A crypto investor claims that the Libragate fiasco has ended the era of memecoins.
Castle Island Ventures partner Nic Carter asserts that the LIBRA token scandal provides “clear proof” that retail participants have been dealing with a manipulated market all along.
The $4 billion LIBRA debacle, which involves Argentina’s President Javier Milei, marks the end of memecoins, according to Carter.
“Memecoins are cooked,” the crypto entrepreneur wrote in a Feb. 19 post to X, arguing that the Libragate scandal has revealed the true depths of the “corrupt memecoin” sector.
Carter states that memecoins appealed to investors because they offered a more transparent alternative to high FDV VC-backed tokens.
He argues that although memecoins fundamentally function as a gamble, their fair launch allowed any retail investor to participate under the assumption of a level playing field.
Carter claims that recent memecoin releases, including LIBRA and celebrity-backed tokens from Donald Trump, Hailey Welch, and others, have demonstrated unfair practices and excessive bot activity.
“The casino didn’t take a slight edge — it was more like 90/10 in favor of the house.”
Other industry experts disagree, believing that memecoins’ real utility continues to evolve.
Rather than dismissing memecoins, Backpack’s Armani Ferrante emphasizes their potential, stating that they serve as a way to “stress test” the evolution of finance.
“Crypto itself is purpose-built technology for transaction processing in the context of finance, but finance itself is meaningless technology unless you have real-world goods and services that are being tracked on the ledger,” said Ferrante.
“That’s really what memecoins are. They’re an enormous stress test and proof-of-concept for real-world finance coming on-chain.”
He notes that the next big innovations in financial systems or everyday products often begin “looking a lot like a toy.”
“Memecoins are the toy, and sooner rather than later, we’ll find ourselves with what we are all hoping and dreaming about — which is all the world’s value, moving onchain, on these trust minimized, global systems that we all believe is the future of finance.”
Supporting memecoins, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong encourages market participants to remain receptive to their long-term prospects.
“Just like the early days of the internet with animated gifs, new technologies often look like a toy but evolve into something much more powerful over time,” he said.
“We should be open-minded about where memecoins are going, even if some are silly, offensive, or even fraudulent today. Memecoins are a canary in the coal mine that everything will be tokenized and brought onchain.”
The debate over memecoins’ future remains intense, but current figures indicate a fading interest in this segment of crypto.
Token launches on Pump.fun peaked at 71,735 on January 23 but then dropped sharply to 28,898 by February 19. Pump.fun founder has urged safeguards following the controversy surrounding the launch of Libra.
