Essay · July 31, 2025 · 7:18
Make 100x Money With Memecoins TODAY! | Memecoin Supercycle Explained
The Signal
Pump.fun co-founder Alon rejects the idea that crypto has entered a one-off memecoin cycle: from the beginning, he argues, its durable use cases have been speculation and permissionless asset creation. As launching gets easier and infrastructure looks increasingly interchangeable to ordinary users, culture and narrative become the way projects attract people; only after they win attention and usage does the underlying technology get a chance to prove itself.
Key Takeaways
- 01
Crypto was already the supercycle
Alon treats memecoins as a continuation of crypto's original behavior, not a category that appeared this cycle. NFTs, tech tokens, and DeFi coins all carry speculative uncertainty because nobody knows which products will still have users — or what token holders will be entitled to — years later.
- 02
Culture carries the experiment
When almost anyone can create an asset, technical claims alone do not distinguish it. Projects such as Monad and Berachain cultivate culture because they still need people to believe, gather, and test technology whose success is not guaranteed.
- 03
Usage gives tech its test
Base benefits from Coinbase's brand and the expectation that users will follow even before onboarding is seamless. Solana's improving performance under Pump.fun activity shows the second half of the sequence: demand arrives through narrative and products, then the infrastructure has to withstand it.
On the Record
“Crypto's number one use case from day one has been speculation, and it's been permissionless asset creation.”
“That actually proves that the tech is good, but that comes later. What comes before is culture.”
The Breakdown
Crypto never left the memecoin cycle
Threadguy opens by asking how far a memecoin supercycle could run. Alon pushes back on the bucket itself: calling one period the memecoin cycle and another the last cycle for memes misses his larger point that crypto has always revolved around speculation and permissionless asset creation.
He briefly widens the lens — everything is a human construct and, in that sense, a meme — but keeps the practical claim narrower. People want to create, trade, and play with cultural assets; NFTs were an earlier expression of the same appetite, and the chance that something newly created can take off is central to the attraction.
When issuance gets easier, culture separates it
Launching once meant a few thousand dollars of seed liquidity, technical knowledge, and substantial onboarding friction. As access widens, Alon says culture becomes the main way one asset distinguishes itself from another.
He also rejects the leap from NFTs failing to crypto having no non-speculative future. Technology takes time, while buyers of a tech or DeFi coin cannot know whether people will use the product years later or whether regulation will let the token capture protocol revenue. That makes the early stage memetic too. Monad and Berachain enter as examples of projects that value culture: a white paper cannot, by itself, gather the people needed to run a large experiment.
The product on top of the L2
Threadguy applies the argument to infrastructure. To many Crypto Twitter participants, the differences under the hood are too small or too obscure to guide a decision; L2s can look like one large technical mass from the front end.
His concrete example is Fantasy Top. If that is the experience somebody wants, its presence on Blast can matter more than a comparison among Blast, Base, and Arbitrum. Treating infrastructure as serious technology and memes as disposable culture misses how the cultural and product layer gives the infrastructure a reason to be used.
Narrative first, proof under load
Alon brings the point back to business: better technology does not matter if nobody uses it or talks about it. Base is his clearest example. Coinbase's brand creates a strong narrative and gives users and builders a reason to expect distribution, even though direct onboarding from Coinbase to Base was not yet polished.
Solana shows what comes next. Pump.fun activity can create congestion, but Alon says the problem had been easing, which lets the network demonstrate that its technology can handle demand; he expects Firedancer to reduce friction further. The order is the thesis of the clip: culture brings people in, and technical quality becomes legible after the system succeeds enough to be tested.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
