Meme coins aren’t just speculative assets. They have slowly started representing a symbolic rebellion against established financial norms, aligning with the demographic and ideological shifts shaping modern markets, as highlighted by Binance Research’s latest report.

Since 2022, the collective market cap of meme coins, measured as a share of Total 3 (the crypto market excluding BTC, ETH, and stablecoins), has nearly tripled from 4% to 11%, driven in part by a sense of financial disillusionment and a search for alternative investments amid rising inflation.

What’s Driving Meme Coins?

From 2020 to 2022, the global money supply surged by over 25%, rising from $81 trillion to $102 trillion. This rapid increase in the global money supply has led many to seek refuge in assets that they perceive to have long-term value to preserve wealth. Real estate is a classic example because it has historically served as a store of value.

Yet, homeownership has become less attainable, with wages failing to match escalating housing prices, a disparity particularly challenging for younger generations.

This economic reality has fostered what Binance Research terms “financial nihilism,” as younger investors, hit by affordability crises and unprecedented inflation, grow skeptical of traditional financial systems. Their dissatisfaction became evident during events like the 2021 Gamestop short squeeze, and meme coins today offer a similarly disruptive, decentralized alternative.

Meme coins have managed to create a similar kind of excitement that the cryptocurrency market generated during the 2017 ICO boom. Their appeal lies in unique accessibility; unlike complex Layer 2 solutions or DeFi products, meme coins present a clear, relatable narrative that everyday investors can easily grasp.

The simplicity of a meme-driven coin with a “cute or catchy” concept allows potential buyers to connect quickly, reducing the “time-to-convert” compared to more technical altcoins. This accelerated comprehension can, in turn, help the narrative spread swiftly, building communities and driving speculative interest far more rapidly.

This has been evidenced by the relatively new token Dogwifhat (WIF), which reached a $1 billion market cap in only 104 days, while Shiba Inu (SHIB) achieved the same in 279 days, and the OG meme coin Dogecoin (DOGE) took 8 years to reach the milestone.

Furthermore, new meme coins are emerging at a remarkable pace, with over 75% created in the past year alone.

How Cabals and Influencers Inflate Meme Coin Hype

Despite its appeal, meme coins are an extremely risky asset class with a high risk of losses, as per Binance Research. Most meme coins from the 2023-2024 boom have been short-lived, with 97% seeing near-zero trading volume. Only a few, like DOGE and SHIB, have endured, surviving for 10 and 4 years, respectively.

Though meme coins boast transparency, retail traders remain vulnerable to manipulation by ‘cabals,’ which stage pump-and-dump schemes, use fresh addresses to mimic the broad distribution, and recruit influencers to create artificial hype.

With so many similar meme coins flooding the market, saturation is a risk; projects must focus on unique value and innovation to prevent wasted time and capital.

With BTC’s value nearing its all-time high of $73,700 a few days ago, Bitcoiners seemed poised to see a new price high for their favorite crypto asset.

Even Bitcoin miners are not left out in the anticipation. A CryptoQuant report confirms that the network’s mining difficulty and hash rate have unlocked new heights. This record shows that more mining machines have joined the bandwagon, sparking competition in the ecosystem.

Bitcoin Mining Competition on the Rise

Bitcoin adopts a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus mechanism tied to mining activities to add transactions to the blockchain. The mining difficulty and hash rate are vital in ensuring the network’s stability while new BTC is produced.

When more miners commence Bitcoin mining operations or existing facilities boost their mining capacity, the network’s mining difficulty and hash rate increase. Conversely, a reduction in mining machines brings a decrease in mining difficulty and hash rate.

Highlighting how the latest surge in the two metrics will impact mining operations, the CryptoQuant report stated:

As the difficulty increases, greater computational power is required to process transactions, driving up mining costs. With Bitcoin’s value on the rise, mining competition has intensified, posing challenges for the industry.

This shows that Bitcoin miners will struggle to contend with bigger market players unless they raise cash to boost their mining capacity. The ongoing competition within the mining ecosystem may partly explain miners’ BTC accumulation and holding policy, a practice some believe will drive the asset’s price to higher heights.

How Bitcoin Miners Are Fairing

With the latest surge in competition in the Bitcoin mining business, several miners have explored acquisitions and several strategies to stay afloat.

Last month, Bitcoin miner TeraWulf sold a 25% stake in a joint venture, raising $92 million to boost its mining operations. In other news, Bitcoin miner BitFuFu acquired a rival mining facility based in Ethiopia, helping to boost the firm’s mining capacity by 80 MW.

Another Bitcoin mining firm, Northern Data, disclosed its plan to shut down its mining business to focus on artificial intelligence (AI).

[PRESS RELEASE – London, UK, November 4th, 2024]

WebZero has announced the full agenda for its conference sub0 reset, inviting developers, investors and innovators to join Polkadot founder Dr Gavin Wood, along with industry leaders from Parity and the Web3 Foundation, to work on building JAM, a new paradigm paving the way forward for writing and securing Web3 applications.

The three day event from 9-11 November in Bangkok is dedicated to the most exciting innovation of the Polkadot ecosystem: advancing Gavin Wood’s visionary JAM chain project into the implementation stage and showcasing the most innovative projects built on Substrate.

JAM takes Polkadot’s current architecture to a new level of flexibility, in which Polkadot’s cores can be used for any verification task, whether for smart contracts or sovereign blockchains, maximizing the potential of the cores. It seeks to offer a real solution to the scalability vs coherency dilemma in Web3.

sub0 reset kicks off with a dedicated education day. Attendees can learn from industry greats such as Polkadot founder Robert Habermeier and Avail’s Anurag Arjun, and join barcamp deep-dives focused on Substrate. Day two is Modularity Day, with discussions from leading innovators at Avail, R0gue, Midnight and Parity Technologies. Day three is JAM & Scalability day, building out Polkadot’s founder Gavin Wood’s vision to transform the ecosystem into the world’s first global computer. The venue’s 24/7 hackerspace will give new teams the chance to co-work and compete for 10k USD in prizes.

Fabian Gompf, CEO of the Web3 Foundation said: “sub0 reset is the best opportunity for global developer talent to come together and catch up on the cutting-edge innovation happening in the Substrate and Polkadot ecosystems. Ranging from network updates and milestones to parachains, solochains and a whole day covering Join Accumulate Machine, sub0 reset is an important step for driving forward progress on Polkadot.”

Agenda highlights

 Saturday 9th

• Interoperability deep-dive from Anurag Arjun 12:00pm, main stage
• Keynote from Robert Habermeier, 12:30pm, main stage

Sunday 10th

• Workshop: Building on Polkadot – Shawn Tabrizi, Parity 14:00-15:00
• Building bespoke Web3 gaming experiences, John Linden, Mythical Games 16:30-17:10

 JAM Day – Monday 11th

• Demystifying Jam – Kian Paimani, Parity 11:00am
• Keynote speech on JAM from Dr. Gavin Wood – 17:00-18:00pm
• JAM Toaster: developers can test and optimise JAM implementations on a full-scale simulation of the network with 1,023 nodes at full capacity and 16,384 AMD CPUs. – All day

The Venue

• Spectacular five-floor industrial venue
• 24/7 hackerspace with bounties and $10k prize
• Rooftop oasis
• Free catering and drinks from a private chef

Practical details:

Sub0 reset is taking place at 127 Na Ranong Rd, Khlong Toei, Bangkok from 9-11 November, 2024.

A limited supply of free tickets for sub0 reset are available here.

The event runs from 10 AM until late each day. Make sure to subscribe to the WebZero Luma for full scheduling opportunities. The hackerspace runs 24 hours a day, ensuring developers can build at all hours of the night with food and beverages provided free of charge. Media lounge and recording rooms are provided.

The event will be streamed on the Polkadot Youtube channel.

For any further media enquiries, please contact media@joinwebzero.com

About WEBZERO

WebZero is a developer experience builder that is establishing a hybrid between event production and developer relations, based on its own unique vision and methodology.

About Polkadot

Polkadot is the powerful, secure core of Web3, providing a shared foundation that unites some of the world’s most transformative apps and blockchains. Polkadot offers advanced modular architecture that allows devs to easily design and build their own specialized blockchain projects, pooled security that ensures the same high standard for secure block production across all connected chains and apps connected to it, and robust governance that ensures a transparent system where everyone has say in shaping the blockchain ecosystem for growth and sustainability. With Polkadot, users are not just participants, they’re co-creators with the power to shape its future.