Meme Coin Super Cycle: A Conversation with Murad Mahmudov

Every era needs its own spiritual leader, and the same is true in the meme field. If Musk, the world's richest man who promoted Dogecoin in the last round

Every era has its spiritual leader, and the meme field is no exception. If Musk, the world's richest man who promoted Dogecoin in the last round, is an old-school meme missionary, then Murad is a new generation of super fomo who advocates cult culture. From a few Meme coin projects in 2017, it has grown to tens of millions by 2024, and has gradually formed a huge market. At the same time, the market value of many Meme coins has exceeded billions of dollars, becoming an important part of the crypto market.

Murad Mahmudov , as a witness and analyst of this trend, proposed the concept of "Meme coin super cycle". In his view, Meme coin is not just a pure speculative tool, but the most powerful user popularization engine in the crypto world. He deeply analyzed the key factors for the success of Meme coin and elaborated on how to promote the growth of these projects through social media and community power.

In this LBank Pulse Focus column, we are honored to invite Murad, a leading figure in the Meme coin field, to share his deep insights on the future of Meme coins, especially his outlook on crypto trends in 2025 and beyond. His sharing will help us deeply understand how the rise of Meme Coin will promote the global popularity of cryptocurrency and lead the future development of the market.

LBank: Can you share with us your career journey? From studying at Princeton University, to working at Goldman Sachs, to becoming a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency field, what does it feel like?

Murad: I am from Azerbaijan and studied in the United States and later in Beijing for a year. While in Beijing, I met the fourth employee of OKX, who introduced me to the field of cryptocurrency. After graduation, I entered the traditional financial industry, engaged in options trading in Hong Kong and commodities trading in Singapore. In 2016-2017, I started to participate in ICO, cryptocurrency and blockchain related work, and realized that Bitcoin could become the next wave of revolution. Since then, I have devoted myself to this field, including trading, investment, on-chain analysis, asset management, and now developing in the field of DeFi. In addition, I am also actively involved in Meme coin related projects.

LBank: You have insights into the current and 2025 “Meme Coin Super Cycle”. Can you tell us more about it?

Murad: The origin of Meme coins can be traced back to Dogecoin in 2013. Since then, the scale of Meme coins has continued to expand in each cycle. In 2017, there was only Dogecoin, in 2021, there were 5,000 Meme coins, and by 2024, the number of Meme coins has reached tens of millions. I believe that this trend will continue until Bitcoin becomes the universal currency of the world.

Outside of cryptocurrencies, the main driver is continued inflation and global money supply pressures, which drive people to constantly compete, outperform their competitors, and keep moving forward. At the same time, artificial intelligence is replacing many people's jobs, and competition in various industries is becoming increasingly fierce. In addition, people are also aware that traditional communities and institutions in the real world are gradually losing influence and significance. All these factors together drive people to turn to cryptocurrencies, meme coins, and such crypto communities.

From the industry's perspective, from 2015 to 2017, people could still buy high-quality projects such as ETH and BNB, which had a market value of only $30 million at the time. Now, some projects have a trading market value of up to $30 billion once they are launched. Successful crypto projects in the past have very strong core community support. The key to the formation of a core community is that ordinary people can participate early at a lower price and gain wealth as a result.

The core idea of my strategy is that 10,000 people holding $1,000 each is much better than one person holding $10 million, or 10 million people holding only $1 each. The larger the proportion of such holders in a community, the more media attention, excitement and influence it will bring. This is the key to driving the development of Meme Coin.

LBank: What qualities do you think a successful Meme coin needs to have?

Murad: The most critical concept is "critical mass" - that is, the community has the conditions for explosive spread. For example, it has 100,000 holders, a market value of $500 million, and is gradually listed on major exchanges. I think that large-cap meme coins usually rise steadily with less downside risk, while small-cap meme coins are more risky and the probability of success may be less than 1%. In contrast, mid-cap