Crypto Popularity: The Birth of Meme Wealth

Original author: Armonio, AC capital

Twitter： @armonio_liang

> Human beings chase popularity, and popularity creates value. This is the history that humanity repeats over and over again. > > Tulip bubble = popular + limited supply. > > This is the most famous and the earliest super meme of humans. In the 21st century, the information age has gone through the Web 2.0 of unlimited replication and entered the Web 3.0 of limited information. > > information can be transmitted on the Internet at the speed of light, and the entity that carries popular value has jumped from offline bags, watches, and luxury cars to an online string of irreproducible data. The payment scene is accompanied by mobile terminals in all corners of the world. Bong!Meme Big Bang, resulting in a bizarre meme world. > > In the world of meme coins, whoever creates popularity, especially the Internet popularity, will be able to directly monetize the popularity through tokens. > > So, how to create popularity? This article first proposes the popularity theory of meme, and then uses this theory to deconstruct the origin of BTC and Bome. > >

Crypto Popular Secrets

The epidemic of information is inherently indistinguishable from the epidemic of disease. In communication, the SIR model for information dissemination and virus propagation is adopted, and interested students can take a look, and we will not expand it in detail here:

_models_in_epidemiology。

The process of information dissemination is divided into two parts: information infection and information immunity.

Information infection: We convert ordinary people into followers of popular information.

Information immunity: Believers of popular information are freed from the influence of popular information and become outsiders.

At the heart of an information epidemic is to let the rate of infection exceed the rate of immunity. As long as the number of infected people per unit of time exceeds the number of people who are immunized, the number of believers with epidemic information will increase, and the information will be spreading. On the contrary, the epidemic is dying. So how do you increase the rate of infection and decrease the rate of immunity?

There is no doubt that if information reaches more new people (who have not been exposed to information), then the rate of infection will increase. The higher the quality of the information, the more sticky it is, the easier it is to spread, and the harder it is to get rid of it. Here, I combine communication studies and social psychology to summarize four important exogenous factors for meme success:

Four Elements

Content:

Content is information. It is the subject of propagation that determines the attributes of propagation. The communication groups that should be inclined and the communication nodes that should be preferred are all determined by the information itself. For example, $People is naturally left-wing, and left-wing people will naturally have feelings for it. Using such a concept to impress the left-wing crowd naturally has an advantage. Another example is $Doge, which is affinity for dog lovers. Moreover, this affinity is there for a long time.

The stickiness of the content. Some concepts are time-sensitive, such as memes of politicians that have exploded recently, or memes of sporting events. Once the political election is over and the event is held, the real-world epidemic is over, and the on-chain information epidemic driven by the real-world information epidemic loses fuel, and the state of infection > immunity may gradually change to the state of infection < immunity.

The affinity of the content includes the ability to disseminate it twice. A good communication event must lower the threshold for transmission, the simpler, the more direct, and the more ordinary people can spread, then the wider the spread will be.

Environment:

The environment has two parts: time and space.

1) Time: Currency circle cycle

Time is for economic cycles that are unique to the crypto world. The outbreak of memes should have attention in the industry and users are willing to participate in gambling, in the middle and late stages of the bull market, after all the project stories are lackluster, the meme of pure cultural communication will shine. The meme craze sparked by inscriptions is an important change. The industry's attention is driven by the meme itself, and cultural communication is no longer an alternative that cannot be told about the content of the project, but has become a way to attract traffic. Of course, the background of BTC's inscription meme is 1, the BTC ETF is about to pass, and BTC will become a mainstream asset and gain mainstream world attention. 2. The BTC halving is imminent, and a bull market is expected after the BTC halving, which has attracted attention.

2) Space: Community

A space is a community. A community is defined as a group of people who share a common purpose. Having a common purpose means that this group of people has a common attribute. If the content of the communication matches the attributes, the communication efficiency can be faster. Just as different diseases spread in different populations, the rate of transmission is different. Malaria is more prevalent in unhygienic places, such as Africa, than elsewhere. Meme's emphasis on community is because at the beginning of the epidemic, the popularity itself was very weak and easy to be stifled in the cradle. Therefore, the initial transmission especially requires a small environment suitable for survival. Similar to a petri dish.

KOL Matrix

Science has shown that different individuals have different abilities to spread the epidemic. Some people are particularly good at exporting their opinions to others, and it is especially easy to convince those around them. This kind of person is a super individual, a KOL. The more KOLs we have, the more KOLs we can form and influence more groups. KOLs are closely connected to the community, and KOCs that have influence on the community are truly valuable nodes. If you can't reach the target population, the value of KOL will be greatly reduced.

The Wealth Effect

The characteristics of the crypto circle, the wealth effect leads the attention. The so-called persuasion of people is to use financial facts to assist the dissemination of information. Therefore, Meme has a self-reinforcing currency price and cultural transmission. The higher the price of memes, the wider the spread of culture, and the more determined believers become. The more the price of meme coins falls, the more unfavorable the spread of culture becomes, and the more disconnected believers become. As a result, meme coins tend to exhibit skyrocketing and plummeting.

Operational Analytics for Memes

In this paragraph, we will combine two cases, review the project, and explain the above theory

BTC

A lot of people don't recognize BTC as a meme coin. But it doesn't matter. The definition of meme is derived from Darwin's theory of evolution, which refers to the fact that, like living things, the diffusion of information involves copying, mutating, and being selected. Macroscopically, BTC's consensus diffusion is no different from the path of other meme coins. It's nothing more than that there are some differences in the content of the communication.

The content of BTC is the fear of the collapse of centralized finance. In its genesis block, the words "The British Chancellor of the Exchequer bailed out the financial system again." A summary of the news. The news, as an anchor, became an anecdote. Every time it spreads, the fear of the collapse of centralization is reinforced through this anecdote. Every financial turmoil reinforces the consensus of BTC. BTC's consensus stickiness is very strong. People who believe in BTC often have a hard time giving up their belief in BTC. The stickiness of this belief is obvious to all in the industry.

The use of fair mining in consensus is a reciprocal design, and in the early stage of the project, as long as you invest computing power, you can get BTC. Satoshi Nakamoto himself also airdropped some users in the early days, which can also be seen as reciprocal. The act of investing computing power itself can be seen as a recognition of the BTC project. Through behavior, the person who binds BTC is psychologically recognized. In terms of supply, BTC has achieved a limit of 21 million BTC through the program, writing scarcity on its face. Satoshi Nakamoto's documentation also depicts BTC being accepted worldwide, BTC to $1,000. Although it is too conservative to put it today. But what a tempting promise in an era when BTC has no price.

The early days of memes are as fragile as the early days of a new virus. In the early stage of meme propagation, because the number of nodes that can propagate is very limited, it is necessary to increase the probability of successful propagation. The BTC whitepaper was released in 2008, which was not a bull market, but it was a time of turmoil for centralized finance. Everyone is skeptical about the sustainability of centralized finance. Its timing and content narrative are highly compatible. This was very necessary in the early days of the meme epidemic.

BTC's initial selection of communities is also carefully selected. Satoshi Nakamoto chose the crypto community first. The concept of the crypto community is highly compatible with the design concept of BTC, and both have a sense of urgency and mission for decentralization. Develop them as seed users with minimal resistance.

For BTC's initial spread KOL matrix, Satoshi Nakamoto chose the biggest names in the crypto community: Dai Wei, Fal Finney, Jon Matonis, Laszo Hanec and others. To cite just one example, Satoshi Nakamoto's email to Dai Wei shows that BTC's idea and design not only fulfills Dai Wei's vision in his paper, but that Fal Finney has endorsed such a product. In this way, the credit endorsement of the product is obtained. These people, perhaps not many people know outside of the crypto community, but have a strong influence in the crypto community. Their onboarding has helped BTC quickly take root in the crypto community.

Bome

Before Bome's launch, artist Dark Farm was well prepared for the popularity of a meme, whether intentionally or not. In terms of content, Bome is to make a meme book and record the history of memes. This is of historical value in the current environment. As I said earlier, through the issuance of cultural coins, this year, the first to get rid of the role of no project to issue has become an alternate. It's about leading the industry at the forefront. Whether it's Solana, Avalanche, or Ethereum, they all use meme as an important means of attracting new users. Investors are also increasingly taking the meme token as an asset. The Book of Memes is the culmination of meme culture, and it is naturally valued. This concept also has a natural affinity for people who rush to meme.

In terms of time, the initiation time is in the industry bull market, and the funds are abundant. In terms of community, Dark Farm has been deeply involved in meme culture in the ETH ecosystem, and it is not a random idea to make a book of meme project, and he has a certain influence in the meme community in the currency circle. Before the popularity of Book of Meme, the floor price of his previous masterpiece was still higher than the issue price, which shows that his achievements have been recognized by the community and have a certain degree of popularity in the community. This community is highly overlapping with the community of Okihoku.

Then let's look at the repost diffusion behavior of Bome's posts, many of which are supported by KOLs who are also artists. Although these artists are small, they are authentic and cohesive. When the meme develops to a certain stage, it can get other traffic interactions, such as the promotion of Beeple. As a meme artist on Twitter, DarkFarm is also very traffic-sensitive, and is good at using super nodes to enhance the impact of their projects.

As can be seen from the avatars of the early communicators, the original promoters are from the SMOWL community. Having a community allows Bome's meme to directly cross the most vulnerable stage. This is also part of DarkFarm's plan, where SMOWL appears in his Bome image as a reference to these original KOLs. Following Bome's success, SMOWL's NFT price also jumped to a floor price of 0.7, giving these community members handsomely rewarded. The whole trading behavior forms a perfect closed loop.

I once said that there are three pillars of projects in the Internet era: traffic, technology, and capital. In the world of memes, there is no technology, no product. The success of a meme project is the matching of traffic and capital. Capital can push up the price of the currency, but simply pushing up the price of the currency cannot effectively attract retail investors to chase it.

This also shows that for memes, there can only be one era of bomes. From the perspective of traffic economy, all other memes are Bome's competitors. If Bome is diverted, Bome will collapse, and it will be more difficult for other toddlers to improve. If Bome is not diverted, Ryuji and Ryusan are just a small fight.

Summary

Meme tokens are the most distinctive phenomenon of the attention economy in the Web3 era. Attention is directly given financial value. The matching of capital with attention creates the Meme token.

Creating attention is dealing with people. In addition to the unique wealth effect, the KOL matrix, the communication environment and the fit of information content are emphasized. It is not a simple matter to get all the factors together. Therefore, creating an out-of-the-loop meme is not an easy task either. To examine the birth and exit of a meme, in addition to looking at the trading volume, liquidity, and the background of the founder, you can also consider these four factors.

When investing in memes, you can consider the phenomenon of attention feedback. For example, the Bome community drives the value of the SMOWL community.

References:

Tipping Point: How to Create Popularity

The Attention Economy: How to Turn Mass Attention into Business

Communication Theory: Origins, Methods and Applications

Influence

Satoshi Nakamoto Documentation:

Satoshi Nakamoto's Early Emails Revealed: Where Does Bitcoin Come From What is he worried about:

Review BOME: The Art of the Divine Plate

The price skyrocketed 20 times in 3 hours after it was launched, why did Pepe Meme artist's BOME suddenly become popular?

Why is BTC the biggest alpha of this round?

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DarkFarm's Twitter thread