Unpopular opinion:
Even if the bull run already started or starts this year / next year, most people are still going to lose their money.
The reason is simple - people are still stuck in the old way of looking at crypto.
A lot of people already got wrecked on this last cycle in 2024-2025. Instead of memes they decided to hold "tech" coins like litecoin:native,
$ADA,
$STRK,
$ZK and a bunch of other trash that was all narrative and zero real execution. They played long-term investor, copied the stock market playbook into crypto and convinced themselves that all these technologies were the future.
@Pumpfun was the most hated project of 2024. Everyone said it "sucked liquidity out of the market." In reality it just gave crypto what crypto actually wanted - more memes, more gambling, more fun, dopamine right now, no need to sit on bags for years hoping something eventually prints. All the tech coins faded into the background because people got tired of holding garbage they couldn’t even sell in profit after several years.
Next bull run a lot of this changes. And even if you still want to hold memes, it matters which ones. The old "just buy any random memecoin and wait for bitcoin:native at $150k, you'll be rich" model is dead.
The narratives that will actually print the big stories this cycle:
1. Social trading
Memecoins sitting in the bags of popular KOLs will have way more price support and upside than random coins nobody is tracking. Before, a serial rugger could dump, hop to the next rug and nobody really cared. Now one bad rug can end an influencer's whole career and send their rating to zero. Previously you had to dig through the chain yourself to figure out who was actually a ragger and who just got wrecked. Now social apps track everything and serial rugs should drop hard.
Feels a lot like that Black Mirror episode "Fifteen Million Merits" where points decided your entire fate. Wouldn't be surprised if Fomo rolls out some kind of reputation points system. Right now the only real score is PnL. While the market is still bullish, use it. Watch the actual GOATs on Fomo (
@theunipcs,
@gajria,
@CryptoKaleo,
@CryptoCurb,
@soby0x,
@Bluntz_Capital,
@anildelphi). Don't blindly copytrade. Do your own research before you ape.
2. Protocols that actually make revenue and have buybacks / burns
There are still some old-school people who hate memecoins and want to hold "real tech." Fine. Then look for projects that have a product, real revenue and a mechanism that can actually support the token instead of the team dumping every unlock into the market.
Right now 8 out of the top 15 protocols by 7-day revenue are gambling-related (memecoin launchpads, perp DEXes etc.). So first place I'd look is tokens (or projects that don't have a token yet but an airdrop is likely):
$PUMP,
$LIT,
$HYPE, ethereum:0x07f5b6823751c2e2cd4560f28af75ff887102241,
@variational ($VAR),
@gmgnai ($GMGN),
@fomo ($FOMO) and the rest.
If even these names start dying, everything else in crypto is going to die harder. Stop using Bitcoin price as the only signal. Last cycle people sat on alts waiting for "liquidity rotation" and got destroyed. Bitcoin hit $125k and their bags still did nothing - that means the problem was the bags, not that rotation was "just around the corner." Analyze the market regularly. Buying something and forgetting about it is how you lose money.
3. Memecoins tied to RWA
Best example almost nobody talks about is
$AI (the
$AI/$NVDA pair). Before you were buying memes against stables or
$ETH and eating full volatility. Here the cushion is tokenized NVDA. A lot of people slept on
@vladtenev saying
@RobinhoodCrypto is for RWA and memes. This is exactly the new model - memecoins can have way better price action when they're paired against a real tokenized stock instead of a stable.
$AI/NVDA launched on
@longdotxyz. The fee mechanic is simple (stock-paired launches also exist at
@bankrbot and
@LaunchOnSF): buys take the fee in
$NVDA, and 80% goes to the Community Vault. Sells take the fee in
$AI - 50% is burned, 50% is locked in the vault and leaves circulating supply.
Treasury only grows.
Circulating
$AI only shrinks.
Volume = fuel.
Long already said Community Mode burns/locks have taken ~$3M equivalent of
$AI off the market.
Same idea exists on other pairs: solana:FL4eKdJrVZ1dVu1RoekeQRnuPxavzD4oCcR5HTcspump/$AMC,
$SPACEHOOD/$SPCX,
$MARSCOIN/$SPCX, solana:GKjAe1bQXXLoEitJYSuyw6qt97tTVoKkGEgWPEo6pump/$MSFT.
DYOR.
This is going to be one of the strongest narratives next bull run.
4. Projects building around RWA or AI
You can keep calling airdrops dead. I'd still look at protocols focused on RWA with a real shot at a token. You don't have to buy anything - you farm points (sometimes retro) that convert at TGE.
Personally I've been farming (or already farmed) perp DEXes that lean into RWA or AI:
@variational_io - TGE Oct-Nov 2026
@nadoHQ (
@inkonchain,
@xStocksFi) - TGE Q4 2026 - Q1 2027
@tread_fi - TGE Sep 2026
@TxFlow_L1 - early, points not live yet
@QFEX - early, points not live yet
@get_truenorth - early, points not live yet
@entropyIO - early, points not live yet
These four narratives are enough for me to be ready. Stay focused where RWA, AI and memes actually meet.
Stop holding old junk hoping bitcoin:native at $150k and
$ETH at $10k will magically save you.
Act now.