During the previous wave of crypto, there were all sorts of ambitious if doomed plans to do interesting things with blockchains. Even Bitcoin was originally supposed to be a means of exchange, not an "investment".
Now we don't even pretend that $DOGE/$TRUMP/whatever has any utility aside from speculation.
As far as I know the only difference between these so-called memecoins and 'reputable' cryptocoins is that the former have a funny name. Other than that they're essentially the same product.
Bitcoin, ETH, and Monero all have utility in one way or another. Bitcoin is accepted by most black markets (and Monero is even better for privacy). And software is built on top of the ETH chain. No one is buying stuff using DOGE or Trump coin. There's a clear difference between memecoins and legitimate cryptocurrencies whether you like them or not.
The question is: what makes a cryptocoin legitimate, in your opinion, considering that 'ilegitimate' memecoins are usually just a copy-paste version of a supposedly 'legitimate' cryptocoin?
If people are using them outside of speculation then I'd consider that legitimate. I'll concede that most of the market cap of cryptocurrencies is from speculation but at least Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a few other coins have use cases outside of that and for that reason, they will at the very least have some value even if that value is much closer to 0 than to what it is currently.
During the previous wave of crypto, there were all sorts of ambitious if doomed plans to do interesting things with blockchains. Even Bitcoin was originally supposed to be a means of exchange, not an "investment".
Now we don't even pretend that $DOGE/$TRUMP/whatever has any utility aside from speculation.
As far as I know the only difference between these so-called memecoins and 'reputable' cryptocoins is that the former have a funny name. Other than that they're essentially the same product.
Bitcoin, ETH, and Monero all have utility in one way or another. Bitcoin is accepted by most black markets (and Monero is even better for privacy). And software is built on top of the ETH chain. No one is buying stuff using DOGE or Trump coin. There's a clear difference between memecoins and legitimate cryptocurrencies whether you like them or not.
The question is: what makes a cryptocoin legitimate, in your opinion, considering that 'ilegitimate' memecoins are usually just a copy-paste version of a supposedly 'legitimate' cryptocoin?
If people are using them outside of speculation then I'd consider that legitimate. I'll concede that most of the market cap of cryptocurrencies is from speculation but at least Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a few other coins have use cases outside of that and for that reason, they will at the very least have some value even if that value is much closer to 0 than to what it is currently.