TL;DR

Hi all,

its been awhile since I last wrote anything at all. Some points from my 2024 thread representing my trading thoughts still remain relevant in terms of memecoin selection; but it appears we’ve since traversed into a new frontier. In 2024 we saw pure memes > celebrity coins > art tokens > AI / tech / utility tokens. To some extent it was still pretty clear then when/what the meta/flavour of the month was - there were clear boundaries and timelines then.

Yet fastforward to 2025 and we see a splattering mess of tokens from yesteryear trying to scramble for relevance - they’ve all had their time in the limelight and most have done a 70-90% drawdown; alas only the last remaining bagholders/roundtrippers still clinging on for the next exit pump! Mind you, these aren’t necessarily rugs - but a function of this game of musical chairs we play - the market (you) will always prefer the shiny new thing until there is reason to revisit the past. In the foreground, new memes and tech continue their fight for dominance; all at the same time. 2024 has provided that precedence for tokenised attention across various industries; and trump’s ‘official’ coin only granted the green light (to both good and bad actors).

Amidst the chaos - we now see multiple tokens across various genres / lifespans co-existing. yet it is important to realise that liquidity, very much like our attention, is cyclical - what makes today’s headlines may not make it tomorrow, and nobody knows what tomorrow’s headlines will be lol. Tokens from various genres will continue to coexist; and various genres will have their own liquidity cycles concurrently. What do I mean? remember this diagram?

ok now imagine this is the graph of one token; whilst also realising that you could flip it around and it’d be the graph of another token.

ok now in your mind overlap them and realise this is happening across 112931920482 tokens on the blockchain each with their own highs and lows; and on another level each genre is also in various stages whether its the nadir / zenith. The point I’m getting at is that there are infinite opportunities for you to spot the trades that are least crowded and granted while most of them may never really be anything; you can at least watchlist them and put in a note to self / set price alerts that ping you to take a second look.

In 2024 we covered most domains of tokenised attention which i’ve mentioned above and will elaborate here. Some candidates from various categories do not make it past a week; others; whilst once in the limelight, have bottomed out as well.

1. Pure memes - memes just for fun; think viral trends both on X / tiktok or nostalgia memes from yesteryear. copypasta and the flywheel of viral posts feature the most strongly here
2. Celebrity Coins - tokens banking on a certain person of influence; whilst this space is full of extractors that fall into this category, these still do present an opportunity via the prospect of ‘onboarding normies’
3. Art Tokens - tokens backed by art; best thought of as an evolution of nft communities
4. AI / tech / utility tokens - tokens with the prospect of actual tek and ‘utility’ - I once said i’d never trade these but you adapt to the market. often the prospect of technology itself is more promising and crucial than the actual technology (“sell the news / the idea of the news”)
5. Communities / web2 - somewhat similar to point 2 except these are existing web2 communities with an existing following they can project onto.
6. news / tweets - as an aside to the above tokens that set a ‘meta’ these often happen much quicker in real time, having a faster and sharper ascent - but often met with an equally sharp descent - isn’t to say they don’t get a second chance but dont fomo more than you should during first pump.

The above is by no means an exhaustive list but just an attempt by me to pigeonhole things to streamline the process. Will there be new categories? Hopefully so - and usually when the opportunity presents itself the ‘next’ meta is often the most rewarding. However, as mentioned above with multiple token genres establishing their footing and concurrently at various cycles of their life, these lines are increasingly blurred. Add to that the market cooldown from the peak euphoria of trump and we see alot more bearposting - indeed it is hard to imagine what could top that - personally I can’t at this juncture. Still, I am grateful for the cooldown in pace - as a holder more than a trader I do benefit more from these markets where we return to tokens primarily under categories 1/3/4 which are historically more slow paced, community driven, and organic. Some things in the original thread still hold true with regarding to memecoin selection (especially for cat. 1/3), but with more coins at their 90% drawdown it also presents itself an opportunity for entry. Some factors for consideration as future catalysts:

1. Community Expansion: what are potential FUTURE backers of the token? most of the time they don’t even really need to buy, just the idea of them buying is convincing enough. eg case study MLG - dead coin for 7 months before being picked up again - and eventually getting the attention of folk like faze. — Sell the story and the idea of an attention flywheel
2. The Current Community / Team: Is the tek still tekking? Is dev still devving? Is community still vibing? with traditional memes i’d always say to evaluate community on dips; with cat. 4 tokens the equivalent would be to dyor into the tek, see how its progressed / advanced; are there more eyes and $ in it. This is not always reflected by mcap - therein lies the opportunity for arbitrage.
3. Mainstream Coverage: Similar to point 1 but with a nuance towards traditional media coverage of particular events (eg politicisation of pnut / continued coverage of moo deng) / tradfi pivoting towards a particular industry (eg AI / robotics). More simply thought of as frontrunning the news (but again it has to be not obvious enough - otherwise the trade gets crowded real early)

As with any trade, you want to enter these trades before it gets crowded - and then exit progressively as it gets more crowded (think at all levels - who is the marginal buyer? Is the story still a good story?)

Potential pitfalls to avoid:

1. Sizing. Ok you’ve managed to think of 312849 reasons why tokens a-z can moon; but do you have enough dry powder to allocate to these? understand that the money you allocate to these may never see light of day, and you should still very much keep $ around to bid active metas / tokens in the limelight. The upside is, because you bought these tokens at the bottom; you typically dont suffer a HUGE drawdown even if you chose to pull out of them; but magnify that across 1293 tokens and you can see how this becomes an issue.
2. Moat / Legitimacy. Ok you’ve gotten the reason why this token SHOULD make a comeback, and very well the thesis is playing out. but wait some guy just launched a new token and that one is running instead! This is a sad but real side effect in the era of pumpfun where anyone with zero blockchain knowledge can launch a token - also why theres 12312 broccolis and 12903 neiros. The solution? If you truly do believe in the thesis - split your eggs into all of them and just hope one of them pans out. take initials back out early if you’re spread too thin - then let the market pick one and size in if you do have powder. my own example of this is chillguy and mnc lol

I do recognise that this style of trading / bidding “death” is not for everybody. The number of ways one can attempt to make / lose money in this space is endless. At best you turn out to be a genius, at worse its copium. Yet looking in a direction where nobody is looking, bidding tokens where the storm has settled, has worked for me enough times for it to matter. at time of writing the random fortnite token is an example of this; but we do see this pattern multiple times. If you’ve made it this far kudos to you given how limited the typical attention span is here.

All the best in the year ahead!

Disclaimer:

1. This article is reprinted from [gake (pep arc)]. All copyrights belong to the original author [gake (pep arc)]. If there are objections to this reprint, please contact the Gate Learn team, and they will handle it promptly.
2. Liability Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not constitute any investment advice.
3. The Gate Learn team does translations of the article into other languages. Copying, distributing, or plagiarizing the translated articles is prohibited unless mentioned.