In Cryptoland, Memecoin fever is giving way to a stablecoin boom

When the President of the United States Donald Trump Launched its own cryptocurrency On January 17, days before he returned to the White House, I was halfway up the Swiss Alps, attending a cryptocurrency conference in St. Moritz.

Memecoins, which typically have no purpose beyond financial speculation, were like that Having a moment. previous year, Millions of new meme coins The market has been flooded. A few, like Vartcoinand has risen to billion-dollar valuations. Pump.Funhas become a platform for launching and trading memecoins One of the fastest growing cryptocurrency launch companies never. Now, the soon-to-be president has set to work.

Over lunch on the second day of the conference, under the ornate plaster ceiling and gold chandeliers in the venue’s dining hall, I set up a dedicated table for a conversation about meme coins. While other tables were half full, the memcoin workshop was oversubscribed; Latecomers pulled out chairs to create two full rows.

The discussion was moderated by Nagendra Bharathula, founder of investment firm G20. Bharathola was recently Co-authored a paper Arguing that meme currencies, despite their youthful spirit, had a place in the portfolios of professional investors. He noted that in the previous six months, a basket of 25 “memcoins” — an oxymoron if there ever was one — outperformed bitcoin by 150 percent. Some of the attendees murmured in agreement.

Since then, the shine has fallen out of the memecoin market. The paper value of the Trump coin, which has risen to a peak 14 billion dollars Two days after its launch, it had collapsed to approx 1 billion dollars. Hundreds of thousands of small investors They lost their shirts. Pump.Fun’s daily revenue, an indicator of the general interest in trading memecoin, is barely more than A tenth of what was In January. The memecoin gold rush has given rise to A set of lawsuits.

Next: stablecoin. If the meme coins are symbolic of Reckless abandon and Unwavering profiteering In the world of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins are a symbol of the industry’s search for purpose and respect. Designed to maintain a fixed valuation of $1, stablecoins are promoted by supporters as a faster and cheaper way to make everyday payments and international money transfers.

In the year that The United States announced that it is open for crypto businesswhere cryptocurrency companies were previously located Fear of regulatory reaction Under the Biden administration, stablecoins have replaced memes as the traditional currency, punctuating the trend.

Although there are stablecoins About since 2014Mostly, they were Used by crypto traders As a safe haven during bouts of market volatility, not by ordinary people. The concept has also faced resistance from regulators skeptical of the existence of a new form of money; Diem, a stablecoin project incubated on the famous Meta It closed in 2022 In the face of widespread opposition.