Recap · August 31, 2025 · 27:15
Lucacs: Trading Trends, Noise_XYZ, Fixing Memecoins and More | TG Podcast
The Signal
Noise co-founder Luca explains his attempt to turn attention itself into a continuous market. Rather than buying a memecoin adjacent to a trend, users would long or short a measured mindshare signal; the bet is that a more durable instrument, global liquidity, and an interface built for TikTok-native users can carry the idea beyond crypto's existing traders.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Trade the trend, not its proxy
Noise aims to let users express a view on a topic's attention directly, rather than on a company, memecoin, or event market that only imperfectly tracks it.
- 02
Reputation filters the feed
The product uses Kaito's influence graph to weight discussion and reduce the effect of spam accounts or agents manufacturing a keyword spike.
- 03
Durability beats flash markets
Luca says Noise will target broad, continuous trends such as a platform or narrative, not a short-lived incident that only creates a brief parabola.
- 04
Testnet shaped the launch
He says Noise saw roughly 66% retention for a couple of months despite explicitly offering no testnet airdrop, and used those users to build the product.
- 05
TikTok is the mainstream funnel
Luca wants a simpler mobile product with social context and embedded wallets, arguing that culture often arrives on TikTok before it reaches Crypto Twitter.
On the Record
“There is latent demand within crypto for people to trade the purest form of attention. However, they've been forced into these, I would say, suboptimal betas as a means to express that belief.”
“What we're trying to do is bring this into a unified platform where you can take the benefits of the capital layer and the social layer and merge that into a package product.”
“We want to target these markets that are a lot more continuous. They have a lot more longevity and it flows a lot better with how people think about these trends anyways.”
“We think Robin Hood is a really good northstar for simplifying these complex financial instruments, but we want to take it a step further and leverage some of our really powerful social features.”
The Breakdown
From Top Shot to continuous markets
Luca says he entered crypto through NBA Top Shot while still in high school, spent his senior year trading Ethereum NFTs and working a part-time job, then studied computer science and worked at LayerZero and Zora. His team had experience with prediction markets, but felt the format was missing continuous markets. Noise grew out of a simple question they kept seeing online: why cannot someone invest in a post when it has only a few likes, or be early to the next artist?
A cleaner bet on attention
He frames NFTs, Friendtech-style bonding curves, and memecoins as successive ways crypto has traded attention. The problem with a memecoin is proxy risk: people buying American Eagle after the Sydney Sweeney campaign may be expressing a view on Sweeney rather than the company. Noise's Google Trends comparison is meant to make the idea legible—quantify interest, then attach a market to it—while using Kaito mindshare data rather than treating a token price as the underlying signal.
What gets listed and how it is measured
Noise starts with projects such as Pump and wants eventually to cover broader cultural trends. Its measurement approach begins on Twitter, using Kaito's changing influence graph to distinguish reputable accounts from automated keyword spam. Luca says the team avoids narrow flash markets like an individual incident coin; it looks for enough longevity and a suitable volatility profile, while keeping the infrastructure able to add or remove markets quickly. The goal is a tradable measure of a trend, not an uncapped 1,000x launch.
Why use crypto at all
For Luca, crypto supplies global supply and demand, cross-border participation, and a protocol vault that can accept liquidity from users around the world. It also provides leverage for trend exposure, though he does not position Noise as a replacement for the memecoin game. Memecoins remain useful at creating long-tail, zero-to-one speculation; Noise instead wants to provide informational value around subjects such as tariffs, a recession, or the popularity of a project without forcing users into a specific yes-or-no expiration.
Liquidity first, then a September mainnet
To solve the cold start, Luca says Noise plans day-one liquidity through business deals and a smaller menu of durable markets. The product was on testnet when the interview was recorded, targeting a September mainnet launch. He says the team saw retention close to 66% for a couple of months after an invite-code launch, despite telling users there was no airdrop. A Pump market also showed high correlation with Hyperliquid data during their overlap, in his account, reinforcing the team's thesis.
A product for the person outside the trenches
Luca says today's audience is still crypto-native users with wallets and prediction-market habits. The longer-term plan is an iOS app with embedded wallets, account abstraction, and social features showing what drives a trend's rise or fall. He cites Robinhood as a north star for simplification. Threadguy expands the distribution point: TikTok is where culture begins, while Crypto Twitter is often late; Luca says TikTok will be a major go-to-market channel after mainnet.
Narratives as the next market
Before mainnet, Luca says the team is working on mobile access, new social features, and an entirely new category: narrative markets that let users long or short attention around crypto categories. He expects the existing tribalism around ecosystems such as Monad and MegaETH to make that experiment interesting. Threadguy's closing argument is that the product could reach a younger, mainstream user who cares about a cultural trend but will not download a memecoin terminal.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
