Dogecoin is on the cutting edge of future assets

Attention is the lifeblood of Dogecoin (DOGE) and other memecoins. Much like earnings drive the price of corporate shares, the size and quality of attention captured by memecoins drive their price action.

Successful crypto traders understand that DOGE and its kin are not just chips in the “great shitcoin casino” but are, in fact, tradable derivatives of human attention. They are tradable assets backed by zeitgeists.

Trading memecoins isn’t just about spinning the wheel but about weighing the coin’s valuation against the amount of attention it’s receiving. As crypto influencer Cobie said, “Smart traders start selling as ownership and valuation have caught up with attention.”

This means that human attention is being viewed increasingly as one of the scarcest commodities in the world, which is true. In fact, we’ve known this for so long that it’s now a cliche to talk about the “attention economy.”

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In the 2000s, Web2 companies like Facebook and Snapchat learned to monetize attention. They created apps that captured people’s attention and tracked their behaviors, which allowed them to farm and sell attention to advertisers.

I know this might sound like undergraduate hooey, but as our economic system changes and evolves, it’s only natural that the types of things we value should expand. If human attention is powerful enough to drive the bottom line of huge companies like Meta and Google, then why not trade it directly?

Memecoins are a way of valuing and trading the attention commodity in a decentralized manner. Using blockchains and automated market makers, anyone can trade on people’s attention and enthusiasm.

Remember when Joe Rogan got into hot water earlier this year about comments he made on his popular The Joe Rogan Experience podcast? Within 24 hours, maybe a dozen Rogan-themed memecoins were launched, with one, Marshall Rogan Inu (MRI), surpassing a $50 million market capitalization.

How could the market cap get so high? Well, at that moment, MRI was the top trending coin across trading platforms like DEX Screener, it was blowing up on Twitter, and it had sponsored a mixed martial arts fighter. Its valuation had to catch up with the amount of hype surrounding the project.

Or take DOGE, which pumped following Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover. The higher valuation was not only due to the rational, if risky, play that Musk might integrate the crypto token into…