Can Art Instruct Markets? Memes as Financial Visionaries
Can Art Instruct Markets? Memes as Financial Visionaries
“I give you the end of a golden string, Only wind it into a ball, It will lead you in at Heaven’s gate, Built in Jerusalem’s wall.”
Read this article and you’ll understand:
How memes can control price more than fundamentals
Examples of such behavior and pumps in the past
What to look out for, to find future pumps before other market participants.
In summary:
If you want something to pump, it needs to have good memes/memetic energy - $imgnAI is an easy recent example of this mechanic.
We live in an attention economy - this is why certain coins are range bound, certain stocks / assets go through pumps and dumps.
Traffic is governed by algorithms, which are governed by the symbols and novelty they hold on the masses. With enough repetition on a population, behaviors can and will be created - as plenty of intelligence agencies have discovered and utilized for decades.
The average Westerner (or rich Asian) / market participant suffers from crippling screen/dopamine addiction outside his working hours, with his thought patterns governed by the societal structure he is raised in - this gives a unique opportunity for those who can realize this, and harness it. Read Eric Hoffmann’s True Believer for a deeper dive into this.
This is why memes instruct markets through the ideas they push on market participants. The right meme/image/moment on the Internet that can trigger enough dopamine for algorithms to identify it, and help push it to virality = a manifested reality as a result of a meme.
Think of the memes that led to GME’s short squeeze, DOGE/SHIB’s massive pumps, LINK’s bear market dominance, etc.
Great memes can come from a moment, or a community, and need not be governed in reality - it simply needs to believed in enough by the market participants for that reality to take precedence over reality
The same human tendencies that create global wars and conflicts are the same tendencies that cause the price of $BTC to go up and down. They are all interconnected, and it is the language and schemas we are raised in that often stop us from realizing this simple truth.
Thus: when analyzing projects for their long term viability, do not solely examine them on fundamentals. Examine them on their memetic power, and the narratives they push forth.
The base of this thesis? Art, Politics, and Science are all interdependent, just as energy and structure are interdependent on every level.
Therefore, art by proxy influences behavior, which influences art, which influences behavior - until a trend is broken, or reality rears its ugly face upon the trend’s participants.
Memes are the poor man’s art form, an audio-visual canvas that allows the suspension of reality, and the creation of new beliefs and ideas with little judgement.
Thus - this is how Memes are Financial Visionaries. This is how Art Instructs Markets.
Now let’s analyze 3 simple case studies to illustrate this concept…
Case Study #1: Chainlink - $LINK.
If you were an OG that stuck around during the 2018 bear market…
You’d have heard of $LINK sooner or later, especially if you spent any time on /biz back in the day.
While Chainlink offered a clear innovation for blockchains - decentralized oracles helping determine outcomes and prices of information OUTSIDE the blockchain - it also captured the mind of bizlets.
With Deep State conspiracy theories, Sergey is Satoshi, and the stratas of $LINK holders (make it stack, suicide stack, etc) - it’s no wonder in the sea of vaporware that was the post 2018 ICO market that $LINK got a consistent bid, and outperformed nearly everything up until 2021.
What said Chainlink apart from plenty of 2020 darlings was that it had a cult of dedicated memoooors pushing it relentlessly, believing Sergey would lead them to the promised land.
If anyone wants to tag me with it on Twitter - there’s a picture of a /biz post of a guy who bought an apartment with $LINK, after only eating broccoli, beans and chicken for years and putting all his money into it. One of the sentences should be something like: “I was so hungry bros”
As the missing piece to the “God” protocol, the art and memes around $LINK built its cult of diamondhanded marines that ended up bagholding the $55 top.
But if you had stacked $LINK from below $1 to $5 - you had a very solid make it play on high liquidity.
At risk of sounding pedantic, I highly doubt without the memes and artwork of the Link Marines, that $LINK would have had such an outperformance on the market as a whole, or even still be remembered by most crypto participants as being a token with highly prized fundamentals.
Bonus example: $FTM was also a /biz darling that was spotted early there, and if you accumulated it around $0.15-0.25 in Summer 2021 before selling the Nov picotop - you had another great make it play there.
Case Study #2: $DOGE
Many faded DOGE. I faded DOGE as a pleb in the 2021 cycle (certified midwit move).
But why did it work so well?
Memes.
The combination of Elon pumping $DOGE with memes, the lack of fundamentals and its memetic energy, and the seething tech maxis that fuelled short squeezes further up sent $DOGE to the moon, being one of the best performers of the whole cycle if you had accumulated it in 2020 and sold the picotop early 2021.
Plus, the cute image of Kabosu, and the low unit bias compared to the 5 figure price of $BTC = normies buy it, normies pump it.
The idea of $DOGE to $1, no matter how unrealistic, drove countless newbies to the market to buy $DOGE and ignore previous price action, squeezing shortoooors and sending it to Valhalla.
Market fundamentalists, boomers and tech maxis cry out in pain looking at an endlessly pumping DOGE candle, while normies with stimmies and Bar Mitzvah savings diamondhanded the pump.
The fundamentals didn’t matter. The fact that there was no “value” in the token didn’t matter. The fact that $DOGE has endless inflation (a good thing, actually) didn’t matter.
I remember seeing a BTC maxi reeeeeeing out on r/cryptocurrency on how all his normie friends wanted to do as crypto newbies was to buy $DOGE.
Pity he didn’t just join in the pump with them and get a few multiples out of it.
All that mattered was that the memetic power of $DOGE, and the image and idea it represented to market participants created a reflexive loop that pushed the price upwards in a parabola that would give Isaac Newton South Sea Bubble PTSD.
Case study #3: $imgnAI
$imgnAI came out a few weeks ago, and stayed at a 7 figure market cap for quite a while before it suddenly rocketed to 50 million at the top. GCR made a nice penny off it, and so did plenty of others that aped in early.
How and why did this pump manifest?
Let’s examine it through the Memes Instruct Markets Framework.
What helped trigger the pump was this image:
Turns out, fake internet titties will get most market participants left (dudes on CT) interested in a new narrative.
And with a rumour that $imgnAI was the technology used to create fake internet tittes?
We commence the pump.
The image goes viral.
Non-gripto natives get mad at the image, OF girls start freaking out and putting on clothes to find a trad husband, Joe Rogan shows it to Lex Fridman on the JRE.
The meme of “AI + titties” was a Lollapalooza to behold.
Didn’t matter that imgnAI was NOT what the artist used for fake internet titties.
As AI coins were already pumping hard then ($FET, $AGIX, $OCEAN, $TAO) - so AI + male sexual gratification = meme that spreads like wildfire.
Suddenly, $imgnAI isn’t a 5m mcap shitcoin that’s destined for the gutter.
No, it’s a coin that’s going to cure cancer by giving us amazing AI images that make it even more valuable than ChatGPT!
And so it rockets from there to over 50m at the peak.
And a 10x on 8 figure liquidity is not to be scoffed at, especially after 2022.
Some apes turned 1ETH into 100ETH with this.
After all, as they say - respect the pump.
When a certain whale (who also deposited millions into FTX as you were withdrawing) began yeeting 6 figure sums into $imgnAI - we were nearing the top, and since then, it’s been mainly down only (for now).
Bonus: The sympathy pumps that also happened on other AI image generator shitcoins, which were great to play if you were early to them. ($NERF, $CAI, off the top of my head)
All it took for $imgnAI to take off were a couple of catalysts, a great meme to sell apes on, a few players in CT starting to pump it, and boom, the pump manifests.
As long as you didn’t buy the top of course.
Recapping the thesis, and applying it going forward:
Art, Politics, Science are all interdependent, just as energy and structure are interdependent on every level.
Thus, the Art/Memes a market is exposed to through social media influences market participant behavior.
Think about it: How many held BTC through the 69k top due to the meme of S2F sneding BTC to $150k soon?
How many held their worthless L1 vaporware tokens on the dreams of the Zhupercycle?
The beliefs of participants influence the behavior of the participants, and beliefs do not come from reality, rather, the perceived reality of participants - which are shaped by the images, stories, and memes they are broadcasted and interact with in the online sphere.
Bonus illustration of the thesis:
Let’s flesh this out with how Trump 2024 may trigger the Golden Bull once more, as GCR has hinted at…
We need dovish policies from Trump to facilitate a bull market in stonks - our beloved internet ponzicoins thus run harder as a beta to boomerstonks
We need good memes to get Trump back into office - has Trump ever failed at generating great memes and moments in the online sphere?
As the zoomers say, Trump has rizz and drip, making a mockery out of all his competitors (although he got screwed in 2020 obviously)
So in essence Trump has killer meme powers - makes people vote for him - gets into office - hires Dovish FED - memes into reality a superstonks market - market pumps - people FOMO into the pump - bull market in full swing
BTC halving in 2024, we start ranging towards ATH, permabears short the range high, we breakout into a new ATH and ETH/alts begin running again - and wagme to the sun?
In essence:
This concept should be a no brainer to the turbo big brains who have killed it in crypto, but is something plenty of normal folks struggle with.
Shouldn’t only valuable things pump? Shouldn’t things with clearly unrealistic value not work?
But they do - because the right message and meme given to a big enough mass of people will make them hold up the price until it is too high to maintain it - or make them short something until they’re liquidated on a squeeze.
Your perception on market events, and their prices on the assets you are speculating on does not matter.
All that matters is the perception that majority of market participants will have from it - and whether you can predict, and profit off those movements.
So in the world of idiotic market participants…
Understanding their idiocy is the way to go.
Memes in the future: Signs of outperformers?
There are a few easy memes that clearly have promise for the next expansion of our ponzinomic asset class:
Pudgy Penguins/Lil Pudgies are an NFT collection with clear memetic energy among less degenerate crypto participants, and have continued building up volume while maintaining a rising floor price throughout the bear market.
Miladies/Remilios are perhaps the counterculture example of this, while not the most ethical collection, the “milady” meme is here to stay and if holders don’t sell? Price can only go one way.
$RLB - a decentralized casino in a world of increasing degeneracy valued at its current prices with its users and tokenomics? Undervalued. It will run hard in the right conditions.
Ultrasound money - $ETH - when the time comes, our darling will run again and murder retail with $300 per tx gas fees once more.
$GMX - the GLP mechanism is a good enough narrative to get people to keep investing into the project, and to not exit their bags.
$ARC as a project combines the decentralized casino thesis alongside a GLP “owning house yield” meme - nevermind the participants, the narrative is strong enough to induce max bidding
I’m a big fan of TridentDAO and $PSI due to their Risk to Earn mechanic, cult and memes (but if you follow my twitter, you know that already)
There are many other coins that will eventually run hard, this is by no means a comprehensive list.
4EB9DE4696ECFACDBDB9E462F5ABB83F7EA19F5BAABC461C23BCCFD99E24963B167E80BC48D6A15034BFD4BC24D86FC8585F19A6BF63298FCC9D9E03F71F1865
Further reading for those interested:
Ray Peat - Can art instruct science? http://raypeat.com/articles/articles/william-blake.shtml
Eric Hoffmann - The True Believer
Punk6529’s threads on memes - find them on Twitter. I like this tweet in particular.