Despite what many in this sub think, I see the opportunity to participate in the growth of authentic, bottom-up, on-chain communities (memecoins imo is a misnomer) as the deepest value bet of this crypto cycle. As crazy as this sounds, I see this is actually investing in mini emerging Network States of the future.

For context, this is my third cycle and I've been angel investing in web3/defi since 2020 so my opinion comes from following the public crypto scene but also from seeing quite some dynamics behind the curtains.

Why tokenized communities

The distribution of money inflows towards alternative crypto assets (i.e. everything outside of BTC, ETH and the other majors) has been imo structurally different this cycle from past ones.

This comes down to several factors:

• Since 2018, the post-ICO capital formation for crypto “utility/ technology” projects has been primarily driven by venture capital and this has relegated most of the FDV growth to private rounds.
• When listing on centralized exchanges, this cycle’s projects have been launching at insane valuations (often in the billions dollars) with little to no fundamentals and no community mobilized around the token. Almost all new launches on Binance in ‘24 and ‘25 have literally been down-only, and retail has been treated as exit liquidity in a particularly extractive way.
• Several tech projects have a large part of their supply still unvested and they have a low-float/high FDV problem. Binance Research estimates that over $150B of unlocks (at current valuations) are due over the next 3 years and this will likely be a massive headwind to alts valuations
• The supply of most tech-alts is extremely centralized. It’s not uncommon to see 70+% of the supply to be controlled by 7/8 wallets, typically the foundation, individual team members and VCs/ large angels. This is definitely far from the original crypto ethos and for an industry so obsessed with decentralization it sounds counterintuitive to say the least.
• More and more people are coming to question the very same notion of “utility” for tech tokens. These are often completely detached from the underlying product or application, which in turn is not producing revenues or cashflow to justify their valuations.

The above has led to the development – especially in 2023-24 – of new “tokenized communities”, i.e. global online groups – each with their own identity, culture, lore and purpose – which use the token as their banner and as their collective Schelling point to gather around.

Also labeled memecoins, the best ones are organically distributed among hundreds of thousands of holders, are very decentralized, the supply is fully circulating (no unlocks) and have very strong, active and passionate communities which exist independently of the financial incentives that the token provides.

While some criticize memecoins for having “no utility”, I believe that the marginal value for the average holder and participant is non-zero and possibly even greater than for tech-alts. It lies in the purpose, the belonging, the adventure, the mission, the meaning, the connections and the network that participants develop by being part of this collective, akin to being part of the same guild in that MMORPG (massively multiplayer online role-playing game) that is crypto.

In a context where the growth of most altcoins has been muted so far, top organic memecoins have been the real outperformers, representing 6 out of the 10 top performing tokens of 2024. As people come to realize that “the best products don’t need a token, and the best tokens don’t need a product”, memecoins are stealing the narrative and speculative premia away from altcoins valuations.

Historically, the top performing categories of year 3 of the cycle (in this case 2024) have continued to outperform in year 4 (2025). As a result, I see in this category the greatest potential as we approach the last 6-10 months where most price action has historically been concentrated.

For a deeper understanding of memecoins I'd recommend you this video from Token 2049

in October ‘24.

How I look at each community comparatively

Within the memecoin category, I believe that those launched in 2023/24 are actually showing the deepest value. Ultimately I believe you need a "landing strip" equevalent of time for the community to really form, consolidate and take off. I call this at least 1-2 years in which ideally the community has been battle-tested and survived multiple -80% drawdowns. So I'm not talking about the "flavor or the day" pump-fun garbage here.

Being completely unlocked, all holders dynamics are visible on-chain and so it is possible to look at each of these emerging tokenized groups quantitatively. Some of the most interesting and objective factors to look at are

• Holders distribution, as measured as HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which measures market concentration) and Gini coefficient
• Holders decentralization, as measured by the absence of relevant wallet clusters and sniping (checkable on-chain or e.g.with the help of BubbleMaps)
• Holders growth rate across the 4 chains where SPX resides: ETH (main), SOL, BASE and SUI
• Mean and average amounts held per holder. To exclude dust (especially on the cheaper chains i.e. Solana and Base) it's insighful to look at the percentage of holders above $1k, $10k and $100k. Higher percentages ultimately speaks to higher level of “inspiration per capita” among the holder base
• Various metrics of social mentions and participation, both on X, TikTok and other social media platforms. One could even bake this into a “media creation per market cap” metric, which again is a proxy for the activity of the holders and the free labor they are willing to put it for their coin
• Price strength in surviving multiple -80% corrections, visible most recently in the market uncertainty of Q2’25 post-tariffs.

The main image of this post shows a comparative analysis of the main memecoins of the 2023-24 vintage updated as of today.

Why now

While the past 3 cycles were almost 4 years to the dot, I wouldn't be surprised if this present cycle extends a little longer. Imo the business cycle (especially in US) hasn't played out yet, the story of lower interests rates has just begun and the overall pessimism in most participants make me inclined to believe that we are still not yet close to a top. Plus retail is still not here.

Of course I may be wrong, but I can personnally see 6-12 months of bullishness left. A few considerations supporting this view:

• Numerous analysts are comparing BTC & crypto growth to the global M2 money supply which has been expanding since early 2023 as a result of easing global monetary conditions. BTC seems to be tracking the M2 chart with an approx. 2-3 months delay. As the monetary supply keeps increasing, this is bullish for BTC (and therefore the broader crypto market) for the next few months where we have visibility.
• Arthur Hayes (founder of Bitmex and macro analyst) sees BTC rallying up to $250k by end of 2025, which would mark in his view the ATH for this cycle, or could potentially extend to early 2026.
• Ethereum has been surging recently and it has approached its ATH in August after an almost 4-year long consolidation. It currently has a major tailwind from ETFs and major Digital Asset Trasuries which are accumulating heavily. Tom Lee of FundStrat and BitMine in particular has recently expressed views for a macro bull market continuation potentially even up to 2035 (peak of the millenials generation) which surely with ups and downs could support a sustained uptrend.
• The last 6 months of the fourth year of the cycle (in this case, H2 2025 to H2 2026) have historically been where most of the price action concentrates for crypto assets.

Note: take the analysts view with the pitch of salt, not for the exact numbers they cite but more for a broader directional idea.

I think we are currently at a sweet spot for positioning in memecoins, and it can be a valuable opportunity for net new participants or those who remained sidelined in H1-25.

Of course I'd love to know what you guys think. I suspect many here may have a lot more attachment to utility altcoins (totally understand, I've been there too and I spent years angel inveting in protocols) so I look forward to the discussion!

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Edit:
TLDR
As crazy as it sounds I see investing in the most organic and bottom-up memecoin communities as investing in early-stage, emerging Network States of the future. Especially post AI, this will be a very big phenomena