Tokenised Hype, Monetised Myths

Cryptocurrencies only exist because of a hype. If Bitcoin had remained nothing more than a few lines of code, ignored by everyone, it wouldn’t be trading above $100,000 today. Its price, like all other cryptocurrencies, is determined by a single metric: the invisible hand of the market.

But here’s the catch: in traditional markets like oil, wheat and copper, that invisible hand reflects something real. Physical scarcity meets tangible demand, grounded in intrinsic utility. In crypto, however, there is nothing to reveal. No wheat behind the futures, no tulips behind the ticker—just pixels and belief. Which means the only fuel left is greed.

Fiat currencies, for all their flaws, draw value from a sovereign backbone. They are legal tender by sheer political will. You don’t have to believe in the euro or the dollar, you use it because the state says so and you don’t have a choice. 

Cryptocurrencies have no such anchor, which is precisely why they seduce the libertarian. Their value comes from visibility, from voluntary usage, from collective projection. Even if they claim to challenge the authoritarian weight of fiat, cryptos desperately crave virality. Somewhere online, you’ll always find a crypto-bro screaming ‘bullrun’—probably next to the weirdest meme you have ever seen.

Proof of Work, Proof of Worth

Before the hype, there was the Genesis Block. On 3 January 2009, Bitcoin came into existence with the mining of its very first block—a 50 BTC reward that, due to a quirk in the code, can never be spent. This ‘block 0’ marked the beginning of Bitcoin’s blockchain and became the founding myth of Web3.

From the start, Bitcoin didn’t try to hype itself into existence. It embedded its credibility in Proof of Work: a system that made participation costly, validation slow, and alteration nearly impossible.

Miners weren’t just securing the network, they were burning energy, time, and money to prove commitment. Every BTC was earned, or acquired from someone who earned it.

In a digital world of copy-paste code and meaningless abundance, Bitcoin introduced friction. It tied belief to physical expense—to electricity, to hardware, to Miners’s work. Proof of Work acted as a ritual of cost and trust. And over time, that ritual turned belief into worth. Unlike tulips, Bitcoin wasn’t desirable for what it was or for its natural scarcity, but for what it was engineered to cost—energy burned, work performed. 

That doesn’t mean Bitcoin escaped having a hype—that is always part of the process, when something aims to reach the mass market. It just didn’t need it to begin with, unlike most of what came after. The hype arrived later, and it came because the system worked. In a market now saturated with coins designed to go viral from day one, that distinction matters.

The Memefication of Money

Welcome to the corner of crypto where the hype isn’t just part of the game: it is the game. Memecoins aren’t pretending to build the future nor to solve anything. They are publicly nothing more than a joke—but a lucrative one. 

They are usually born from some obscure internet meme, a joke, a symbol, or a personality—really, it can be anything with viral potential. Memecoins usually follow a simple, brutal logic: pump, crash, disappear, repeat.

Dogecoin is the original memecoin. Born in 2013 from a Shiba Inu joke and a bored developer’s weekend, it was never meant to last—let alone dominate. And yet, more than a decade later, it still sits comfortably among the world’s top 10 cryptocurrencies, with a market cap hovering around $27 billion in mid-2025 (just below USDC, the world’s second-largest stablecoin at $61 billion).

The coin’s most dramatic price swings have followed Elon Musk’s tweets and moods. What keeps Dogecoin alive isn’t utility—it’s visibility. A hype machine that made some millionaires, and crushed latecomers just as easily.

Once it became clear that hype alone could generate millions in minutes, a flood of memecoins followed—each turning absurdity into a business model.
From $TRUMP, where access to a dinner with the president required owning the token, to $HAWK, a viral TikTok star’s coin that hit $490 million in market cap before crashing by 96%—with its creator later admitting she had no idea what she was doing.

The second biggest memecoin $SHIB, Dogecoin’s hyper-inflated spiritual cousin; $PNUT, a tribute token for a dead famous squirrel; and $FARTCOIN, a Solana-based coin featuring a ‘Gas Fee’ system that emits digital fart sounds with transactions.

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The Utility Mirage

If memecoins never pretended to solve anything, most altcoins insist they do. They promise disruption, functionality, and real-world impact. But in practice, the product rarely drives the token—it’s the token that comes first.

The cycle is familiar: token launch, buzz across X and Discord echo chambers, a FOMO-fuelled spike, then the collapse. The packaging says infrastructure and innovation, but under the hood it's pure speculation. Even when projects deliver something, it’s often too late, or too detached from token value. Investors stay in the red, even when the roadmap goes green. A blockchain game is launched, though with virtually no gamers; a DeFi tool might function, but its token is only aimed at farming incentives. You get a product, a platform, maybe even a protocol; but the token? That’s mostly there to remind everyone how excited they once were. 

Even some of the biggest names in altcoins follow the same logic. Avalanche, Polkadot, Filecoin, Helium—all once hailed as revolutionary—have struggled to demonstrate sustained utility tied to token demand. Their ecosystems may still be active, but their tokens often move with sentiment, not usage. Utility becomes a narrative device: a promise, not a feature.

The AI sector is the clearest example of this dynamic. Most so-called ‘AI tokens’ power no model, run no training, and exist only to monetise the hype. Behind the scenes, blockchain and artificial intelligence rarely collaborate—but that hasn’t stopped anyone from selling the fantasy. Terms like ‘decentralised intelligence’ or ‘on-chain agents’ are thrown around, but seldom backed by infrastructure that actually needs the token to function.

A notable exception may be Caffeine AI, a recent demo launched by the Internet Computer (ICP) ecosystem. Described with the bold claim ‘the internet writing itself’, it showcases a fully on-chain coding assistant—capable of autonomously querying user intent, generating code, and deploying it directly through smart contracts, all without relying on centralised APIs. It’s a glimpse into what a truly decentralised AI agent might look like.

Still, between promise and product, the gap remains vast. The demo is striking—but as with many next-gen tools, we’ve learned to expect a brutal reality check once we try them ourselves.

The point seems valid in general terms, too. Stories lead—and we hope reality will catch up. Perhaps it’s only a matter of time before these projects deliver real solutions. But for now, it’s just like betting on some drawings on white paper.

Statement  

Crypto was never just about code, decentralisation, or even money. It was always about belief. Very ironic for a community obsessed with fiat-hating. Bitcoin ritualised value through proof-of-work effort. Memecoins monetised absurdity. Altcoins cloaked speculation in the language of innovation. Across all categories, the narrative—not the product—remains the driving force behind both price movement and so-called ‘usage.’ In a space where attention is scarce and utility often optional, the projects that thrive aren’t the most useful, but the most convincing. Until crypto stops selling stories, its future will be shaped less by technology than by myth.