Cheatsheet: Vitalik Buterin says there’s nothing ‘new and interesting’ about memecoins
Vitalik Buterin has some thoughts on memecoins, and one firm says it’s shorting MicroStrategy
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin | Duncan Rawlinson – Duncan.co /"Vitalik Buterin – Ethereum 2″ (CC license)
Bitcoin (BTC) continued to stay above $70,000, despite a week filled with legal news in the crypto space from KuCoin to Coinbase. And, of course, the sentencing of Sam Bankman-Fried.
Ethereum (ETH) hovered around $3,500 at time of publication, down slightly in the last 24 hours but still up 8% over the last seven days.
Dogwifhat (WIF) is up over 13% at time of publication, trading around $3.72. Litecoin and Filecoin were up 10.5% and roughly 10% respectively.
Read more: SBF’s ambitions went too far, judge says when handing down 25-year sentence
Crypto can still have fun without racist memecoins: Buterin
Vitalik Buterin, on Friday, penned a post on memecoins and where they stand in this cycle as racist and sexist memecoins continue to pop up.
“This time, they are heating up again, but in a way that is making many people feel uneasy, because there isn’t anything particularly new and interesting about the memecoins,” Buterin wrote.
Buterin cited a recent post from Polynya, a pseudonymous Ethereum blogger, who announced that they were going to stop writing about crypto under their current pseudonym due to the “aggressive cultural shift” in crypto.
Read more: Vitalik Buterin discusses what is next for Ethereum, following Dencun hard fork
“Things have hit an all-new bottom with 2024: racist, sexist, and other shitheaded memecoins which are merely a vehicle to transfer wealth from the many to the most obnoxious people on the planet.” they wrote.
He noted that there are a few ways to approach the current environment: virtue-signal or ask how the concept can be utilized to benefit multiple parties.
“If people value having fun, and financialized games seem to at least sometimes provide that, then could there be a more positive-sum version of this whole concept?” he asked.
He added two potential avenues to maintain the fun that some are looking for in crypto while also benefiting specific parties. One such avenue are charity coins, which donate either part of the token supply or create a fee mechanism dedicated to a specific charity. Though he notes that the avenue may “create something fundamentally limited.”
Then there are “Robin Hood games.” Buterin urges people to consider making games that are “actually meaningful and fun” not just “Candy Crush on the blockchain.” His example for this? World of Warcraft.
Read more: Traditional gaming needs Web3 more than ever
Axie Infinity, prior to the $600 million hack, was a boon for people in some Southeast Asian countries, he noted. The goal would be to make a game that’s interesting but also benefits lower-income players, instead of potentially harming them.
“I value people’s desire to have fun, and I would rather the crypto space somehow swim with this current rather than against it. And so I want to see higher quality fun projects that contribute positively to the ecosystem and the world around them (and not just by ‘bringing in users’) get more mindshare,” Buterin wrote.
Crypto business
On Thursday, Kerrisdale Capital announced that they’re long bitcoin, but short MicroStrategy.
“The days when MicroStrategy shares represented a rare, unique way to gain access to bitcoin are long over,” Kerrisdale wrote. MicroStrategy Chairman and founder Michael Saylor has previously pushed back against questions around his company’s role now that the spot bitcoin ETFs are on the market.
He previously said that spot bitcoin ETFs could mark “institutional adoption of bitcoin as an asset class.”
Kerrisdale also noted that MicroStrategy’s operating business doesn’t contribute “meaningful value” to the enterprise overall. The software business also hasn’t shown a lot of topline growth in years.
“Leverage cuts both ways and while MicroStrategy has succeeded in increasing the amount of bitcoin held, the impact of massive dilution has also kept the amount of bitcoin per share virtually unchanged in recent years,” the report stated.
- The stock market’s closed for Good Friday, but MicroStrategy closed down 11% Thursday following the short report.
- Coinbase closed 3% higher on the day by end of trading Thursday, despite the exchange notching a slight loss against the SEC in its fight to dismiss the regulatory agency’s suit.
- “This Friday marks one of the biggest expiries in Deribit’s history as USD 9.5 billion BTC options open interest out of USD 26.3 billion will expire (40%) plus USD 5.7 billion ETH options open interest out of a total of USD 13.2 billion (43%),” Deribit noted.
On the ground
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