Playing MEME, how can you achieve repeated victories?
@Michael_Liu93 Mai's secret is eight words: find a strong dominant market, chase the second wave.
After reading these verified MEME trading principles, making big money is actually quite simple (contains 💰 password).
This is the 22nd recap of #Dialogue with 100 Traders. It will continue to be updated, and you are welcome to follow.
Mai's MEME journey: after a five-minute hundredfold return, he became addicted to MEME.
Before getting into crypto, Mai followed a very 'orthodox' financial path: studying finance in university, becoming a banker in the sell-side after graduation, and then moving to the buy-side. In the buy-side, he was looking at the enterprise service sector, where many blockchain founders wanted to create BAAS, which is Blockchain as a Service, and through this opportunity, he saw this new technology.
By 2020-2021, Mai officially entered the crypto industry, managing secondary positions for some traditional finance industry bosses, primarily in Bitcoin. From that time on, he began to spend a lot of time researching new things and finding Alpha.
As for this cycle's Alpha, Mai firmly believes it is MEME, so he personally spends 60% to 70% of his time on MEME, also inviting various CX traditional finance industry bosses to participate.
Becoming addicted to MEME originated from a trade that yielded a hundredfold return in five minutes.
At that time, the market was speculating on Elon Musk's signature. Mai had positions in both Dragon One TROLL and Dragon Two ZUZALU. So which coin will become Dragon Three? Mai and his friends think that Vitalik's signature might have speculative space, so they bought TCATI (Green Tea), a cat-themed MEME, for over 20,000 in market cap, which comes from a signature in Vitalik's X account.
About five minutes after buying, the coin suddenly surged to around one to two million in market cap, instantly turning several hundred dollars in position into thirty to forty thousand dollars.
This is actually Mai's first real contact with MEME. Although the hundredfold return only recouped the initial capital, this trading experience made him feel, 'MEME is really fun.'
Then he began to spend more time studying MEME, understanding MEME, and trading MEME, gradually developing his own trading strategy.
Why is a strong dominant player more fun?
PVP markets are a typical game of mutual non-achievement, where everyone is actually competing to discover a hotspot first, or who can create a hotspot and accumulate bottom chips, and then when they feel it's a high point, cover everyone and make a profit.
The dominant market is actually a game where retail investors and the dominant player achieve each other. In a MEME's lifecycle, the dominant player wants to raise its market cap, wants to get listed on Binance, so they need to use their funds to find callers, accumulate chips, wash chips, and create advertisements/messages to drive hotspots.
If a dominant player is very good at doing these things, it means they are skilled at storytelling, have a large financial volume, and have various relationships with callers and exchanges. This situation is a win-win for both retail investors and the dominant player.
How to judge whether a market is a dominant market?
Mai provided a perspective: observe whether there is deliberate wash behavior in wallets, i.e., maintaining a price range for the same target and quickly buying and selling within a few seconds. The purpose of the dominant player washing wallets includes:
Able to be marked as a new wallet by tool vendors like GMGN.
Dispersing chips to prepare for pumps.
However, as more and more information is revealed by tool vendors, the methods used by the dominant players are constantly changing. But this is good news for retail investors because it gives the dominant players more time to collect chips and prepare for the pump, allowing retail investors more time to identify which dominant markets are strong.
How does the dominant player on Solana operate a MEME?
Early stage: internal market accumulation, launching on the Pump.
Due to the market's 'anti-dominance' sentiment after the case of NEIRO, the dominant player will initially hide themselves, letting the MEME become a project supposedly initiated by the community, and during this process, they will begin to accumulate chips.
In the process of internal market accumulation, the biggest enemy of the dominant player is Bots. There are now many Bots that check the Pump internal market Volume, and once they detect a new wallet buying (5-10 SOL), they will immediately follow up.
Once enough chips are collected, usually reaching over 75%, they will launch on the Pump.
Mid-term: push volume in rounds.
First wave: start. Find some Tier 3 and Tier 2 callers, while also getting their market makers to cooperate, pushing the market cap to the range of 5 million to 20 million, and then quickly dumping.
Second wave: explosive rise. Deploy the funds harvested from the first wave dump, usually all funds, market making, and find Tier 1 callers to shout orders, creating a surge that prevents everyone from getting cheaper chips.
Later stage: listing on exchanges.
Whether you can get listed on exchanges like Binance actually depends on fate, and the dominant player is also watching fate. If the listing goes smoothly, the liquidity valve opens, and the subsequent operations align with the secondary market.
After listing, the market-making is usually operated by wintermute.
BAN and AI16Z are two typical examples of 'dominant markets': they underwent a very long accumulation period in the early stages, executed a significant first wave rise, then dumped down to gather enough market-making funds, while also accumulating chips at the bottom, and directly surged in the second wave.
How to get into a strong dominant player’s market?
There are two strategies:
First, buy before the second wave rises after the first wave ends.
At this stage, the dominant player is continuously accumulating chips at the bottom. If you find traces of their accumulation (mainly by observing wallets), you can follow up and buy.
Second, decisively chase after the second wave starts.
At this stage, the dominant player will likely look for Tier 1 callers to cooperate with the funds accumulated from the first wave of dumping to rapidly raise the market cap and seek a listing. Generally, once the second wave starts, a truly strong dominant player will rarely allow the coin price to pull back even slightly to let retail investors get in. So if you observe that the second wave has started and has already risen beyond the first wave, you can chase the high.
Understand MEME using the logic of short videos.
In May, when I was chatting with Zepump about #DialogueTrader on MEME, he mentioned a point that MEME is to VC coins what short videos are to long videos. Mai also very much agrees with this logic and explains the 'commonalities' between short videos and MEME from the perspectives of 'hierarchy of demand' and 'evolutionary path.'
First, let's talk about the hierarchy of demand.
Why do people, especially those born after 2000, enjoy scrolling through short videos and MEME every day without fatigue? Because they satisfy their deepest desires.
Short videos satisfy lust and so-called 'laziness.' Because young people's time is fragmented and their entertainment time is very limited, they can only gain very brief happiness by scrolling through Douyin.
MEME satisfies greed. Today's young people generally feel that the threshold for wealth elevation is too high, so they all want to take a gamble (to get rich).
Let’s talk about the evolutionary path.
Short videos initially focused on UGC, user-generated content, but later you will find that not many people watch UGC anymore; everyone is watching PGC because the quality of PGC is better.
In MEME, everyone started as a very naive CTO, but later found that it's more fun in the dominant market, and the dominant market rises high because they are essentially strong in operations and have substantial financial power.
Ultimately, both short videos and MEME are markets that pay great attention to the economy of attention.
In the MEME supercycle, which coin will become the 'new king'?
Mai firmly believes that MEME has already been established as a long-cycle matter. When we look back at today in two years, most of the MEME in the market may have vanished, but the MEME that can persist will definitely be more, and there will certainly be a MEME that is more powerful than SHIB, and this MEME is likely already in the market.
Which coin has the potential to become the 'new king'?
First: $DOGE
The true leader in the MEME track, the 'BTC' in MEME. After Trump came to power, DOGE is likely to be included in an ETF later.
Second: $PEPE
The brilliance of PEPE lies in two aspects: it came early, and its logic is something many Chinese people cannot understand. In fact, the projects that emerged from Ethereum are basically derivatives of PEPE, which has already become a consensus. Currently, it is hard to find a MEME in this cycle with a consensus as strong as PEPE's.
Third: $WIF
Fourth: $POPCAT
$WIF VS $POPCAT, Mai prefers the latter. In fact, there is a particularly interesting point: although WIF has a market cap that is twice that of POPCAT, their pools are the same.
Currently, fewer people in foreign communities and conspiracy groups are discussing WIF, and attention has shifted to POPCAT, which may also indicate a choice of capital.
What callers should you pay attention to if you want to play MEME well?
Abroad:
Murad @MustStopMurad, Crash @CrashiusClay69, Mitch @idrawline, OverDose @Overdose_AI, Moneylord @moneyl0rd, Ansem @blknoiz06, Spidercrypto @SpiderCrypto0x
Chinese region:
First: Wizard @0xcryptowizard
The Wizard is a Builder, and following his lead feels relatively stable because he is continuously building, and the projects he builds are all of very good quality.
Second: magnolia @0xmagnolia
Sister Hat has written a lot of valuable content, teaching everyone how to find MEME and how to win in this game. Moreover, Sister Hat often has a strong ability to catch hotspots, so she can serve as a good reference for where a hotspot might be and its sustainability.
Third: Timo @timotimoqi
Timo is a friend of Mai in real life, and they were both investors, so their trading perspectives may be quite similar. The tweet about the eight questions to ask oneself before buying MEME came from Timo. Recently, Timo may have called five or six projects, three of which returned over a hundred times.
Lastly, I want to say that there is a problem with callers: someone who was good a month ago may not be good a month later. For example, this person POE used to make great calls, but after becoming popular over a month ago, they started calling various rug pulls to exploit retail investors.
Although you may not know what is happening behind the scenes, the lesson is: when looking at the Caller, you must look at the overall picture, comprehensively. It's still like short videos; they are just someone who recommends videos to you, rather than the person who asks you to like it. The right to like should still be in your own hands.
Written at the end
I think the core of playing MEME is to find the stage and trading method within your capability. In fact, no matter when you enter, you can always find opportunities in MEME; this is the most interesting aspect of MEME in this cycle.