Overall, it's a very rabid community with no competition and the market is definitely not saturated.
Author: Zoomer Oracle
Compiled by: TechFlow
A tech coin with cult-like qualities
The word “cults” is probably one of the most common words used on CT to describe the memecoin craze. During the 2023 bear market, I wrote a post that became my most popular tweet titled “The Art of Cults”.
I explored the fundamental difference between the desire for cult and tech coins. Today, the market is catching up to this trend, and every memecoin with a large following is rapidly appreciating in value. It is good to see that the theory is basically valid. However, there is another category of coins in the "cult coins" that is almost not mentioned. When we think of "cult coins", we usually think of memecoins.
However, there are also some technology-focused coins (without venture capital) that have a large following. The reason is that these projects started with little to no venture capital, attracting initial loyal supporters. Usually, these people are early miners who will do everything they can to be true to their belief in the project changing the world.
These coins have outperformed venture-backed tech coins and are almost on par with memecoin in terms of ROI. Here are some of them:
Old tech cult coins:
HEX
Cardano (ADA)
Raiblocks (NANO)
If you have been following these coins since 2017, you will find that they attracted a large number of followers in the early stage of the project. Many people believe that these coins will become the next Bitcoin. However, most people do not take these cult-like technology coins seriously, and generally believe that they are "bubbles" and only "fools" will buy these "useless coins".
In fact, these coins tend to perform much better than so-called "legit" coins. This is because their communities have a strong cult-like quality. They are a unique presence in the cryptocurrency space because most people on your Telegram group or crypto twitter are not heavily invested in these coins.
Of course, coins like Cardano, Hex, and Nano suffered when the market bubble burst, and their once cult followings faded into obscurity.
However, new coins are emerging in the same way. New market cycles bring new coins, which also means new tech cult coins are emerging.
In the past 1-2 years, we have witnessed the rise of a new generation of “cult tech coins”. Here are a few representative examples:
Bittensor (TAO) - $4.7 billion in market capitalization, $13 billion in fully diluted valuation
Kaspa (KAS) - fully diluted valuation $3.4 billion
Both coins have a large number of supporters. People started mining in the early days and believed that these coins could change the world. Whether you agree or not, as a profit maximizer, you should learn from the past. Let's take a look at the data:
TAO’s lowest trading price was below $35 and it is now trading at $642, representing an 18x return.
Kaspa’s lowest trading price was below $0.0004 and it is now trading at $0.1358, representing a 339x return.
Despite the different returns, it is safe to say that these two coins are not held by the majority of crypto Twitter users and have significantly outperformed the new venture-backed tech coins listed on large centralized exchanges. At this point, the only conclusion I can draw is that this is a separate category that is rarely discussed. Most people refer to this category of coins as "the Cardano of this cycle", but they are in a separate category, which means there are many more coins with this potential.
There are two coins on my current watchlist that could potentially fall into this category:
- $QUIL - $META
Many of the people who invested in Bittensor early also invested in QUIL early. If you look at the QUIL hashtag, you’ll see that many users use both the TAO and QUIL logos in their profiles. The crowd promoting QUIL is very similar to the crowd promoting Bittensor. Cyberpunk culture and community spirit are fully reflected in both projects.
One of the projects focuses on decentralized AI, while the other focuses on decentralized internet infrastructure.
Of course, AI is a hot topic in its own right, so a lot of people bought into TAO because of the combination of AI and cryptocurrencies. I think the decentralized internet discussion will eventually come up, especially when projects like Nillon launch in Q4, and people will discuss the difference between QUIL (community-led) and Nillon (VC-backed). I'm not going to argue which technology is better, but the attention might be enough to move the market upward.
Note that there will be a large amount of QUIL tokens unlocked today or this week. I don't want to give miners the opportunity to sell to you at a high price, so I recommend waiting until the market stabilizes before making a decision. Keep this in mind. I have an investment in QUIL (also bought at a higher price) and plan to increase my position when miners are willing to sell.
I also like META DAO in this category. META has a very smart community that genuinely believes they can change the way DAOs work in crypto.
In general, I think DAOs are one of the most boring parts of crypto. But what META is trying to do is probably one of the most interesting experiments in crypto right now. Here’s their take:
We humans sometimes fail to make good decisions. For example, participants in prediction markets often perform better than professional pollsters in predicting outcomes. Google has even studied using prediction markets within the organization to make better decisions. I recommend reading this article by the founder to fully understand the concept.
You might be thinking: why does this matter? But actually, prediction markets have proven to be a great product-market fit in the crypto space (like polymarket and drift). This is a huge opportunity. Introducing prediction markets in DAO proposals will make it interesting again. We are moving towards an era of "future governance" driven by prediction markets, rather than relying solely on humans holding the majority of tokens to control governance.
Currently, Futuredom is used in less than 5% of the Solana project. Since this is a brand new concept, I assume some senior people are waiting to see how things develop before deciding whether to invest further. The chart shows rising prices, which makes me think that the earliest observers have already bought in because they believe that the concept may work. I have seen some discussion on social media about an "enterprise version of polymarket".
Overall, it's a very enthusiastic community, there are no competitors, and the market is definitely not saturated. All supply is circulating on the market. Not much discussion on crypto twitter at the moment, and the charts look very good. Its fully diluted market cap is $70 million at the time of writing. One thing to note is that liquidity is not great, so be careful if you decide to invest.
I'm going to end this post because it's gotten too long. I like to write down my thoughts because it can spark discussions about angles I hadn't noticed before.
