Author: BitpushNews
After resigning from the internet giant Meta, Justin has fully immersed himself in the crypto field as an entrepreneur and Crypto Degen (enthusiast). He has not only successfully invested in hot targets such as PEPE, Degen, and TRUMP, accumulating a rich track record, but has also gained valuable experience and lessons from the market fluctuations.
In this exclusive interview with Bitpush, Justin shares his story from Meta to Crypto, and delves into the investment strategies, current market status, and future trends of Meme coins. This article is packed with valuable insights, and whether you are a Meme coin newbie or a seasoned player, you can gain inspiration from it. Recommended reading!
Part 1: From Big Tech Employee to the Crypto "Rabbit Hole"
Your family or friends, how do they view your decision to quit Meta and focus on meme and Crypto? How do they view meme coins?
Justin: I'm more of a Crypto degen than a "person who quit a big company to start a business". Before joining Meta, I had already decided to delve into Crypto in the long run, but felt I needed more technical and team collaboration experience, so I went to Meta. At the time, Meta even had a Crypto team, with many bigwigs being veterans of the Libra project, and the Move language development team was also there. Instagram even had an NFT business. But shortly after I joined, the bear market came, and Meta cut off all blockchain-related businesses to focus on the metaverse and AI.
Do they support your All in Crypto decision?
Justin: At first, they were a bit hesitant, after all, giving up such a good treatment at Meta to go to an "uncertain" industry, the risk is not small. But life is about choices, you can't have both a stable salary and grab the Alpha opportunities. I talked to them about the long-term certainty of Crypto, and they finally respected my decision. My dad even asked me to help him store some Bitcoin.
Have you made money or lost money in meme coin investments, and how do the people around you view it?
Justin: Overall, I've made money, but the meme coins I've lost money on are more than the ones I've made money on. The core strategy is: if I'm bullish on a Meme, I'll go big, like Pepe in 2023, Degen in 2024, and Trump in 2025. This way, even if most Memes go to zero, the few I hit big on are enough to make up for the losses.
Before entering the meme track, did you step on any pits?
Justin: Meme investment is a "comprehensive subject", requiring an understanding of hot spots, emotions, culture, investment, and self-awareness. The biggest lesson I've learned in the past two years is that the market can find ways to make you lose money that are far more than you can imagine.
Part 2: Discussion on the Current State of Meme Coins
CZ's dog-themed promotion ignited the BNB chain Meme, how do you and your friends view this?
Justin: CZ saw the trend of on-chain transaction volume and wanted to boost the activity of the BNB chain, but the community reaction was not very good. Because he didn't clearly "officially announce" which Broccoli was the authentic version, the market instantly spawned hundreds of them, which cut a lot of retail investors, and also dispersed the liquidity.
Does the BNB ecosystem still have the opportunity to ignite meme coins?
Justin: The opportunity is there, but the road is still long. The basic infrastructure of the BNB ecosystem cannot keep up with the demand for Meme transactions, such as transaction speed, basic infrastructure, and stability. Solana and Base have also been polished many times to achieve the current smooth experience, while BNB was obviously not prepared this time, with Pancake, Binance Wallet experiencing serious lags, high slippage, and poor stability, causing many users to have difficulty trading.
How do your Crypto trader or VC friends evaluate this incident?
Justin: Many on-chain experts and founders have been badly burned, totaling at least $10 million. Everyone is very angry about Milei's tweet deletion, because the endorsement of a national leader made them dare to take large positions. But Crypto is a casino, every piece of information affects decision-making, the key is whether you can anticipate and respond to new information, like when Milei deleted the tweet, do you choose to cut losses or add positions?
Will "national-level shilling" become a new normal for meme coins?
Justin: If 3-4 national-level Meme coins all follow the "launch-skyrocket-plummet to zero" model in a short period of time, this gameplay won't work anymore, and people who have lost money won't get on board again, and later countries won't dare to play either.
If it wants to last in the long run, it must find a sustainable economic model and gameplay, otherwise it will be like NFTs, a brief boom followed by a collapse.
Part 3: How Should Ordinary Users Play Meme?
Many meme coin investors say they "know it's gambling, but they just can't resist", how do you view this mentality?
Justin: Meme coins give people a sense of "grassroots counterattack" excitement, similar to the mechanism that attracts people to casinos, but the volatility of Memes far exceeds that of casinos, even making casinos seem a bit boring. Although most people end up losing money in the end, the stories of 100x, 1000x explosive wealth will still make people believe that "the next one to make it big could be me". Even if they lose, they will continue to charge in, because the FOMO mentality is at work.
If I'm an ordinary investor, how should I judge which meme coins have potential and which are purely for cutting leeks?
Justin: Due to time constraints, I rarely have the ability to sit in front of the computer and continuously follow new meme coins that just opened, and participate in the early stage. Therefore, I tend to choose meme coins with a life cycle of more than a few hours, which requires judging the narrative, token structure, profit-loss ratio, and whether they have the explosive power of social transmission.
Narrative
In terms of narrative judgment, I believe there are two key points: the coverage of the number of people and the depth of resonance. First, we need to see if the narrative can reach enough people; second, whether it can move these people and make them resonate. If the narrative is too niche, although it is not necessarily bad, the ceiling is limited and it is difficult to spread widely. And some well-known IPs may not be suitable as memes, because people's resonance and sense of identity may not be high. Both of these points are indispensable.
Token Distribution
You need to judge whether there are traces of the boss in this project. Usually, the boss's wallet will definitely appear in the Top 100, so you can focus on digging deeper into the addresses in the Top 100, especially paying attention to the fact that the boss is most likely to come out and absorb the chips during the second stage of horizontal consolidation.
The market maker wallet mainly looks at the number of transactions, its role is to cash out at high levels and absorb chips to support the market, and gradually raise the bottom, while harvesting the chips of retail investors, transferring the chips to diamond hands and big players.
Trading volume is also a good way to judge the boss. I usually use trading volume / market cap to judge, if this value is maintained > 1 for a long time, it means the boss of this plate is still very strong.
Address library management: Whenever I find a boss plate, I will save the address, which may be used again in the future, similar to the way of tracking smart money.
Risk-Reward Ratio
You need to set a target price for this token based on the judgment of the narrative. For example, PNUT may be a 1B-level narrative, while Trump is a 100B-level narrative. Based on the current market cap and your target price, it can help you judge whether it is worth investing and how much position to take. For example, a narrative I recently liked, Dogshit2, I think it can at least reach a market cap of 100M, while the current one is only 2M, which makes me see an upside potential of 50x, so I will choose to invest a certain position, following my judgment.
Virality
You need to quickly judge who is following this token on Twitter, and extrapolate their dissemination relationships, analyzing which potential circles or KOLs may pay attention to it in the future. This requires some accumulation of the value of the KOLs in the core circle of memes. Everyone can use tools like Katio or The1 to analyze the influence of shilling KOLs, which can help judge their dissemination potential.
Many meme experts have summarized a lot of excellent investment advice, I suggest everyone check out the "From 0 to 10 Million USD Meme Operation Guide" co-authored by GMGN and on-chain experts, which has a lot of in-depth analysis on the selection of meme targets, as well as the corresponding stop-profit and stop-loss strategies. This guide is a very practical reference. GMGN: From 0 to 10 Million USD Meme Operation Guide.pdf
How would you look at a meme project yourself? Do you have any "stop-profit" or "stop-loss" rules set up?
Justin: Looking at a meme goes through several stages: information gathering → evaluation → investment → stop-profit / stop-loss.
Information gathering: The information channels need to be as diverse as possible, while ensuring the quality of the information. I will discuss in some core on-chain player groups, and also pay attention to the Twitter and TG groups of high-quality KOLs, to ensure that I can know about potential targets in the first time. In addition, I will also keep an eye on on-chain signals, trying not to miss potential targets.
Quick evaluation: After discovering a potential meme, I need to make a quick judgment. The Twitter common friends is a very helpful dimension for judgment, which requires your Twitter follow list to be well trained, following high-quality KOLs, and constantly accumulating high-quality information sources. This is the treasure for judging project quality. Next, evaluate the narrative, token distribution, and risk-reward ratio according to the previous methods, and then decide whether to invest and the size of the position.
Stop-profit and stop-loss strategy: My strategy is to take back the principal when it doubles or triples, and then stage the stop-profit for the remaining part according to the ideal valuation. Memes change too fast, I won't set rigid stop-profit and stop-loss standards, but will adjust in real time based on market sentiment. For example, the sudden deletion of tweets by Argentine President Milei is impossible to predict in advance, and in such sudden events, I must stop loss immediately without hesitation.
If you were to give 3 survival tips for meme investors, what would you say?
Justin: 1. Learn to judge the sentiment, dissemination power, sustainability, and whether there is cyclicality of the topic. Whether a meme can be popular not only depends on the narrative itself, but also whether its sentiment can continue to ferment.
2. If you are optimistic about the narrative, token distribution, and risk-reward ratio of a meme, you must dare to take a position, don't blindly diversify your investments. Too diversified investment approach may prevent you from catching the big gains, and ultimately become "worked hard for a long time, but only earned pocket money".
3. Losses are part of success, analyze the reasons for each loss in depth, summarize thoroughly, and apply them to the next investment. True masters are not those who don't lose money, but those who can learn something from every loss and continuously optimize their strategies.
Part 4: The Future of Memes
Do you think the hype of meme coins has peaked, or will there be even crazier gameplay in the future?
Justin: I think there will definitely be even crazier gameplay than Pump.fun in the future. Meme culture runs through the entire history, and even before the emergence of blockchain, people have been good at joking and playing with culture, which is one of the indispensable pleasures of life. And blockchain has given Meme a more efficient way of creation and dissemination, making it possible for an IP to quickly become a hit, which is something traditional cultural dissemination efficiency cannot achieve.
I believe that in the future, social, news and Meme will be more closely integrated. If every news and hot topic can correspond to a Meme, what a scenario would that be? Perhaps the future Meme ecosystem will not only be about trading, but will become a consensus carrier for certain news hot spots, allowing people to participate in a more intuitive way. This will be very interesting and may also be the next big opportunity.
If you were to predict the meme market in 2025, do you think it will still be booming?
Justin: Memes will not only continue to be hot in 2025, but will also run through the entire market in the long run. Memes have become a new way of expressing news, hot topics and culture for the new generation, consolidating consensus through coin prices.
Hot spots will continue to emerge, cultural trends will continue to evolve, and popular figures will also emerge endlessly, only the annual trend will be different. Therefore, in order to seize opportunities in the Meme field, one must have sensitivity to global hot spots, including technology, culture, trends, politics and other fields.
Each field will give birth to its own leading Meme, and investors can choose the direction they are good at, give full play to their advantages, and dare to seize opportunities when the right Meme appears.
Do you think the meme ecosystem has the potential to become a "valuable long-term asset"?
Justin: To understand the essence of Meme, it is actually a kind of information with dissemination attributes. Whether a Meme can be popular depends on whether the information (culture, memes, news, popular figures, etc.) it carries can accumulate enough attention and dissemination effect in the short term. This is similar to the hot search mechanism, the difference is that Meme is measured by trading volume and market value, while hot search is judged by post heat and browsing volume.
So, to judge whether a Meme has long-term value, we need to see if the information it carries has the ability of long-term dissemination or cyclical dissemination. For example:
Doge is occasionally mentioned by Musk, and it is also linked to the efficiency problem of the US government, so it has long-term discussion value, so Doge has become a long-term Meme.
PNUT has extremely strong real-time explosive power, but it is difficult to predict whether it will have the right scenario to explode again in the future, so its long-term attributes are relatively weak.
From the current point of view, only a few Memes have long-term value, and most Memes are still short-cycle hot spots without the ability to explode again. The life cycle of these Memes is like fashion trends, with new popular trends every year, and the old Memes are gradually eliminated. Therefore, the Meme ecosystem will continue to evolve, but only a few can truly become long-term assets.
