Vice President of Research at Messari: Meme coins are an important part of the crypto market and may become a new asset class

Speaking at BUIDL Asia in Seoul on Thursday, Maartje Bus, vice president of research at crypto data aggregator Messari, said that meme coins will remain an important part of the cryptocurrency market and have the potential to become a new asset class. “Cryptocurrencies are often criticized for not having use cases for the average person, and that’s a fair comment,” Bus said, “but meme coins have actually been very successful in bringing people on-chain.” Bus calls “Meme” a way to monetize attention, citing U.S. election candidate-based tokens as an example that could easily turn into prediction markets. Meme coins can also be viewed as a “long-tail speculative service,” like lottery tickets or penny stocks, according to Bus. With all this traction, Meme Coin “inadvertently” introduced crypto concepts such as decentralization and encrypted wallets to Web3 newbies, and could be described as a “Trojan horse” for the next era of crypto-native consumer applications. At the same time, Bus said that the integration of artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency, DePIN and EIP-4844 expansion are emerging trends in the crypto industry in addition to meme coins. (The Block)