Meme coin war escalates, SEC speech triggers a new era of Compliance

This week, the cryptocurrency market has seen an upward trend driven by the easing of Sino-U.S. trade tensions and CPI data meeting expectations. The price of Bitcoin is currently still above $104,000. Market conditions are mixed; Coinbase's stock price rose and then fell, FTX is about to start compensation, but overall there is an increasing sense of caution.

The competition in the meme coin market has become intense, with the three major platforms Pump.fun, Believe, and LetsBONK.fun fiercely competing over token launches, liquidity, and community influence. At the same time, the SEC Chairman delivered an important speech on asset tokenization, providing a clearer regulatory framework for the issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets, indicating that a new era of compliance and mainstreaming is about to arrive.

1. The meme coin melee escalates

With Believe joining the anti Pump.fun camp, the competition in the meme market has become increasingly fierce among the three major platforms this week. In particular, the three platforms have engaged in a crazy showdown to compete for the Glonk Ticker. Tom, the founder of LetsBONK.fun, and Alon, the co-founder of Pump.Fun, have been calling each other out on social media, pushing this meme frenzy to a climax.

1. Pump.Fun became the target of criticism.

• Pump.fun has a strong cash flow, no need to issue coins, regularly selling Solana has suppressed the price of the local currency.

According to statistics, Pump.fun transfers these SOL to the trading platform for sale after accumulating transaction fee revenue for one to two weeks, selling a total of about 3.868 million SOL over the past year, with an average price of 183.3 USD.

• Pump.fun is dominant in the Solana ecosystem, which is not conducive to ecological development.

Pump.Fun accounts for 71% of Solana's daily token issuance. Especially after the launch of PumpSwap, it competes directly with other DEXs, further consolidating its market share. This dominance may stifle innovation, lack of competition, or lead to ecological unification, which is detrimental to long-term development.

Under competitive pressure, Pump.fun later announced the launch of a creator revenue sharing program, sharing 50% of the revenue from PumpSwap with token creators.

2. The Web2 gameplay of Believe

Believe was founded by 26-year-old Australian entrepreneur Ben Pasternak. Pasternak achieved great success by developing games at the age of 14 and founded a social trading app at 15, securing $2 million in funding.

Believe develops new strategies by bringing talent from Web2 into the Web3 space. For example, the Yapper project was launched by Harvard graduate Emmet Halm, who has released several hit products in the Web2 field and successfully exited twice. This model may continue in the short term and attract more Web2 teams to join.

Other similar projects include:

• Noodle: A snake game launched by Web2 entrepreneur Alex Leiman
• GOONC: A token issued by OpenAI employee Pata van Goon
• MSCP: The developer is suspected to be a software engineer from a certain technology company, but this has been debunked.

Recently, the founder of Believe stated that they will no longer recommend new coins, but will focus on existing coins.

3. LetsBONK.fun

LetsBONK.fun has received support from many senior figures in the Solana ecosystem, launching popular projects such as Useless, Hosico, and Ikun. Participants can pay attention to founder Tom and ecosystem supporter Bonk Guy, who often announce trades publicly on social media.

4. Robot Wars

The Believe platform allows users to launch new tokens with simple social media operations, lowering the launch threshold. However, this has also led to a large number of bots monitoring new launches and buying in quickly, transforming the meme battlefield from PVP to BVB. In this model, when the Believe officials and founders recommend a certain meme, early interest groups often have already set up ambushes, making the risk for retail investors extremely high.

5. meme market competitive landscape

Although Pump.Fun still holds a leading position in the Meme market, its market share is being eroded by emerging launch platforms. The ultimate winner of this meme war is yet to be determined, but for retail investors, the competition among the three major platforms may herald a golden age of frequent meme gold dogs.

2. Key Points of the SEC Chair's Speech on Asset Tokenization

1. Asset Issuance

Current Status and Challenges: Currently, only a few cryptocurrency issuers complete their issuance through legal channels. The existing forms may not be suitable for the characteristics of cryptocurrency assets.

Regulatory Objective: The SEC plans to establish clear and reasonable guidelines for the allocation of crypto assets that are securities or subject to investment contracts, addressing the uncertainty faced by issuers in determining the nature of the asset. For already issued non-compliant projects, as long as they can be rectified, the SEC still offers registration exemptions or safe harbors.

2. Custody

The SEC plans to relax the identity restrictions on custodians, which may gradually expand from large asset companies or banks to brokerages and financial institutions. The previous restrictions on the capital occupation of custodians have been lifted.

Regulatory objectives: Provide more options for registrants when custodizing crypto assets, clarify the types of "qualified custodians," and consider reasonable exemptions for self-custody.

3. Trading

Regulatory Objective: The SEC plans to modernize the ATS regulatory framework to better accommodate crypto assets and explore further guidance or rulemaking to facilitate the listing and trading of crypto assets on national securities exchanges.

Conclusion

1. Strong regulation will curb scams and make the market more standardized.

2. Asset tokenization is expected to become mainstream, balancing efficiency and Compliance.

3. Market liquidity will significantly improve, and the overall scale is expected to expand.