Crypto Casinos: Why Most Meme Players Are Doomed to Lose Money

Author: Mohamed Allam, Messari Protocol Research Analyst; Compiler: 0xjs@黄金财

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article titled "Stick to your investment thesis, otherwise you will lose money", and my god, it feels like no one has an investment thesis - and on top of that, everyone is losing money. If this is your first cryptocurrency cycle, welcome to the casino. If you try to bet against the house, you will lose. Ahem, $TRUMP, $LIBRA, $JAILSTOOL and $CAR. These are just mainstream memes, but if you are really in the trenches, you will know that this is just the first layer of the onion.

Let me say it again: If you treat cryptocurrency as a casino, it will treat you as a gambler.

In a casino, one in five players will win money on the jackpot machine. This means that the vast majority of people are losers — and even the “winners” aren’t really winners if you count how much they lost before they hit the jackpot. Let’s say you bet a bunch of memecoins, lose over and over, and finally hit the jackpot. What happens? You think you’re special. You think you’ve cracked the code. But in reality, your win is just an exception, and if you keep playing, the casino will take your money away.

• Casinos lure you in with dreams of free buffets and financial freedom. Memecoin tempts you with airdrops, 10,000x dreams, wife swap rewards, and shiny Rolexes.

• Casinos make the rules and keep you playing until they decide to spit you out. Twitter influencers send memes to the moon, then banish you to the cold.

• When your luck is down, casinos sell you the fantasy of a "one big win." Memecoin has the same effect, only with a smaller chance of success.

Math - Why You Might Lose

Now, I'm a math person, so let's talk about the Law of Large Numbers in plain English.

The law states that as you increase the number of trials, your results will get closer and closer to the expected mean. In gambling, the expected mean is the amount of money you lose. Casinos and gambling games are built around this principle. The more you play, the more your personal results tend toward the house edge.

Think of it this way: If you flip a coin 10 times, you'll probably get 7 heads and 3 tails - anomalies that happen in small samples. But if you flip the coin 1,000 times, the results will be closer to 50/50. The same logic applies to betting on meme coins. You might get lucky once or twice, but after enough trades, the expected outcome returns to reality. And the reality is that Twitter influencers are getting richer and richer, while you are losing a lot of money.

So how do winners win?

1. Get in early - but let's face it, even the smartest people can't leave on time, and getting in early is almost impossible.

2. Become an insider trader - vile, bad.

3. Become an influencer to sabotage - also vile, bad.

So, in short, it's a game of luck unless you meet the above criteria, which you probably don't, including me.

That being said, the stigma of cryptocurrency needs to change. Memecoin will almost always not make you rich. If you really care about this space, then study it and formulate a thesis - a real thesis.

Making 10,000x in a few hours is not a rational idea. Making 2-4x in 2-5 years is a rational idea. If you understand this, you can make money (NFA of course). Don't let the Meme cycle consume you.

Will Memecoins disappear? No.

Is peak crime here? Yes. And it will probably always be.

But if you want to succeed in this gray world of cryptocurrencies, you need to be prepared and understand what you are investing in.