The paradox of “meme” tokens — is it worth taking them seriously?

Meme tokens exploit the phenomenon of memes that have become widespread among Generation Z as the Internet develops. They can be perceived as a kind of indicator of risk appetite in the cryptocurrency market as a whole, despite the fact that there are no serious fundamental reasons for them. The cost is derived from the mood of the crowd.

The ancestor of Dogecoin appeared as a joke based on a fork of one of the Litecoin forks. Various clones that have filled the space since then (according to CoinGecko, 46 of them still have some value), among which Shiba Inu stands out, are standard ERC-20 tokens that are launched “in ten minutes on the knee”.

They have not proposed use cases that allow them to count on their long-term “survival”.

We can only mention the Shiba Inu team, which is making efforts in this direction – the development of the metaverse and the expansion of support for tokens as a payment option by real business.

However, meme tokens clearly do not pull on the status of “Internet money” – 90.5% of ATH DOGE collapsed, SHIB – 84.7%. To do this, there is a Lightning Network and stablecoins, which are implemented by reputable companies, and not those that chase hype or are initially focused on young people.

Dogecoin and Shiba Inu still rank 10th and 12th in the ranking by capitalization, but it is obvious that this is not a guaranteed phenomenon for the future. Below, in this list, for example, are Polygon, Avalanche, NEAR, which definitely have fundamental reasons to end up in higher positions. Dogecoin, Shiba Inu have played their role to expand the number of cryptocurrency users.

To maintain the current estimates or return to the previous ones, a constant influx of “army” of users is needed. Now, in the conditions of crypto-winter and the deterioration of the situation in the economy, many holders are beginning to look at tokens as an opportunity to get a cache. The recent surge in interest was due to the influence of technical factors (reversal formations worked).

But Google Trends shows minimal interest in buying meme tokens over the past year, and Santiment noted the “unloading” of “whales”. The growth over the last 30 days has actually evaporated.