It’s a memecoin frenzy:
Shrub (SHRUB), up 113,335%…
Nutcoin (NUT) +3,876%…
Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) +1,949%…
Bertram The Pomeranian (BERT) +1,608%…
Fartcoin (FARTCOIN) (FART) + 947%…
These are all in just the past month alone.
I could keep going. Here’s Evan (EVAN), up 951%… and Hege (HEGE), up 336% in the past 7 days.
Frenzy is an understatement.
Meanwhile, bitcoin’s (BTC) sits at all-time highs, about to cross $100,000 any day now.
Ethereum (ETH) and Solana (SOL) — my two favorite large cryptos — are up 34% and 30%, respectively, in the past month.
Any stock market investor would be thrilled with those returns. But you can see why they’re not as “exciting” as the tiny memecoins that can spike 1,000% overnight.
Here’s the chart of Google searches for the term “memecoins” over the past 90 days. Talk about hockey stick growth:
Source: Google Trends
Is this a flash in the pan, or will the memecoin mania last?
I believe this is just the beginning.
Readers who’ve been following along know the whole crypto sector was like a basketball held underwater.
Now, thanks to Trump’s victory, it’s being unleashed all at once. The sector is a Wild West of new opportunity — with all the good, bad, and ugly that comes with that. And that includes funny, but useless, memecoins.
Bonk (BONK), for example, is up 119% in November. It’s a dog-themed coin on the Solana blockchain. It’s known for its fast and low-cost transactions. According to crypto news, Bonk plans to burn 1 trillion tokens by Christmas, which would boost scarcity and potentially drive up the price. At least, that’s what its fans are betting on.
Or Pepe (PEPE), an Ethereum-based coin that was inspired by the Pepe the Frog meme.
There’s also a Pikachu Inu (PIKACHU) coin up 1,285% in one month.
These are entertainment — pure speculation. This part of the crypto market is like the world’s greatest casino. Like any casino, some folks get lucky. A lot of folks are getting very lucky lately.
And they’ll probably keep getting lucky given we’ve entered the altseason. This is the part of the bitcoin cycle where smaller cryptos outperform bitcoin.
But 99% of these memecoins are jokes and will go to zero in less than a year. For the most part, they’re a bad look for the crypto industry. A distraction that causes people to not take the whole industry seriously. Which is a shame because there’s real, exciting innovation going on in the space.
Instead of memecoins, invest in real crypto businesses making real money.
There’s hundreds crypto businesses using the power of blockchain to solve real-world problems.
The only thing they have in common with memecoins is they’re cryptos, and they’re often tiny.
And these kinds of businesses are now set to thrive thanks to the new pro-crypto Congress. Less regulations and more innovation. SEC Chair Gary Gensler (who led the crackdown in crypto), just announced on X/Twitter that he’s stepping down.
With new regulatory support after the 2024 election, Bitcoin is reaching unprecedented highs. Crypto’s path is clearer than ever, making this a prime moment to take action.
The crypto renaissance is unfolding fast.
For almost four years, building a legitimate crypto business in America has been basically illegal. Entrepreneurs who wanted to build real businesses in this industry risked jail time.
This put innovation on pause. Developers told me, “I’d love to build this, but I don’t want to go to jail.” It was a constant regulatory barrage. Crypto banks were shut down by the government. Founders and funds were sued. Protocols were subject to constant surveillance sweeps.
That era just ended.
Think of it like taking the handcuffs off thousands of entrepreneurs at once. The innovation surge will shock people who think crypto is just about speculation.
It’s like buying internet stocks in the 90s.
Here’s one example of a crypto business with a real use case, one where innovators were able to flourish.
We invested in Hivemapper (HONEY) in my Venture advisory at $0.01. A year later we sold half of that position for a 1,050% gain. We continue to hold the other half.
This may look like you’ve already missed the boat. But don’t worry, Hivemapper is still a very early-stage crypto.
Hivemapper is reinventing “mapping.” It makes a 4K, high-definition dashcam. Anyone can buy one of these dashcams and attach it to their rearview mirror.
The camera automatically “maps” the roads as you drive around, just like a Google Street View car. Hivemapper then feeds these images into its global map. Hivemapper pays you in crypto for updating its map. And it’s growing 5X faster than Google Maps did in its early days.
You can read my full Hivemapper analysis here.
There’s also Helium (HNT) which sells hotspot routers you can install on your roof. It successfully built the world’s only global Internet of Things network. And it achieved this without constructing a single cell tower.
Akash Network (AKT) and Render Network (RNDR) are building artificial intelligence chip networks spanning the globe. They’re up 73% and 62% in the last month, respectively.
My most recent recommendation in my crypto advisoy Venture is building a location data network that’s 100X more accurate than standard GPS (which has been around since the 70s).
Standard GPS gets you within 20 ft. of your target. This crypto provides centimeter precision. Amazing. Its revenues surged 450% in the past year.
Bottom line: With so many quality cryptos to chose from, investing in memecoins just isn’t worth it.
For more insights, subscribe to my investing letter The Jolt⚡.
I publish fresh research on stocks and crypto every Monday and Friday.
Also, I run a crypto advisory called Venture. You can learn more about it by clicking here.
— Stephen McBride, Chief Analyst at RiskHedge
Are memecoins worth investing in? was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.