Memecoins: Experts Are Divided on the Future of SHIB and DOGE

Memecoins started as a joke, but now they are part of our cultural, social and economic landscape. Here’s what in-industry experts are saying about their future.

Simon Furlong is the Co-Founder of Geode. He says predicting the future of memecoins is incredibly difficult, given the circumstances around these memecoins. “As we’ve seen with recent headlines, all it takes is for a single popular celebrity to endorse one of these, and it will at least create a sharp, short term price increase. Creating usefulness, rather than hype, however, is quite another story. Usefulness requires a community of dedicated developers, and a technical platform that can accommodate building useful things. The latter has been a real hurdle for DOGE in particular, since it has no ability to run smart contracts, and requires an outside blockchain to bridge the gap (for example, the recently launched Dogechain).

“SHIB is simply an Ethereum token, so at least smart contracts aren’t a roadblock for them. Thus far, it’s lacked a true use case though, and whether it will find one in the future is anyone’s guess.”

Furlong is reluctant to predict the price on these tokens. “Celebrities and other popular culture events can make all the difference for these prices. I would classify them as gambles of the highest order, so trying to make well-grounded predictions over these time frames, given the lack of use case, or serious institutional investment, is basically impossible.”

Memecoins will always be just that

Julian Koh is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ribbon Finance. “SHIB and DOGE are probably going to stay as memecoins forever, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t get interest and broad appeal with the younger generation. More interest does not always equate to increased adoption however. Having excessive attention on this aspect isn’t the healthiest as it may lead to an inaccurate representation of the entire industry. It takes away the spotlight from the full potential of crypto to innovate on top of traditional financial concepts, and generate stable financial returns with practical, sound strategies.”

Memecoins do have utility

Kadan Stadelmann is the CTO of Komodo. “Just because SHIB or DOGE are considered memecoins, doesn’t mean they lack utility. While certainly there are more innovative projects, both have strong, committed communities. Any currency – whether fiat or crypto – only needs to have utility to succeed. For example, popular stores like Nordstrom and Whole Foods accept SHIB. Another example is Gucci which recently became the first luxury brand to accept ApeCoin as payment in its U.S. stores. If more people start using SHIB for purchases, it will have greater utility and play an important part in the future of crypto.”

Kadan says says the for the last four months of 2022, the global macroeconomic conditions don’t appear to be favorable for the crypto market. “It’s difficult to say what will happen in 2025 or 2030. By the end of 2030, according to previous crypto history, most people expect there to be at least two new bull cycles. That expectation won’t necessarily play out though. Even if the market does go through bull cycles, we may very well see a new crop of memecoins emerge which don’t currently exist that might have surpassed SHIB or DOGE in terms of market cap.”

Kadan says that DOGE has been around since December 2013 and remains relevant with a market cap currently around the top 10. “So one would expect it to be around for many years into the future. Likewise, SHIB has now gone through a full bull market and bear market. It is still a top 15 crypto by market cap. Both projects clearly have a solid core group of holders.”

Joke or not – they are useful

Rick Porter is the CEO of DSCVR. “Meme coins, such as DOGE and SHIB, are often looked at as a joke by people in the crypto industry who are more interested in advances in technology. We believe meme coins are the epitome of the crypto-social instrument; they combine the social community aspects of NFTs with the liquidity of fungible tokens. At DSCVR, one of the largest web3 social networks, we’ve actually introduced tipping with meme coins and witnessed daily active users to more than double. A heart, a smile, a laugh… Why not a DOGE? Tipping with meme coins is Web3 reactions. It is a way to show appreciation for content by both sharing an emotion and transferring value.”

Porter says that these meme coin microtransactions are changing the way people think about simple Web2 reaction buttons, incentivizing content in a way we haven’t seen before. “I think we’ll see more examples of this social liquidity in the coming year that will increase valuations. With that in mind, I could see coins like SHIB and DOGE multiplying their current prices relative to BTC as web3 social grows.”

Memecoins aren’t going anywhere

Anderson Mccutcheon is the CEO and Founder of Chains.com. “DOGE is already usable and accepted by many merchants, for popular payment gateways such as Coinbase. We support DOGE as a payment method on Chains.com Launchpad. Anything that has sufficient liquidity can be used as a payment method, given the right merchant integration tools.”

Eric Chen is the CEO and co-founder of Injective Labs, core contributor to Injective. “I think the main value add of these assets has been the introduction of crypto to new audiences.”

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