So it seems there’s somewhat of a consensus that crypto is in its post-fundamentals era. That it doesn’t matter what the technology related to the token could become; because on a long enough time horizon, no token-holder has ever been rewarded for holding. The only ‘fundamentals’ a token will need is other buyers.
and I’m not saying this hasn’t always been the case, it just feels more broadly realised now. There’s an acknowledgement that we can’t sell narratives of governance, potential rev-share, staking, and all that, because they’ve all been exhausted.
I’ve barely held any tokens with conviction since November 2021. It’s not my niche. I missed Defi Summer but I remember being partially red-pilled on the prospects of $UNI and all the Defi tokens throughout 2022, listening to old podcasts, reading old blogs, all that junk. The endgame for these tokens was supposedly to share protocol revenue and governance rights. The token holders would be partial owners of the world’s largest cross-border asset exchange.
Now almost everyone is aware the main purpose of a token is for the team and investors to cashout. So any narratives about fundamentals that are spun up are futile.
In this post-fundamentals era for crypto, coins like Pepe and HarryPotterObamicSonic10Inu are being genuinely considered on my TL as the best allocation for the next cycle. Because they contain culture. Or at least, enough culture to sell to the greater fool at a higher mcap.
Culture is definitely important — it’s partly, if not entirely, the reason Milady is so successful. All the other PFPs are bleeding at the moment, except for the Remila eco ones. They aren’t any more fundamentally sound than any of the other PFPs, just like all the others there’s no hard asset backing them. There’s been airdrops for a while, sure, (thinking of Scatter Art, $DMT, and others here), but it’s minimal and at this point everyone can acknowledge airdrops are relatively zero sum.
Milady has been the right cultural fit for crypto for some time. In good cause from the team too, who are very much self-aware drivers of it. The tweets of the Charlotte and co and the large success of their events are testimony to this.
You could even go so far to say the cultural value is ‘fundamental’ value. That people will read your tweets if you don a Remilia PFP.
Imo though, ultimately, the shitcoin cycle we are in at the moment is just another narrative. How far this narrative goes is defined by how high Hpos10i goes, or Pepe, or the next coin that hasn’t arrived yet. It could well succeed in a bigger bull when majors pump more. But to reiterate: end of the day, it is still a narrative.
Also imo, the return value on fundamentals will come eventually if crypto innovates. People will no longer end up with wool over their eyes though; we need actual fundamentals. $GMX and $RLB to name two, but they both contain long-tail protocol-level bankruptcy risk. We need more useful on-chain primitives, better self custody solutions, greater connections to real world assets, and more. Probably a lot of what we need, we don’t even know yet.
and with the return to fundamentals we might just see a rejection of the memecoins born in the post-fundamentals era.
Would highly recommend reading @CL207’s article that first made me seriously aware of the longevity of shitcoin szn.
https://www.egirlcapital.com/writings/154108440.
Perhaps my view is more optimistic, that within crypto we might see a reversion to value on fundamentals.
Thanks for reading.
