Deel dit artikel
Balaji Blasts Memecoins, Calling Them 'Zero-Sum Lottery’ as TRUMP Token Sends Market In Frenzy
The former CTO of Coinbase and general partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz said in a thread on X that memecoins aren’t wealth creation.
20 jan 2025, 3:57 a..m.. Vertaald door AI
What to know:
- As market mania over memecoins from Donald Trump and the next first lady Melania Trump continues, Balaji Srinivasan has criticized the category as not creating wealth and being a zero-sum game.
- Market interest in Trump-themed coins has sucked liquidity from the broader memecoin market, with many of the majors down double digits.
As the official memecoin of the second Donald Trump presidency flirts with a market cap of $10 billion, and Melania Trump, the next first lady, launches her own, Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, said in a thread on X that this whole category of tokens could be equated to gambling.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Mis geen enkel verhaal.Abonneer je vandaag nog op de Crypto Daybook Americas Nieuwsbrief. Bekijk Alle Nieuwsbrieven
Loading...
“There is no wealth creation. Every buy order is simply matched by a sell order. And after an initial spike, the price eventually crashes and the last buyers lose everything,” he posted, calling memecoins a zero-sum – even negative sum after exchange fees – lottery.
Balaji said that memecoins should be approached in the same way as gambling in Las Vegas for entertainment purposes.
“Most should buy assets that retain their value over the long run,” he continued. “It is sometimes possible to add use cases to a memecoin, or to keep it in the headlines to keep its value aloft indefinitely. And we’ve seen examples of that as well.”
In response to the post, many asked Balaji if bitcoin was ever considered a memecoin, to which he argued that it wasn’t because of its use cases and decade-plus staying power.
Loading...
“Bitcoin is the base layer asset of a blockchain with ~800 Th/s in hashrate across hundreds of datacenters worldwide,” he wrote. “It grew gradually over time, rather than all at once, and the mining issuance schedule limits how much can be sold by any one party.”
Market interest in the official Trump memecoin has sucked liquidity out of other memecoins, with CoinGecko data reporting that the category has shrunk by 8% in the last 24 hours. Many of the top memecoins like DOGE, SHIB, and BONK are down by over 10% on-day.
READ MORE: Bitcoin retraces to $100K, TRUMP Tanks 30% as Melania Memecoin Skyrockets
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Zcash Floats Dynamic Fee Plan to Ensure Users Won’t Be Priced Out
ZEC zoomed 12% amid the fee discussion, beating gains across all major tokens.
What to know:
- A new proposal by Shielded Labs suggests a dynamic fee market for Zcash to address rising transaction costs and network congestion.
- The proposed system uses a median fee per action observed over the prior 50 blocks, with a priority lane for high-demand periods.
- The changes aim to maintain Zcash's privacy features while avoiding complex protocol redesigns.
Top Stories
