Attention is the lifeblood of Dogecoin (DOGE) and different memecoins. Much like earnings drive the value of company shares, the measurement and high quality of consideration captured by memecoins drive their value motion.
Successful crypto merchants perceive that DOGE and its kin will not be simply chips in the “great shitcoin casino” however are, actually, tradable derivatives of human consideration. They are tradable assets backed by zeitgeists.
Trading memecoins isn’t nearly spinning the wheel however about weighing the coin’s valuation towards the quantity of consideration it’s receiving. As crypto influencer Cobie mentioned, “Smart traders start selling as ownership and valuation have caught up with attention.”
This signifies that human consideration is being considered more and more as one of the scarcest commodities in the world, which is true. In reality, we’ve recognized this for thus lengthy that it’s now a cliche to speak about the “attention economy.”
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In the 2000s, Web2 firms like Facebook and Snapchat discovered to monetize consideration. They created apps that captured folks’s consideration and tracked their behaviors, which allowed them to farm and promote consideration to advertisers.
I do know this may sound like undergraduate hooey, however as our financial system modifications and evolves, it’s solely pure that the varieties of issues we worth ought to develop. If human consideration is highly effective sufficient to drive the backside line of large firms like Meta and Google, then why not commerce it straight?
Memecoins are a method of valuing and buying and selling the consideration commodity in a decentralized method. Using blockchains and automatic market makers, anybody can commerce on folks’s consideration and enthusiasm.
Remember when Joe Rogan obtained into scorching water earlier this 12 months about feedback he made on his well-liked The Joe Rogan Experience podcast? Within 24 hours, perhaps a dozen Rogan-themed memecoins had been launched, with one, Marshall Rogan Inu (MRI), surpassing a $50 million market capitalization.
How may the market cap get so excessive? Well, at that second, MRI was the high trending coin throughout buying and selling platforms like DEX Screener, it was blowing up on Twitter, and it had sponsored a combined martial arts fighter. Its valuation needed to meet up with the quantity of hype surrounding the challenge.
Or take DOGE, which pumped following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. The greater valuation was not solely as a result of the rational, if dangerous, play that Musk may combine the crypto token into Twitter in the future, nevertheless it was additionally a operate of crypto merchants betting that Musk’s tweets would drive consideration to DOGE and enhance its value.
Unlike small memecoins that stay and die on how a lot curiosity there is in the story, memecoin stalwarts like Shuba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin even have fundamentals contributing to their worth. Indeed, DOGE’s market cap is at present over $16 billion, and it’s one of the largest proof-of-work blockchains following Ethereum’s change to proof-of-stake in September.
DOGE’s valuation is subsequently based mostly on its fundamentals plus consideration, whereas memecoins like Will Smith Inu (WSI), which pumped after Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars, are valued solely on consideration and are forgotten when the information cycle strikes on.
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While it’s simple to dismiss all this as meaningless playing — and I don’t deny the speculative facet — that may miss the change beneath the hood. Memecoins aren’t based mostly on random cube rolls — they observe the human consideration commodity.
Given the headwinds confronted by the world financial system, the creation of new means of hypothesis and investing is not shocking. Our economies are at risk of grinding to a halt as a result of declining productiveness and scarcer pure sources.
In the future, we’ll see an uptick in ephemeral points of tradition turning into tradable commodities. Fractionalized music albums and mental property rights are on the method, and because of memecoins, folks can now commerce derivatives based mostly on jokes and tabloid scandals.
The large market cap of DOGE and the fixed parade of microcap memecoins present that our idea of worth is shifting from real-world commodities that come out of the floor to the ephemeral qualities that produce tradition. And keep in mind, if everybody decides one thing is priceless, it would nicely be.
Nathan Thompson is the lead tech author for Bybit. He spent ten years as a contract journalist principally overlaying Southeast Asia earlier than turning to crypto throughout the Covid-19 lockdowns. He holds joint honors in communication and philosophy from Cardiff University.
This article is for normal info functions and is not supposed to be and shouldn’t be taken as authorized or funding recommendation. The views, ideas and opinions expressed listed below are the creator’s alone and don’t essentially replicate or characterize the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.