Every era needs its own spiritual leader, and the same is true in the meme field.
If Musk, the world's richest man who promoted Dogecoin in the last round, is an old-school meme missionary, then Murad is a new generation of super fomo who advocates cult culture.
From a few Meme coin projects in 2017, it has grown to tens of millions by 2024, and has gradually formed a huge market. At the same time, the market value of many Meme coins has exceeded billions of dollars, becoming an important part of the crypto market.
Murad Mahmudov , as a witness and analyst of this trend, proposed the concept of "Meme coin super cycle". In his view, Meme coin is not just a pure speculative tool, but the most powerful user popularization engine in the crypto world. He deeply analyzed the key factors for the success of Meme coin and elaborated on how to promote the growth of these projects through social media and community power.
In this LBank Pulse Focus column, we are honored to invite Murad, a leading figure in the Meme coin field, to share his deep insights on the future of Meme coins, especially his outlook on crypto trends in 2025 and beyond.
His sharing will help us deeply understand how the rise of Meme Coin will promote the global popularity of cryptocurrency and lead the future development of the market.
LBank: Can you share with us your career journey? From studying at Princeton University, to working at Goldman Sachs, to becoming a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency field, what does it feel like?
Murad: I am from Azerbaijan and studied in the United States and later in Beijing for a year. While in Beijing, I met the fourth employee of OKX, who introduced me to the field of cryptocurrency. After graduation, I entered the traditional financial industry, engaged in options trading in Hong Kong and commodities trading in Singapore. In 2016-2017, I started to participate in ICO, cryptocurrency and blockchain related work, and realized that Bitcoin could become the next wave of revolution. Since then, I have devoted myself to this field, including trading, investment, on-chain analysis, asset management, and now developing in the field of DeFi. In addition, I am also actively involved in Meme coin related projects.
LBank: You have insights into the current and 2025 “Meme Coin Super Cycle”. Can you tell us more about it?
Murad: The origin of Meme coins can be traced back to Dogecoin in 2013. Since then, the scale of Meme coins has continued to expand in each cycle. In 2017, there was only Dogecoin, in 2021, there were 5,000 Meme coins, and by 2024, the number of Meme coins has reached tens of millions. I believe that this trend will continue until Bitcoin becomes the universal currency of the world.
Outside of cryptocurrencies, the main driver is continued inflation and global money supply pressures, which drive people to constantly compete, outperform their competitors, and keep moving forward.
At the same time, artificial intelligence is replacing many people's jobs, and competition in various industries is becoming increasingly fierce. In addition, people are also aware that traditional communities and institutions in the real world are gradually losing influence and significance. All these factors together drive people to turn to cryptocurrencies, meme coins, and such crypto communities.
From the industry's perspective, from 2015 to 2017, people could still buy high-quality projects such as ETH and BNB, which had a market value of only $30 million at the time. Now, some projects have a trading market value of up to $30 billion once they are launched. Successful crypto projects in the past have very strong core community support. The key to the formation of a core community is that ordinary people can participate early at a lower price and gain wealth as a result.
The core idea of my strategy is that 10,000 people holding $1,000 each is much better than one person holding $10 million, or 10 million people holding only $1 each. The larger the proportion of such holders in a community, the more media attention, excitement and influence it will bring. This is the key to driving the development of Meme Coin.
LBank: What qualities do you think a successful Meme coin needs to have?
Murad: The most critical concept is "critical mass" - that is, the community has the conditions for explosive spread. For example, it has 100,000 holders, a market value of $500 million, and is gradually listed on major exchanges. I think that large-cap meme coins usually rise steadily with less downside risk, while small-cap meme coins are more risky and the probability of success may be less than 1%. In contrast, mid-cap meme coins offer the best risk-return ratio, especially those mid-cap projects with strong and growing communities, such as SPX 6900, GIGA, MOG, POPCAT, APU, and HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu.
LBank: How important is community participation to the success of Memecoin? Are there any specific strategies?
Murad: The activity of the community is crucial, and indicators for measuring the health of the community can be analyzed from two dimensions: the supply side and the demand side.
On the supply side, I focus on several key factors: first, the proportion of "diamond hands" (the proportion of long-term holders), second, the degree of decentralization, the fairness of the distribution of tokens, and early performance. I hope to see a higher proportion of token holders holding tokens above $1,000 or even $3,000, because they are the "core force" that is most motivated to promote the project. From the perspective of on-chain behavior, I hope that these token holders will be more determined rather than frequently engage in speculative transactions.
On the demand side, price is a key factor, and rising prices indicate that the community is actively attracting new members. At the same time, attention should also be paid to distribution channels, cross-chain bridges, partnerships, and exchange listings.
Finally, the influence of social media cannot be ignored, especially X and TikTok. In fact, the role of YouTube, Reddit and Facebook is also gradually increasing. A successful Meme coin must have a wide exposure on these platforms and continue to expand its influence through these platforms. Those Meme coins that perform well usually invest a lot of energy in this regard and achieve remarkable results.
LBank: How do you think crypto trends will evolve in 2025 and beyond?
Murad: I think we need to distinguish between long-term storable trends and short-term hot trends, especially those "meme culture" that have lasting vitality. For example, memes like Doge, Pepe or GIGA have been around on the Internet for many years. At the same time, there are also some hot trends that are only short-lived. In the case of TikTok, the key is to determine whether a meme can survive for many years or disappear in just a few months.
My overall view is that the crazier and more inspiring the meme, the better. Because the stronger the inspiration, the more money, time, energy, and labor the community members will invest. I think the crypto trends in 2025 will be different from 2024, but still full of opportunities.
LBank: Do you think Memecoins will drive mass adoption of cryptocurrencies?
Murad: The core of crypto assets will be Bitcoin (BTC) as the main means of value storage, and other Layer 1 projects, such as Ethereum and Solana, will play a relatively small role. Stablecoins are expected to continue to exist in the next 20-30 years.
Before the rise of Meme coins, the positioning of altcoins has always been vague. The rise of Meme coins has divided crypto assets into two categories: one is tokens with cash flow, which gradually evolve into "stocks" on the chain; the other is tokenized assets based on crypto culture, community, speculation and belief.
LBank: Do you personally think that Meme Coin can promote the popularity of cryptocurrency around the world?
Murad: This cycle, Memecoin will be the biggest driver of cryptocurrency adoption. Many people first came into contact with cryptocurrency through Phantom, Metamask or exchanges, and Memecoin attracted people of all ages and cultural backgrounds with its easy-to-understand features - no white papers, complex technology or cumbersome re-staking concepts. It has become the best entry point to the crypto world with its universality.
Users will then gradually come into contact with wallets, DeFi exchanges, cross-chain bridges, stablecoins, and core assets such as BTC. Meme coins serve as an entry point to attract users to the crypto industry, and these further explorations will encourage them to stay in this ecosystem for a long time.
LBank: Looking ahead five years, do you think Memecoin will still exist?
Murad: Dogecoin and some other meme coins have proven that meme coins can go through multiple cycles and persist. They keep hitting new highs. I do think Dogecoin will go to $1 in this cycle and hit new all-time highs again. In addition, there will be some meme coins that will launch ETFs in the future.
LBank: Do meme coins need real-world utility to survive in a bear market, or can they remain purely speculative?
Murad: In a bear market, utility is a positive factor, but in a bull market, utility can become a constraint. In a bull market, purity will make meme coins perform better, while in a bear market, utility can provide support for prices, but also limit the upside. Projects like Shiba Inu and Floki have proven this by increasing utility in a bear market. In the future, meme coins will add DeFi functions, develop into investment DAOs, and even create fashion and lifestyle brands.
