Written by Zen

At TOKEN2049's roundtable "The Virality of Value: Memecoins in the Attention Economy" on September 19, two celebrities who have earned a lot of attention and income in the meme field this year - well-known meme trader Ansem and rapper Iggy Azalea - received widespread attention.

At the meeting, the two discussed the value and influence of Meme tokens, the key attributes of building community culture and future prospects. PANews briefly sorted out the content of the speeches. The following is a compilation and summary of some of the views.

Ansem: The Meme Token Community and Its Four Key Attributes

"Meme tokens have many different attributes and factors, and I think the most important one is their community." Ansem believes that the success of Meme tokens is inseparable from their communities, especially in the early stages, these communities often show a sense of closeness similar to "cults". He said that looking back at the early stages of Bitcoin, it did not have any real value at first, and the real value of Bitcoin was given by those who ran network validators and held Bitcoin. At that time, despite the lack of regulation and pricing, these people still maintained a firm belief and gave it "romantic value".

Ansem also mentioned that when he discusses these meme tokens today, he focuses on four key properties: relatability, distribution, virality, and scalability.

“I think relatability is really important, meaning that even people who don’t know what cryptocurrencies are can understand them easily. You don’t need to know what L1 is or all the technical details, but you will understand that it’s a simple concept.”

"The second thing I want to say is that distribution is very important. The problem we need to solve is that when some tokens are issued, there are a lot of speculators participating in the early stage, but they don't intend to hold them for a long time." Ansem believes that the team structure of the project and a more decentralized model are crucial. He said this approach is conducive to the wide distribution of the project in the early stage, attracting more people to participate in the discussion, and promoting the spread of the project through different platforms and social networks. "In the early stage, this model often allows the project to spread like wildfire."

Virality is the third point Ansem mentioned. He continued to use Dogecoin as an example, saying that the success of the coin is not only due to its strong community, but also because its founder Billy Markus knows a lot of people and everyone knows who he is, which makes Dogecoin spread quickly, and the celebrity effect is also one of the reasons.

The last point is scalability. He said that the success of the Hat Dog (WIF) lies in the concept of "hat" - the hat can be added to other non-crypto related things to give it new meaning. This is also one of the ways it has been widely spread. Anyone who sees an item with a "hat" will associate it with this token.

This cycle will focus on consumer applications

"Each cryptocurrency cycle brings a new paradigm, and the core focus of this cycle is consumer adoption and consumer applications." Ansem said that looking back at the past few cycles, the first cycle was the rise of Bitcoin as a value storage and hedging tool; the second cycle was Ethereum, which provided the basis for a large number of applications through a global decentralized security platform. Now, as these applications mature, the current cycle is driving widespread consumer participation.

"In the last cycle, NFTs became a Trojan horse for retail investors to enter the crypto market. Many people did not understand what NFTs were, but suddenly found that a lot of resources and attention were directed to the NFT market. A similar situation was repeated in the meme coin market in this cycle. Many people entered the meme coin market directly and then began to understand the technology behind it."

In addition, Ansem also pointed out that these cultural tokens have not yet proven to create real value in the long run. He cited the NFT brand Yuga Labs as an example, saying that meme coins should also start to move along the path of branding, spreading brands through goods and stories, so that people feel that they hold a part of the brand. This phenomenon is completely consumer-centric and gradually permeates into daily life.

In this cycle, the way retail investors invest is also changing. People used to prefer to invest in mainstream tokens, but now this speculative value seems to be gradually flowing out of mainstream tokens. Ansem said that whenever a technology or application is first iterated, the speculative frenzy is often very high due to the lack of comparability. The L1 public chain in the last cycle is a typical example. With the growth of users and the arrival of practical applications, we are reconsidering the pricing of infrastructure. He also said: "From a macro perspective, this cycle is still closely related to meme coins, and smart money will gradually flow to infrastructure projects, DeFi and other fields."

Cryptocurrency empowers celebrity branding

At the meeting, another focus of the event - Iggy Azalea, a well-known rapper and founder of the $MOTHER token, also expressed her views on the value and future prospects of cryptocurrency.

Iggy said: "In an increasingly competitive environment, a digital community must develop in innovative ways to maintain its competitive advantage." She believes that as cryptocurrencies gradually enter the retail market, simple token integration is no longer enough to attract users. "We can pay with Solana or Bitcoin, so why join a meme coin community?" Therefore, the integration of tokens must be transformed into a more attractive and valuable experience for holders, like building an exclusive social network.

People often express, "I like rap music" or "I like this artist," which influences their dressing style and lifestyle. Therefore, brand association plays an important role in music and entertainment culture. As a well-known artist in the entertainment industry, Iggy also fully affirms the potential of cryptocurrency for personal branding. She believes that the integration of tokens is not just a benefit, but can also add value to brand identity.

"As crypto becomes more integrated into the retail space, we'll see tokens go beyond wallets and become larger brands or personalization symbols," Iggy said, adding that people will be able to identify with these brands and say, "Yeah, this is who I am, these brands are part of me."

“It’s not just about personal recognition, it’s also about a wider cultural phenomenon. Other members of the community will feel similarly, and that resonance makes people more willing to join,” Iggy added.