With 9 MEMEs already in the top 100 by market cap, embracing "attention investing" is the clear path forward
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With 9 MEMEs already in the top 100 by market cap, embracing "attention investing" is the clear path forward
When a project becomes memefied, the effect is infinite.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy TechFlow
Do memes have value? This question has probably become a daily debate.
Good meme or bad meme, as long as it pumps, everyone loves it.
In the crypto world where everything can become a meme, any joke or event could turn into a wealth-generating machine, naturally attracting an endless stream of dreamers willing to gamble on small memecoins.
And here’s a little-known fact you might not be aware of:
Among the current top 100 cryptocurrencies by market cap, there are already 9 meme coins.
Big dog, second dog, hat dog, blue frog, green frog, open-mouth cat... Cats, dogs, and frogs are gradually moving toward center stage in the cryptocurrency landscape.
With the recent market rebound, if you check the gainers list within the top 500 market caps, you’ll also find that many of the biggest movers are memecoins.
Born from chaos, strong in pumping, skilled in virality, trapped by risk.
Memecoins blend alluring yet dangerous traits—like the 108 heroes of Liangshan Marsh, once seated among them, you’re a hero. Whether you were once a humble mat weaver or an outlaw doesn’t matter under the logic of “might makes right.”
More important than debating "which coin has real value" is embracing change.
Barbell Strategy: Both Ends Are Attention Investments
In this crypto cycle, one increasingly accepted strategy is the "barbell approach."
One end of the barbell holds established, relatively stable large-cap assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and SOL. The other end holds various meme coins tied to trending narratives.
One side secures the floor, the other bets on the ceiling; one side focuses on long-term holding, the other on rapid turnover.
As for the middle of the barbell—VC-backed tokens and so-called "value coins"—positions are being reduced or abandoned altogether.
From a materialist perspective, you could say this is investors’ intelligent response to evolving market structures.
Moreover, consensus around both ends of this barbell is growing stronger.
Infrastructure has value, applications have value, narratives have value… But nothing matters more than attention.
The left side of the barbell captures sustained attention, while the right represents fleeting, ephemeral attention. Crypto investing itself is ultimately an attention investment—catching the pulse of attention brings liquidity and fuels price pumps (and possibly dumps).
That’s how you think—and smart institutions think the same way.
Since December last year, Stratos, a hedge fund backed by a16z, has been running a liquid fund holding WIF. When WIF was priced at $0.01, Stratos reportedly achieved 300x returns.
Similarly, top-tier VC Pantera has publicly stated its holdings in meme coins. Partner Paul Veradittakit once wrote that memes are Trojan horses disguised as toys, using cultural references to show how memes can attract more people into crypto.
While you’re worrying about high FDV and low circulation draining VC coins, the VCs themselves are playing memes on one end of the barbell.
Attention equals value—an inviolable truth every participant in the crypto world must respect.
Project Memeification: Unlimited Impact
Born from grassroots origins, masterful in dissemination—the two traits of memes haven't gone unnoticed by project teams.
Thus, you’ll increasingly see projects—from launch to operation—embracing memes, attempting to use more accessible expressions to build closer ties with the crypto community.
For example, Monad, the highly anticipated flagship project boosted by parallel EVM narrative, despite positioning itself around core infrastructure and hardcore tech, even created a dedicated "Meme Generator" on its official website to encourage the community to create memes around Monad.
You’ll also increasingly notice that in posts and articles introducing Monad, a sad frog形象 corresponding to Monad’s purple logo always appears.
Likewise, Berachain—one of the L1s most resembling a meme—positioned itself as an adorable bear right from its brand inception. Hence, the nickname "Bear Chain" spread organically.
Later, in finer product designs, you can see the bear-eating-honey motif incorporated into its tokenomics and liquidity mechanisms.
This reflects the reality of today’s attention-scarce crypto market environment, where memes offer superior memorability and virality.
Carefully observe crypto projects’ attention-grabbing marketing strategies—nothing has really changed:
In earlier days, crypto projects preferred promoting themselves using hardcore technical jargon—millions of TPS, directed acyclic graphs, high concurrency, EVM compatibility… Seeing these terms, both capital and retail investors would inevitably feel: “I don’t understand anything, but it sounds impressive.”
Now that the crypto space has evolved, market participants are gradually suffering from "impressive fatigue." Technical buzzwords no longer excite.
Instead, easily shareable frog-headed memes are becoming more interesting.
Whether it's a communication strategy or a trading strategy, embracing memes has become an irreversible trend.
Don’t get stuck in debates over whether memes have value. Spending precious time on abstract mental debates is utterly pointless.
Question memes, understand memes, then either embrace or avoid them—that’s all there is to it.
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