Meme coins are stealing the spotlight with presales and one in particular meme is on its way to Las Vegas. The dog with fat community has managed to raise more than their $650,000 target to put that cute little pup with the hat on, on the Las Vegas sphere. Joining first mover now is OVI Farook who you might know as Os F on X who’s going to help us unpack? What the heck is going on in the meme coin world? OVI Welcome to the show. Thanks Jen. Thanks. Thanks for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here. It’s been a crazy few days. It’s been wild. It’s been insane. I mean, the last time we saw this kind of crazy, you know, price action and activity was probably 2021 and we’ve had glimpses of it over the last few months and, and perhaps even a year. But what’s happened in the last few days and weeks is just, it’s really insane. Yeah, I saw you posted on X about this, you know, you pointed to the IC O boom. Then you pointed to NFTS that really took over the crypto spotlight in 2021. And now it’s all about these meme coin presales. Do you think that this is going to be a prolonged, um, I guess journey for meme coin presales? That mirror NFTS and IC OS. Uh How do you like? I don’t know. Draw on your experience. Tell me about what you think is gonna happen next. I don’t think, I think meme coins will last for a long time this cycle. And it’s quite clear that’s a very easy entry point for retail who don’t know much about crypto and they just get attracted to things, they find cute or funny and it just becomes easy to buy. I think the pres salee me that was that we’re seeing now within meme coins. I don’t think that will last for very long because it’s just too easy for someone to come in and raise whatever, you know, some of these presales are raising 1020 $30 million. And then these people are kind of in their Twitter accounts and, and signing off. So that kind of behavior and activity I think won’t last for very long. We obviously had the book of Meme, which was the first one that kicked off. This whole thing that ran to almost a $2 billion market cap, I think in the space of two days. And so when something like that is amazingly successful, you see lots of copycats try to attempt the same thing but in my experience, those things don’t last a very long time. So, in my opinion, I think this whole pres sale thing will exist for maybe another few more days, possibly, possibly a few more weeks. But that’s not to say that the meme coin market won’t continue to thrive. I think in this cycle, $100 million flowed into presales, I believe in just the last couple of days. It’s absolutely crazy to see and to think about and it reminds me about when everyone was Fomo into Doge about, I don’t even know how long ago that was. Now, that’s how crazy this industry was. I want to say it was definitely over a year ago, Ku back. Um What lessons can we learn from that? I remember people were taking out a lot of money, money that they couldn’t lose and putting it into meme coins hoping that they could get rich. Like some of the people that they follow on X and unfortunately, it didn’t work out for, for a lot of folks. There were some really sad stories out there. What do you think that we can learn from what’s happened in the past? Yeah. Look, I think you have to be careful. I think you have to understand and respect that. Putting money into a meme coin is, is very different than putting money into E or Bitcoin that the latter can be perceived as an investment can be perceived as something of potential real value and something that may appreciate over a longer period of time, just like buying stocks or something like that. Right. But when you buy a mu coin, I, I perceive that more to be like you’re going to the casino and you’re gambling and you’re betting on a winning horse or whatever it is. And, and it’s very hard to assess the fundamentals of market or assess anything with any rational brain or mind. And actually, when people who try and do that often fail, so, you know, you can be very constructive on and bullish on crypto as a whole and you could be top down bullish on meme coins as a, as a whole, you know, II I certainly am. But you have to really understand that it is just a little bit above gambling, I think. And you have to understand that any money you put in has a very high probability of going to zero. This is, you know, uh, a volatile and risky game that we’re all playing here. And so I think, um, you know, people who sophisticated players who are, who are in meme coins and betting big money and, and making a lot of money, they’re doing it with the understanding of the risks associated with it. And they’re probably seasoned traders who’ve done this for a long time. So I think if you’re, you know, if you’re putting in money into meme coins and you wanna have a bit of fun and trying to make a bit of money, that’s absolutely fine. But tricking yourself into thinking this is the next doge and it’s gonna be a great investment. This thing’s going to $100 billion and, you know, putting a significant amount of money on which could impact you adversely. I think that’s a mistake. So I think it’s just a case of like I’m not saying, don’t play around and gamble and have fun because we’re all doing it and it is fun. But understand the risks attached to it and, and you know, don’t get over your skis. I think it is super fun and the memes attached to some of these tokens are just so fun and some of them are going to Vegas. So we’re gonna talk about that in just a second. But I think you bring up a good point with the, the gambling piece. You know, often we hear uh people say crypto is gambling or crypto is not gambling and there are different facets to the space. Um And a meme coin is different than Bitcoin. It’s different than Ether. It has different fundamentals or it has no fundamentals at all. And so I think that you made um a really good point there that folks should note. Let’s talk about the Vegas Sphere. Now you are in the dog with hat community. I don’t even know how to define that anymore. But you, you talk about dog with hat, you contributed to the campaign that’s gonna put this meme on the Vegas sphere. What, what is this all about Dock of Hat is, is pretty incredible because it doesn’t really have, uh like an owner of it or someone that’s controlling it. I think there was someone who made this coin and, you know, uh a Dev, like you have, um, you know, you may have a Dev or a creator of, of many different coins out there. And the, the Dev sold all their coins left, just left the whole thing. And so this was kind of like picked up by the community by the actual coin holders. And I guess a bunch of random people, you know, it really truly is random people that don’t, probably don’t even know each other in real life and have just met online through Twitter, et cetera who have gotten together and just, you know, created various initiatives to get this thing going and, and, and get it out there to the, to the mainstream public. And, you know, something this group did was to put uh an actual hat on the, the Wall Street Bull, which they had there for a while and that hit, um you know, that hit the news and it hit the mainstream media. And so the next thing, you know, a funny thing is like, oh, you know, could we raise enough money to get this thing on the Vegas sphere and $650,000 to get it up there for a week. Certainly sounds like a tall order. But in comparison to the amounts of money, all these presales have raised and, you know, the amounts of money people are making in crypto and just the sheer amount of people who are involved in this one specific community in coin. It’s not actually that much to raise and, you know, in the space of about a week, I think they were, they were able to raise that through just various people donating and contributing to it. And um it sounds like there’s now going to be a plan to, to get that thing on the sphere. So it’s, it’s amazing to see something where there isn’t one centralized owner or team working on, you know, getting this thing out there. It’s just a group of random people who have come together with some ideas and were actually able to, to action it. So it’s, it’s very, very impressive. I think, what are the logistics to getting this thing on the sphere? Does it need to be approved by anyone or is it like buying a billboard? No, I think, you know, there’s, there’s certainly a process of getting it done. I think there’s various approval processes. Um You know, I’m sure there are some, yeah, uh you know, like regulation and laws and like what you can advertise and stuff like that, you know, I don’t think you can go out there and say, hey, you know, buy this crypto coin on the Vegas sphere like that wouldn’t go down. Uh I think, but you know, having a picture of the meme up there is something that I think is very possible and I, and I would imagine is, is the route that they’re taking. And so I, I mean, tell me what this means to you, you contributed to it. Do you feel like we are in the height of a bull market? Do you feel like why is it important for you? Why did you put your money behind getting this meme on the sphere? Yeah, look, I was early into it and um like many others, I, I just, you know, I made some good money on it and I think for people who are, who still hold this coin and, and are still in this community, you’re always setting yourself new targets and new challenges. And the first challenge was like, oh, can we get this thing to a billion dollar market cap? And then is that 2 billion and 3 billion? And, and I think that the abs the absolute, you know, haven and, and massive target for any meme coin really is like, can you rival the likes of Shee and Doge and, and, and she and Doja, I think are around a 20 to $25 billion market cap, which is, you know, another 10 X from where we are now almost in, in terms of prices. So, um that’s always the dream and the aim. And in order to achieve that, you have to do crazy things like this to gain attention and really crypto especially mean cos it just is an attention game and how much of that attention can you hog and if someone else hogs more of it than you, then you lose your holders to someone else. And so again, like getting it on the Vegas sphere, which probably had, you know, it gets hundreds of thousands of viewers, if not millions across the week, it would be there is I think a fantastic way to do that. So then what’s next? What beats the Vegas fear? I think that Doge went to the moon. I don’t know if it actually made it to the moon, but there was definitely talk about Doge getting to the moon. What’s next for Dog with hat? Are we sending, are we sending the meme out into space? Yeah, that would be cool. I mean, getting a hat out there into space, a hat on the moon I think would be pretty amazing. The the brilliant thing about this meme is the hat is now so recognizable and you can literally put it on anything. And so, you know, I think the Wall Street Bill was a starting point but put getting it out there and you know, in, in front of um more iconic landmarks or whatever it is, could be potential options but it’s hard, you know, to top the Vegas sphere. I, I’d say that’s pretty much up there as one of the top five things right now for promotional purposes. It’s really, really hard to top that. I think. Where do we get the hats? I mean, I would buy one but I don’t know where to get this exact specific hat that this cute little pup is wearing. Do you like? Is there some kind of intel in the community on where to get these hats? I believe. So, there’s actually, if you’re based in the US, there’s actually a website called Dog with Hat store.com. Unfortunately, they don’t deliver to the UK, which is where I’m based. But, um, you can actually buy the, the knitted hat. Um I think it’s 40 bucks. So maybe not the cheapest hat, but definitely a sentimental one. Next time you see me, I’ll be donning a dog with hat hat and maybe if I, if I have any plans to go to the UK, I’ll bring you one. All right. Fantastic. Yeah, I appreciate that. And of course, all of these meme coins that are becoming so popular are in the Solana ecosystem soul is even up this week. Where does this tell you about Solana and where it’s going? I mean, if you look at, uh if you look at the DEX Volumes, for example, Radium and Jupiter uh are doing more than Unis swap is right now on, on Ethereum is that the volumes are just going crazy. And if you look at uni swap, I mean, unis swap trades at around the six or $7 billion market cap versus E which is at what, you know, 3 $5400 billion right? And then you have Solana which is about $100 billion. But Jupiter trades at like te $10 billion. So those ratios are, are so off. Like the fact that Solana already has two or three multibillion dollar meme coins and the market cap of that is just $100 billion. Just shows you in my opinion how cheap Seoul is. And in 2021 he did amazing as a, as a Cryptocurrency. All the activity was an Ethereum because of NFTS and that was what I call the casino, all the activity and action and everything was just happening on Ethereum in 2021. It feels like this cycle that casino is now Solana, you have all this meme coin stuff, all the presales stuff and it’s just perfect for, for, for these coins because the transaction fees are so low that anyone even with just $1 can bet on a meme coin. And indeed some people put in just a few dollars into a dog with hat, for example, and ended up making thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. So you can’t do that’s a different game. But Solana on the other hand, you know, for better or worse is, is much more inclusive uh in that regard. So it’s incredibly bullish for Seoul because I think with the market dynamics we have and this great big bull market that we’re in the middle of right now, I do, I don’t think activity on Solana will drop. I think if anything it will continue to rise and I think some of the larger, more sophisticated players will realize how cheap Seoul is in compa comparison to that. If you look at the metrics in terms of how much activity there is right now. And you know, solar still some ways off its all time highs in terms of price. But the activity now compared to three years ago is at, you know, more than tenfold I would imagine. So, yeah, it’s gonna be exciting to watch the soul price. I think over the next uh few months. Well, you know, in the last bull market, Solana was being branded as the Ethereum killer. Do you think that this could push it uh a step closer to actually being that Ethereum killer? I don’t believe it’s an Ethereum Killer necessarily. I think there’s, you know, Solana and Ethereum, they’re not mutually exclusive and I think people in crypto get very attached to certain coins and they think if one exists, the other can’t exist. So this one has to beat this one, et cetera. I think they can all coexist and they maybe have different use cases. You know, Solano is a fantastic retail product because of how cheap it is to use. But Ethereum is a much more secure Blockchain and more decentralized as you know, as, as, as many people say. So they have different use cases, I think. And it feels like that casino use case has kind of shifted from eat the soul. But for other purposes, Ethereum will have, um, will have its advantages, I think. And you know, you know, it has a massive L two network now which also saves on trans transaction fees. It’s just not as exciting as Solana is right now, but for, for other purposes and things like defi a lot of that action still happens on Ethereum and, and it’s L twos. So I don’t think Solana will kill Ethereum. I think they can both coexist can Solana flip Ethereum in terms of market cap. That’s a possibility. Yeah, that’s definitely a possibility, I think. And I have to ask you this one last thing before we wrap up this interview. And it’s about the dog. We’ve had NFT that sold for just around $4 million early this week. I never thought we were going to see this again. And I’m being completely honest, I thought that we were not going to see NFTS sell for this type of money, get the kind of headline, get the kind of excitement again. I thought we’re really moving into utility use cases. Real World that use cases. And here we have dog with hats. Surprising me. Uh What, what do you make of this? Did you, did you expect it? Am I just on the totally, am I following the wrong uh wavelength here? Should I, should I change the way I’m thinking about things? Honestly, I, I expected it to go for a high amount, but I didn’t really expect it to exceed a million dollars. So to go to north of four, I think it was $4.3 million and about 12, just over 1200 eve. That’s a staggering staggering amount. And it looks like there were just two buyers in the bidding for the last, you know, 90% of the price action or something crazy like that. So it’s certainly a staggering amount. The the person that bought it allegedly is someone called GCR who is a crypto trading legend who doesn’t really tweet anymore, but apparently made a ton of money back in the day on, on meme coins. And so yeah, I take your point. I didn’t really expect to see a such a large NFTC either at this point in the cycle, I would have expected it later in the cycle. But I think there is, you know, this is an NFT for sure, but it has this meme coin attachment. And you know, let’s say I’m someone for example, who has a load of this dog with hat coin I’m a big whale and dog with hat, for example. And if I go out there and spend a load of money on the set of t then, and that makes mainstream media, it once again garners that attention. And if you know, and if the price goes up because of that, then that can be a net positive trade for that person. So my opinion is that it went really high because there are maybe some different motives for people who are purchasing it and who maybe own some of the coin. And it’s probably, uh you know, a little tactic to get this out there even more into mainstream media. Um you know, if this was a, just a meme without the coin, I don’t think it would have sold for, you know, nearly anywhere near, near that amount. So, yes, I think I kind of agree with you that I’m surprised that we see, you know, this level of set such a high sale at this point in time. But I think it has that meme coin association with it still, which is really the thing that’s propelling that value. All right. And outside of dog whiff hat, what meme coin are you watching? Yeah, there’s, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot out there. Um, one that I really like is a, is a coin called Mog on Ethereum, which I think is around a 400 to 500 $million million market cap. But it’s a coin that’s been around since August. And, you know, it’s all based around these Pit Viper Glasses that you may see all across Twitter everywhere. And I think I like that kind of stuff for a meme, you know, dog hat was great because anyone can just put this hat on their profile picture and it kind of makes them part of this community and it’s instantly recognizable and I think it’s the same thing with Mog. You see these pit vipers around everywhere and people are like, are like, OK, I know where that’s from. I know what that means and that has a massive networking effect, has a massive marketing effect. And you don’t really have to put much effort into it. That’s the thing. It has to be effortless. You shouldn’t have to explain to someone what the meme is or explain to someone where this comes from. Someone should just see an image and instantly know what the meme is and, and how it makes them feel and, and, and why it is what it is. And I think that’s one that I’ve liked. Uh I liked a lot that I think has a lot of potential. OVI Thanks so much for joining first mover. It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.