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Author: Zack Guzman Translated by: Vernacular Blockchain
With the latest memecoin storm settled, the crypto industry is once again at a familiar crossroads.This time, the fuse of the storm was a scandal involving Argentina President Javier Milei and the ill-fated Libra Token – an incident that sparked an increasing market for rush trading, insider trading and memecoinExtensive discussion of absurdity.
To dig deep into the impact of the storm on the industry as a whole, Coinage interviewed Travis Kling, founder of Ikigai Asset Management, who has been warning the nihilism of the crypto market is growing for more than a year.In his opinion, this incident was the result of an increasingly unbridled cycle of development to the extreme.
“I think we are now experiencing a post-Gensler era SEC “unregulated” or “light regulation” environment… People have begun to call it “crime season” since Trump launched himThis statement has become popular since memecoin,” Kling said.He believes that politicians such as Donald Trump and Javier Milei’s entry into memecoin has made the market absurdity that can no longer be ignored.
“It seems that Iggy Azalea is crawling forward, allowing Donald J. Trump to move forward,” he teased, emphasizing that a group of unexpected participants are now making money in the crypto market.
Kling believes that the memecoin ecosystem has completely degenerated and has become an area of ”the most nihilistic, the most extreme gambling, the most valuable, the most meaningless, the most plundering, the most incredible plundering – all the bad, the no good.”The question is whether this is just a cyclical over-craze in the market that will eventually fade, or is there a deeper corruption in the crypto industry in its core use cases?”We’re still facing a use case problem, a core practical problem. And now, this kind of thing is filling that gap.”
This atmosphere of nihilism has become increasingly serious due to the behavior of market participants.Hayden Davis, a controversial figure who has repeatedly traded well-known memecoin projects, said bluntly in a recent interview with Coffeezilla: “This is a game for people in the circle, it is an unregulated casino.” Although he knew the risks, he himselfBut they made millions of dollars in profits, while later retail investors were completely harvested.Kling was exhausted by all this: “It’s so breathless…it’s so crazy, you know?”
These scams are operating at a faster pace.The past Token projects that took years to cash out have become history, and now, as Kling put it, “we have refined the scam to the extreme – the Argentine president completed a scam in the crypto market in just five hours.” Compared with the previous token sell-offs with longer cycles and slower paces, this situation seems particularly absurd, but if you think about it carefully, there seems to be no essential difference.”We used to be at least pretending to do some projects, but now we’re completely naked nihilism, and people are still in line and can’t wait to participate in this scam.”
While memecoin has recently driven a surge in on-chain trading volume, especially in the Solana ecosystem, Kling warns that this is not necessarily a positive signal that investors are expecting.He noted that the current mainstream view of institutions is “owning a casino”, but the explosive growth driven by Solana relies on memecoin is facing sustainability issues, a bet that may not be as secure as some people think.Pantera’s portfolio manager Cosmo Jiang said in an interview with Coinage in December that Solana has surpassed Ethereum in discussions among institutional investors.In addition, the developers of the Solana ecosystem at that time also emphasized that Solana is much more than memecoin.
“Memecoin has social attributes, they obviously affect the entire social level, and the higher the attention they are on the social network, the larger the scale they will be,” Mert said. “I don’t think there is anything strange about them attracting the most attention. ButWhat I want to say is that the statement “Solana only has memecoin” is completely wrong. The fact is that Solana provides the best token distribution experience, whether it is issuing, transferring, trading, or storing it in a wallet, all of which are built onA truly usable, scalable, and capable of supporting a large number of users. ”
However, aside from the short-term impact of Memecoin, a bigger question remains: If such topics occupy the industry’s headlines, what does the crypto market represent?Kling believes that “the phenomenon of memecoin is inseparable from the core practicality issues of the entire altcoin track. If there are a large number of altcoin projects that can be proposed, “Look at this, it has achieved real application in the real world.”Then our discussion today will be completely different. But unfortunately, there are only a handful of such projects.”
Despite being frustrated by the current market situation, Kling still hasn’t given up.He acknowledged that the industry was in a survival crisis, but also saw hope.”The current crypto market is extremely frustrating, but at the same time, we have unprecedented support from the highest level of the U.S. government, and this contrast is simply incredible.” The Trump administration’s recent friendly attitude towards crypto policy,Including the appointment of David Sacks and priorities to promote regulatory clarity, it shows that the long-term development trajectory of the crypto industry may not be as pessimistic as it seems.
“This is a battle worth fighting for,” Kling said.As for whether the entire industry will take this opportunity to adjust itself and turn to real practical applications, it remains to be seen.But one thing is clear: the era of unbridled scams may be coming to an end.
