Author: Zeke, YBB Capital Researcher
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 the social media platform Truth Social he founded. Initially, many people mistakenly believed that this move was the result of a hacker attack on Trump's account, but dozens of minutes later, Trump used his personal main account on X (formerly Twitter) to forward 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 scope of this incident is no less than the assassination that Trump experienced in Pennsylvania last year, and its magic is no less than that of him dodging the bullet with his head tilted. I also have some simple thoughts to share about this incident.
In this big country in the East where I live, the final realization of private domain 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 Lighthouse" 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 in which 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 still deviated from the original route. The early Internet companies that held chat platforms and search engines in Web2.0 have developed into the behemoths we see today, such as Google and Tencent, which have completed the original accumulation and achieved long-term monopoly by controlling a large number of traffic entrances. Nowadays, 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 discourse power.
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 very 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? TRUMP's process from 0-80 may be the only time.
In the past, I wanted to explain what Meme Coin was, but it was hard to explain. 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 as the market's initial pricing of President Trump was 80B 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.
I mentioned in my previous article that the best form of SocialFi is not a Dapp like Friend.tech that has set rules and regulations, but a Dapp like Friend.tech. Pump, the currency issuing team behind the president also chose Pump. The reason is also 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.tech's 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 project, the allocation of empowerment and services to people based on the number of tokens held is also the reason for their failure.
Small and fine will never be suitable for Crypto that relies on community culture. Similarly, this is applicable 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 100U tokens or 10WU tokens, you belong to this group.
In the past, when we established a project, we needed to use Twitter to promote it on social media, and then introduce users to Tg and DC to build a community. In the more 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 setter 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.
No matter how you look at Trump's personal tokens, we will enter an era where Meme becomes mainstream and many things are tokenized. In fact, this is somewhat similar to the coinage rights in the Middle Ages in Europe that I mentioned in my article on stablecoins last year. Compared with the Chinese dynasties that have unified the same standard monetary system for most of the time, Europe has always been in bulk style, and countries and even nobles and bishops have the right to mint and issue their own currencies.
Although TRUMP is not a practical currency backed by gold and silver in essence, after all, the president has set a precedent, and many European and American celebrities will inevitably join this medieval retro wave in the future. Another point worth pondering is that Trump owns 80% of the tokens. Will the tokens 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 monetize rights?
Among many conspiracy theories, I actually prefer that this is a grand beginning for the Trump family to completely turn from real estate to encryption. 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 the most appropriate. There are both eye-catching myths of getting rich quickly and a sense of contrast with the president's high position. I think that most of the remaining tokens (according to the token release chart, there may be three uses) can be airdropped to voters, donated to the United States to repay debts, and used for construction. All of these will help consolidate Trump as a cultural totem of the United States and reverse the public's stereotype of Crypto after the FTX incident. The family's transformation from industrial capital will start with this IP worth nearly 100 billion. (According to the report of Jinshi, Trump's understanding of the family's crypto projects and even its own tokens is not high, which further confirms that it is the team behind it and its children who are operating around Trump's IP.)
Solana is undoubtedly the biggest winner of this crypto weekend, achieving a new high in SOL prices and a daily transaction volume that exceeds Ethereum by many times in just two days. In comparison, 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 handling fees and failed transactions, crypto is still a long way from true Mass Adoption. So on the issue of Ethereum, I still maintain the same view as in the past. The route around Layer2 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 Dapp of the second layer has not ushered in any breakthroughs. A large amount of idle block space is not in demand, and the handling fee is pitifully low. This is the current situation of Ethereum and also a microcosm of the former ETH Killers. The paradox of the development of public chains is not only the triangle problem, but also the problem of the contradiction between Gas income and technological development behind the triangle problem. To use an extremely popular metaphor, Ethereum can be assumed to be a casino that requires tickets. In the past few years, the business has been full, the tickets are in short supply, and some people have continued to increase the price to purchase them for investment. The price of this ticket has begun to rise continuously. The boss realized that the casino was not big enough and spacious enough, so he built a casino 100 times larger. Given the scale, he lowered the admission price by 100 times, so that one ticket could be used 100 times. As a result, he found that there were still so many customers, and the existing equipment did not require such a large venue, so the ticket price began to slump.
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 is still magnifying.
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 advantages at the social level (making it easier for users to understand Ethereum's various obscure technical concepts, and integrating them into traditional social media), how Layer2 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 based on infrastructure projects as the only core, and various L2s should have better interoperability and compatibility). In the case of stagnation at the application layer, the public chain often competes on details and differentiation.
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 is described as follows:
The WLFI protocol will provide liquidity for Ethereum (ETH), Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), certain stablecoins, and possibly other digital assets. WLFI will enable WLFI protocol users to access the WLFI protocol Aave instance, which will be managed through Aave's 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 for lending. More assets may be added in the future through WLFI voting proposals.
WLFI will adopt the same reserve ratio system as the main Aave instance in this Aave V3 instance. AaveDAO will receive 20% of the protocol fees generated by the WLFI Aave V3 instance and will receive approximately 7% of the total circulation 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 the WLFI treasury address.
Combined with the recent large-scale purchase of various project tokens, WLFI can be regarded as an on-chain lending institution created by Donald John Trump Jr. using his father's influence. Sell WLFI tokens with the left foot and buy value coins with the right foot (if there are big projects to invest, WLFI can step on this move of ascending to the sky with both feet even more happily), and directly spiral up 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 will still revolve 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 have to 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.
After the Federal Reserve decided to cut interest rates by 50 basis points in September, Bitcoin once surged to $64,000. According to US media, during the price increase, details of the meeting between Musk and Salvadoran President Bukele were exposed, and they talked about the future of mankind.
AlexBitcoin fell back from its high of $64,741 at the beginning of the week to around $63,000. Market analysis pointed out that BlackRock's new withdrawal policy has triggered panic among traders.
MiyukiExperts at TOKEN2049 agreed that Singapore’s progressive initiatives, such as the digital token payment guide, support industry growth. As a leading financial and fintech hub, Singapore prioritises incentives for companies, reinforcing its reputation for stability as a Web3 leader.
CatherineAlibaba has launched a new AI-powered video generator called Qwen 2.5, allowing users to create high-quality videos from text prompts in both Chinese and English. This tool enhances Alibaba's Tongyi Wanxiang portfolio and aims to serve various industries, simplifying video production by integrating audio and offering unlimited free usage.
AnaisAfter the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 50 basis points, gold and Bitcoin soared, but both underperformed the more than 10% weekly increase in the SOL token under the US blue-chip public chain Solana. The reason is that the bigwigs from China and the United States gathered at TOKEN 2049 and good news came frequently.
WeiliangThe Korea National Police Agency has conducted 515 undercover investigations into illegal deepfake pornography since September 2021, leading to the arrest of 1,415 individuals, including teenagers involved in distributing such content. In response to rising digital sex crimes, authorities have established a task force to address deepfake pornography and are evaluating Telegram's role in facilitating these offenses.
WeatherlyBybit has launched the world’s first Shariah-compliant Islamic Crypto Account for ethical trading, following Bybit Türkiye’s recognition by Turkey’s Capital Markets Board as a crypto asset service provider.
CatherineCaroline Ellison, former Alameda Research CEO, was sentenced to two years in a minimum-security prison for her role in the FTX collapse and must forfeit $11 billion. She is set to surrender on or after 7 November 2024, likely serving near Boston.
KikyoSweden's authorities are cracking down on unlicensed cryptocurrency exchanges involved in organised crime and money laundering. They are also targeting Bitcoin mining operations, uncovering 90 million SEK in unpaid taxes from 18 firms.
WeatherlyDiddy, awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges, is reportedly sharing a jail space with disgraced crypto figure Sam Bankman-Fried. The hip-hop mogul has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in court.
Catherine
