glimpse of it from the project’s proposal forum. The first proposal described it this way:
The WLFI protocol will provide liquidity for Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), certain stablecoins, and potentially other digital assets. WLFI will enable WLFI protocol users to access WLFI protocol Aave instances, which will be managed through Aaves risk management system. WLFI aims to introduce a new class of users to over-collateralized lending, one of the most important features of decentralized finance (DeFi). WLFI plans to attract new users to the DeFi space by providing users with a seamless experience to supply and borrow digital assets. Many of these users will be first-time DeFi users, which will help build brand loyalty and awareness for WLFI and Aave, helping Aave maintain its market leadership in the digital asset lending and supply space.
Initially, the WLFI protocol will allow USDC, USDT, ETH, and WBTC to be used for lending. More assets may be added in the future through WLFI voting proposals.
WLFI will use the same reserve ratio system in this Aave V3 instance as the main Aave instance. AaveDAO will receive 20% of the protocol fees generated by the WLFI Aave V3 instance and will receive approximately 7% of the total circulating supply of $WLFI tokens to participate in future WLFI governance procedures, liquidity mining, and promote the decentralization of the WLFI platform. Revenue distribution will be set up through a trustless smart contract that will direct the corresponding percentage of protocol fees to the AaveDAO treasury and WLFI treasury addresses.
Combined with the recent purchase of a large number of tokens of various projects, WLFI can be regarded as an on-chain lending institution created by Donald John Trump Jr. using his fathers influence. Sell WLFI tokens with the left foot and buy value coins with the right foot (if there are large projects to invest, WLFI can step on this move of ascending to the sky with both feet even more happily), and directly spiral to the sky. In addition, WLFI is also buying various domain names in large quantities. According to the information sent by Cointelegraph on Twitter, WLFI has currently bought daolationship.eth, yatogame.eth, WorldLiberty.eth, trumpcoin.eth, erictrump.eth, barrontrump.eth, 9290.eth. It is not difficult to see from here that the main theme of the Trump family in the future is still around the TRUMP IP, but the track involved will be relatively wide. In the next four years, the Trump family project may exist in various public chains like the Trump Group real estate that is now spread all over New York.
The curtain slowly falls, and an extremely special era is about to come. Whether you accept this crypto president or not, you must admit that many major events that will affect Crypto in the next four years will happen on the other side of the Atlantic, and Crypto can either follow or be reborn to make it happen all over the world.
