Speculation always flows towards anything that can maintain the narrative momentum.

Written by: @MiyaHedge

Translated by: AididiaoJP, Foresight News

The founder of Launchcoin, Ben Pasternak, triggers post-traumatic stress disorder across all of crypto Twitter just by mentioning his name. A token with a market cap of $40 million can occupy such a high mental share, which tells me one thing: tokenized startups have firmly established themselves, and everyone in crypto Twitter is very eager for this concept to succeed.

I previously outlined how meme coins are slowly fading away, and since then, a lot has happened; let’s quickly recap:

BonkFun rapidly faded away, just as predicted.

PumpFun regained market share, just as predicted.

Heaven emerged, capturing 14% of the meme coin market.

Overall activity in the meme coin market? It hit a new low on August 17, with only 124,000 daily active addresses. You may disagree with my viewpoint, but the numbers don’t lie: the meme coin market is dying.

What won’t die is the generational shift towards gambling, financial nihilism, and taking significant risks for asymmetric returns. We are in an era of super gambling. This is precisely why tokenization has never truly taken off on crypto Twitter. If you can bet on CHILLHOUSE (expected to increase tenfold in five days), who would want to bet on Apple on Solana? Tokenization remains the biggest traditional finance theme of this cycle, and it has been for a year.

RWA, while important to society, has never sparked significant capital interest within the crypto space, but all of that began to change with the emergence of Ben Pasternak.

We are at a stage where the era of meme coins is coming to an end and the era of ICM (Initial Coin Offerings, referring to tokenized startups or related concepts) is beginning.

Although we all love to mock Ben Pasternak, I believe he is, in some ways, a visionary.

Startups + crypto Degen culture is a match made in heaven.

For the first time, you can bet on real founders supported by T1 Silicon Valley venture capitalists, while Believe has created a digital version of a venture capital reality show for them. Most of it is premise and vision, with actual execution lacking in both rhythm and framework. Now that LAUNCHCOIN has dropped -87% from its peak, Ben Pasternak has become the laughingstock of all crypto Twitter.

So, is ICM dead now? Is the digital venture capital reality show a joke, a bad idea?

I don’t think so.

Speculation always flows towards anything that can maintain the narrative momentum.

• In the 1980s, it was low-priced stocks.

• In the 2000s, it was small-cap IPOs.

• In the 2020s, it was Dogecoin.

Now? It’s tokenized startups.

Why? Because they are at the intersection of what every stakeholder wants:

• Startups need funding + distribution channels.

• Investors want liquidity exposure to early innovations.

• The crypto space needs a continuous influx of new tokens to sustain the cycle.

The Background of Private Equity

The global private equity market is projected to be a $13 trillion market by 2025, expected to reach $12-19 trillion by 2030.

Currently, it is closed: minimum investment of $1 million, 5-10 year lock-up periods, opaque reporting, with trillions concentrated in giants like Blackstone, KKR, Apollo, etc.

Thus, we have trillions of dollars in private assets locked away, while the retail end of the crypto market is eager for new non-shell assets. This mismatch is an arbitrage opportunity.

We also have young founders eager to stand out. The next generation of founders is long online and skilled at capturing attention. As AGI approaches, the only thing that will generate income is the ability to monetize your “shell” in the most effective way. Technology will no longer matter; it will become a game of who can best promote their product to gather a large customer base.

These Gen Z founders are fluent in meme grammar, trained since adolescence to navigate algorithmic recommendation flows. They are not just “founders”; they are cultural operators. Actual codebases can be forked, outsourced, or auto-generated by AI, but packaging it into a viral narrative that compels millions to click, share, and ultimately pay is the scarce skill. They weaponize network effects and attention maximization by creating a token that automatically attracts millions of users to their products. This is why tokenized startups have an advantage over non-tokenized ones.

Look at Murad’s SPX game plan. “Promote this coin to one person daily to increase the number of holders.” For Believe, you should be incentivized to promote the startup to increase its user base, and if the development team has designed the token correctly, it should also benefit the token holders. This user flywheel is crucial for tokenized startups.

This aligns perfectly with the current zeitgeist: they are not selling products; they are selling a real-time narrative with a stock code attached. Founders can direct their attention-maximizing skills to a tradable object from day one. Every tweet, every viral marketing effort, every market cycle directly translates into liquidity.

Tokenized startups are inevitable because they meet the needs of every side of the equation.

Now, please don’t get me wrong: this is not a promotion for LAUNCHCOIN. I think Believe messed up; they launched a product that is only 1/10 complete, with a poor framework, and promoted these tokens like meme coins, when what they should really do is design them as close to securities as possible.

ICM is so hot, yet no one wants to hold a token for more than 30 seconds; the two are mutually exclusive.

I don’t know if this narrative shift will unfold in two months or two years. I invested six figures this month to create a legal framework that allows startups to tokenize without being classified as securities. As far as I know, at least five other teams are doing the same thing. Some people are in the shadows, supported by large law firms, building a legal framework for tokenized equity for nearly a year.

I don’t know when this will happen, but the process will look like this:

• Tokenized startups through non-securities models.

• Small to mid-cap valuation companies tokenize through securities models before IPO.

• Large ($1 billion+) private companies tokenize through securities models.

And you need to be part of it.

Private equity is the largest undeveloped market that the crypto space has yet to dare to touch.

It fits perfectly with crypto culture.

Gambling-like nature, no excessive financialization, a flood of new companies entering.

Tokenized startups will mark the beginning of tokenized private equity and will become the new casino for the fallen, super gambling, and losing savings.

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