TRUMP Memecoin May Replicate Capital Conditions Similar to 2017 ICO Craze, According to Investor Chris Burniske

Investor Chris Burniske says that Donald Trump’s recent launch of his official memecoin could help usher in a new phase of free experimentation and capital flows in the crypto space.

Burniske, a former ARK analyst and current partner at venture firm Placeholder, says in a post on the social media platform X that he doesn’t plan on buying TRUMP, but notes that its launch is “catching eyeballs everywhere” and potentially encouraging others to embark on projects in a similar manner.

President Trump launched TRUMP late on Friday and it quickly skyrocketed to a $64 billion fully diluted valuation (FDV).

Burniske says the launch of TRUMP could trigger a phase similar to the initial coin offering (ICO) boom of 2017.

“It could be similar to Ethereum’s ‘The DAO’ moment of 2016, which was also a major lightning rod topic, but after raising ~$150 million very quickly (catching eyeballs everywhere) I believe it to have catalyzed the ICO craze of 2017. Once people see the scale at which something can be done, it encourages them to experiment…

Permissionless innovation is wild and messy, and sometimes supremely cringe – but it is representative of society as a whole. I encourage everyone to see all sides of a situation and its ramifications, even if the knee-jerk reaction is negative.”

Despite a potential incoming phase of extreme speculative fervor, the investor says that he’s expecting an eventual return to the “basics” of crypto focused on Bitcoin (BTC), stablecoins and “quality” staking coins.

“It’s hard for reality to live up to the hype of the mind (the 2013 – 2017 era was a time when everything was optimistically possible), but we’re making major progress, and I think some of the most important things will be ‘back to the basics’ (eg, BTC as a savings account, stablecoins dropping global mobile communications over Internet Protocol costs to ~0, quality staking coins as digital real estate in new economic zones, etc).

But yes, in the ‘mainstreaming’ there is often dilution of the ideals, dilution of the soul of the original movement.”

Don’t Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox

Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram

Featured Image: Shutterstock/sci-fion/Sensvector