The following text is compiled from the series Twitter Space #DialogueTraders, hosted by FC, founding partner of SevenX Ventures, Twitter @FC_0X0
This episode's guest: Honest Mr. Mai, Twitter @Michael_Liu93
Mr. Mai’s MEME journey: After earning 100 times the profit in 5 minutes, he became addicted to MEME
Before he came into contact with Crypto, Mr. Mai took a very "orthodox" financial path: he studied finance in college, worked as a banker on the sell side after graduation, and then moved to the buy side. On the buy side, he was looking at the enterprise service track. At that time, many blockchain founders wanted to do BAAS, which is Blockchain as a Service. It was also through this opportunity that he saw this new technology.
In 2020 and 2021, Mr. Mai officially entered the Crypto industry and managed some secondary positions for some bosses in the traditional financial industry, mainly Bitcoin. From that time on, he began to spend a lot of time every day researching new things and looking for Alpha.
As for the Alpha of this cycle, Mr. Mai firmly believes that MEME is, so 60% or even 70% of his personal time is now spent on MEME, and he is also inviting bosses from various CX traditional financial industries to come and play.
The addiction to MEME comes from a transaction that earns a hundred times the profit in 5 minutes.
At that time, the market was speculating on Musk's signature. Mr. Mai had taken some positions in both TROLL and ZUZALU, so which coin would become the third? Mr. Mai and his friends thought that Vitalik's signature might have room for speculation, so they bought TCATI (Green Tea) at a market value of around 20,000, a cat-themed MEME from the profile signature of Vitalik's X account.
About five minutes after the purchase, the market value of this coin suddenly soared to about one or two million dollars, and the position of several hundred dollars instantly turned into thirty or forty thousand dollars.
This was actually Mr. Mai’s first time to come into contact with MEME. Although he only paid out one’s capital for a hundred times the profit, this trading experience made him feel that “MEME is really fun.”
Then he began to spend more time studying MEME, understanding MEME, trading MEME, and gradually developed his own trading strategy.
Why is the strong banker game more fun?
PVP is a typical game in which no one achieves anything. What everyone is competing for is actually who can discover a hot spot first, or who can create a hot spot and get the bottom chips, and then cover up everyone when they think the position is high, make money and leave.
The market maker is actually a game in which retail investors and market makers complement each other. In the life cycle of a MEME, if the market maker wants to push up the market value and list it on Binance, he needs to use his funds to find callers to absorb funds, wash funds, pull the market, create advertisements/news, and promote hot spots.
If a market maker is very good at doing these things, it means that he is good at narrative, has a large amount of capital, and has relationships with various callers and exchanges. In this case, it is a win-win situation for retail investors and the market maker.
So how do you determine whether a market is controlled by a banker?
Mr. Mai gave an angle: observe whether the wallet has intentional washing behavior, that is, the same target maintains a price range and is quickly bought and sold within a few seconds. Zhuang washes the wallet for the following purposes:
- Can be marked as a new wallet by tool vendors such as GMGN
- Disperse chips to prepare for a pullback
However, as more and more information is revealed by tool vendors, the methods used by market makers are constantly changing, but this is good news for retail investors, because the market makers need to collect chips and have more time to prepare for market manipulation. This way, retail investors will have more time to find out which market makers are the best.
How do dealers on Solana manipulate a MEME?
Early stage: Collecting chips in the inner market and launching on the pump
- Because of the market's "anti-banker" sentiment after the creation of NEIRO, the banker will hide himself in the early stage, making MEME a so-called community-started project, and start collecting funds in the process.
- In the process of collecting internal chips, the biggest enemy of the dealer is the bot. Now there are many bots that check the internal volume of the pump. Once they find a new wallet buying (5-10 SOL), they will follow up immediately.
- When enough chips are collected, usually more than 75%, they will be launched on the Pump.
Mid-term: Push volume in rounds
- The first wave: Start. Find some Tier 3 and Tier 2 callers and let your own market makers cooperate, rush the market value to the range of 5 million to 20 million, and then quickly dump the market.
- The second wave: explosive pull. Deploy the funds gained from the first wave of market crash, usually all the funds, to make the market, and at the same time find Tier 1 callers to call orders, and pull up the market in one wave, so that no one can get cheaper chips.
Later stage: Listing on the exchange
- Whether you can be listed on an exchange or Binance is actually a matter of luck, and the market makers are also looking at luck. If you are successfully listed, the valve of liquidity will be opened, and the subsequent trading will be the same as the secondary market.
- After listing, market making is usually done by wintermute.
The two MEMEs BAN and AI16Z are very typical "market manipulators": the manipulators spent a very long time collecting chips in the early stage, made the first big pull-up, and then smashed it down to get enough funds for subsequent market-making, and at the same time collected chips at the bottom, and directly pulled it up in the second wave.
How to get on board a strong dealer’s plate?
There are two strategies:
The first one is to buy after the first wave ends and before the second wave rises.
During this stage, the market makers continue to accumulate funds at the bottom. If you find traces of them collecting funds (mainly by observing the wallets), you can follow up and buy.
Second, after the second wave starts, chase it decisively.
At this stage, the market maker will most likely look for Tier 1 callers to cooperate with the funds saved from the first wave of market crashes to quickly push up the market value and seek listing. Generally speaking, once the second wave starts, the real strong market maker will rarely let the coin price fall back a little to allow retail investors to get on board. Therefore, if you observe that the second wave has started and has exceeded the first wave, you can chase high and buy.
Using the logic of short videos to understand MEME
In May, when I was doing #DialogueWithTraders with Zepump to talk about MEME, he mentioned a point of view that MEME is to VC coins as short videos are to long videos. Mr. Mai also agreed with this logic and explained the "commonalities" between short videos and MEME from the two aspects of "demand hierarchy" and "evolutionary path".
Let’s talk about the hierarchy of needs first.
Why do people, especially those born after 2000, like to watch short videos and MEME every day? Because they satisfy their deepest desires:
- Short videos satisfy lust and so-called "laziness". Because young people have fragmented time and little time for entertainment, they can only get very short-term happiness by watching Douyin.
- MEME satisfies greed. Young people today generally feel that the threshold for wealth leap is too high, so they all want to take a gamble (get rich quickly).
Let’s talk about the evolution path.
- In the beginning, short videos were mainly UGC, which was content produced by users themselves, but later you would find that few people were watching UGC anymore. Everyone was watching PGC because PGC was of better quality.
- In MEME, everyone was very ignorant about the CTO at the beginning, but later they found that the market makers were more interesting and could raise the prices because they were inherently strong in operations and had relatively strong financial strength.
Ultimately, short videos and MEMEs are both very much attention economy markets.
In the MEME super cycle, which coin will become the "new king"?
Mr. Mai firmly believes that MEME is a long-term thing. If we look back at today in two years, most of the MEMEs in the market may have fallen, but there will definitely be more MEMEs that can run sustainably, and there will definitely be a MEME that is more powerful than SHIB, and this MEME is likely to be in the market.
Which coin is likely to become the “new king”?
First: $DOGE
The real leader of the MEME track, the "BTC" in MEME, DOGE will most likely be listed on the ETF after Trump takes office.
Second: $PEPE
PEPE's strength lies in its early development and its logic that many Chinese people cannot understand. In fact, most of the projects on Ethereum are derivatives of PEPE, which has become a consensus. In this round of MEME, it is difficult to find a consensus as strong as PEPE.
The third one: $WIF
Fourth: $POPCAT
$WIF VS $POPCAT, Mr. Mai is more optimistic about the latter. In fact, there is a particularly interesting point between WIF and POPCAT: although WIF’s market value is twice that of POPCAT, their pools are the same.
Nowadays, fewer people in foreign communities and conspiracy group callers are talking about WIF, and attention has shifted to POPCAT. This may also mean the choice of capital.
If you want to play MEME well, which callers should you pay attention to?
foreign:
Murad @MustStopMurad, Crash @CrashiusClay69, Mitch @idrawline, OverDose@Overdose_AI, Moneylord @moneyl0rd, Ansem @blknoiz06, Spidercrypto@SpiderCrypto0x
Chinese Area:
First: Wizard @0xcryptowizard
The Wizard is a Builder. You will feel more stable when following his car because he is constantly building and the projects he builds are all from very good angles.
Second: magnolia @0xmagnolia
Hat Sister has written a lot of useful content, teaching you how to find MEME and how to win in this game. Hat Sister is very good at catching hot spots, so she can be a good reference for where the hot spots are and where the sustainability may be.
The third one: Timo @timotimoqi
Timo is a friend of Mr. Mai in real life. They are both investors, so their trading perspectives may be similar. The tweet about 8 questions to ask yourself before buying MEME comes from Timo 👉https://x.com/timotimoqi/status/1847147614963486730
Timo may have called five or six projects recently, three of which have increased their returns by hundreds of times.
Finally, I want to say that there is a problem with callers, that is, they may be good a month ago, but may be bad a month later. For example, POE, who used to post very good content, became popular more than a month ago and started calling various Rug disks to make money.
Although you don’t know what happened behind the scenes, the lesson is: when watching Caller, you must watch it in a comprehensive way. It is still analogous to short videos. He is just a person who recommends videos to you, not the one who asks you to like. The right to like should still be in your own hands.
Last words
I think the key to playing MEME is to find the stage and trading method within your ability. In fact, no matter when you enter the market, you can always find your own opportunities in MEME. This is the most interesting point of MEME in this cycle.
