FOMO, Meme Stocks and Robinhood Chain | Andy8052 & Eric Conner

David Hoffman (0:00)

Hey, Bankless Nation, today on the show, I talked to Eric Conner and Andy8052 about all the activity happening in and around meme coins and crypto.

There's the paired tokenized stock meme coin activity happening on Robinhood Chain. There's conversations around FOMO and what their FOMO strategies are, and also just their do's and don'ts around meme coin trading. So this is a meme coin episode, and it's not for everyone. I don't recommend meme coins, but nonetheless, I do partake in them, and I remain kind of curious about what the future might hold. Meme coins are a sector of crypto, and that sector progresses and innovates like all the others, and I want to make sure that I stay on top of that weird corner of the internet. So that's your disclaimer. If meme coins aren't for you, feel free to skip this episode. But if you want to stay up to speed about what's happening, or if you're just curious about what's going on in the trenches, feel free to tune in. So let's get into my conversation with Andy and Eric.

Eric, Andy, welcome back.

Eric Conner (0:56)

Hey, David, good to be back.

David Hoffman (0:58)

Seems like another cycle is upon us. Andy, Eric, we all became friends during DeFi Summer, and that was a while ago. I want to get you guys on the show just because I want to get grounded a little bit as we enter what seems to be like a little bit of froth in the market now. And if the cycle plays out as they normally do, it will only get frothier. And so now I think is some of the time to get our bearings about what this all kind of looks like. A lot of this trading behavior, the FOMO meme coin behavior has been around for a while, but it's definitely picking up steam. So maybe I can kind of like start the conversation with this kind of just zooming out.

Meme coins have been both incredibly durable and are individually incredibly not durable. Like most of them go to zero, but as a meta, we are still doing meme coins over and over and over again. Like we had the first meme coin bull market of 2024 And as an industry, that kind of did zero for adoption. And I would say like the industry took an L thanks to meme coins as like a brand identity for the industry. And then here we are again in the latter half of 2026 going on 2027 And FOMO and meme coins are kind of like once again the meta.

And I bring up the fact that we all kind of started in DeFi Summer, and then after that was NFT mania. Previous cycles have all kind of looked different to each other. And now we're entering another cycle, and it's kind of the same meta of meme coins. Again, are we, the question I want to ask you guys is like, are we as an industry kind of just stuck in this meme coin meta? And that's kind of the way it is. Eric, you're the biggest veteran out of all of this. Maybe I'll throw that one to you.

Eric Conner (2:49)

Yeah, I mean, I think so. It's ironic, of course, right? Robinhood finally starts tokenizing things like stops. And the first thing people do with it is create meme stocks, right? It's just where I think finance in general is slowly going. And we're just on the frontier here. Yeah, I mean, I think it'll always be the meta. I think one thing we've seen in the past, the problem, like you brought up NFTs, DeFi Summer. What happens is someone creates a cool concept. Like I remember the first time I farmed during DeFi Summer was on Compound, right? It was just kind of a new concept. And then everyone takes that. And there's like this Cambrian explosion of either farming or NFTs or memes, and the capital just starts to get spread thinner and thinner, right? So there are like core winners that come out of these cycles, like for example, CryptoPunks, and the NFT craze. There's obviously core DeFi protocols still around doing very well. Oh, but you need to swap in others. There's been big meme coin winners that have gone to billions of dollars and more. But I think this is always a good meta, but I think it's getting a little bit more refined. I think with apps like FOMO, for example, there's finally some social accountability. There's tabs like the most held. I think we're seeing consolidation in too. I think, yeah, there are a lot of coins that you buy into a small cap, and they just go straight to zero. But a lot of the most held coins over the last few months have actually done pretty well. Like AI, for example, just keeps cranking away every day. I think it's up to $350 million market cap.