Talk with BOME investor Flynngao

Interview by Flynngao, Trillion fi Scientist Team

Disclaimer: The content of this article only represents the personal views of the interviewee, does not represent the position of Wu Blockchain, does not provide any financial advice, Memecoin fluctuates tremendously, please listen to the audience strictly abide by the laws and regulations of the location.

BOME (Book Of Meme) is a Solana Memecoin launched by Pepe Meme artist Darkfarms on March 14th. Initially, Darkfarms kick-started the BOME token presale by leaving a Solana address on Twitter, with the raised SOL being used to add liquidity. In just three days, BOME soared from 0 to a peak market value of over 2 billion USD and was listed on Binance.

Please briefly introduce yourself

Flynngao: I am currently a part of a group of scientists affiliated with something called Trillion fi. I have been analyzing and researching chain opportunities, such as arbitrage, since 2021. Before this, I worked at Bitmain, and even before that, I was an engineer in the internet sector — at Alibaba and Tencent.

Share the whole process of investing in BOME

Flynngao: The entire process of investing in BOME was practically a lightning-fast decision. Initially, I stumbled upon it in a group chat of young people planning to rush into Memecoins. By the time I noticed BOME, it wasn’t early but rather midway through its launch phase, yet still on the first day.

A week before investing in BOME, I had just concluded profiting from my investment in SHIB. During this cycle, I had been paying attention to Memecoins, and of course, I missed out on PEPE. I observed and confirmed that Darkfarms was one of the senior authors of Pepe. Additionally, I noticed that Darkfarms had big plans for BOME as a coin. It’s rare to see such substantial liquidity in the entire trading pool on the blockchain. When I came across BOME, its market value was around $30 million, but it had $10 million in liquidity. Initially, this was shocking to me, and I wondered what kind of coin would offer $10 million in liquidity right from the start. As a scientist, I am quite familiar with the practices of many blockchain-based Memecoins and the launch patterns of small projects. It’s rare to encounter such a scenario, which also served as a security in deciding to invest.

The next concern was whether the project would rug-pull, creating a risk of losing the entire principal invested. To date, BOME’s liquidity is not locked. I felt that the risk of a rug-pull was very low because if they intended to rug-pull, they wouldn’t need to provide liquidity at all; taking away the collected SOL would have sufficed for their profit. So, I trusted the project had a grand vision.

Once I made up my mind, believing strongly in the project, I decided to invest heavily according to my investment style. Initially, I invested cautiously with $20,000, but as I saw its market value rise, I continued to invest up to $100,000 while its market cap was below $50 million. I kept holding even up to its listing on Binance. My expectations for BOME’s market cap are high, at least comparable to PEPE, so I anticipate it reaching a potential market cap of $3 billion.

How long was the interval from when you saw the BOME project in the Memecoin group to when you first pressed the buy button?

Flynngao: It was about within half an hour. A very quick decision.

Do you have any fixed selling strategies or stop-loss points when investing in Memecoins on-chain?

Flynngao: Actually, I invest in very few Memecoins. Strictly speaking, I am not one of those traditional Memecoin players. The act of buying BOME might seem like jumping on a Memecoin, but at the time, my intuition was not to treat it as a Memecoin. In my entire experience in the crypto space, I have only bought three Memecoins: SHIB, BONK, and BOME. So, I can’t say I have a lot of experience investing in Memecoins.

However, the analysis of the few reasons why I invested in them is related. I look for coins in the crypto space that have large fluctuations, liquidity, and trading volume. Buying them at sufficiently low valleys to earn a portion of their multiplier is enough for me. Then, I use a larger position to endure significant fluctuations. After reaching my target multiplier, I sell them. Basically, I invest in Memecoins that absolutely won’t go to zero.

Frankly, I think my strategy is consistent with many people who invest in BTC and ETH. Just like those who believe in BTC and ETH, thinking they are not just any altcoin that will go to zero after purchase. My investment in Memecoins follows a similar direction. For example, when I bought SHIB, it already had a large market cap and has always been in the top 20. It’s hard to believe that its market value would go completely to zero. It has a very active community, and even from the last cycle to now, there is still a great deal of trading volume and fluctuation. In my view, you don’t need to catch the very bottom or the very top; the profit in between is already quite substantial.

Not treating BOME as a memecoin, how did you judge that this Memecoin had potential, and did you pay attention to any indicators?

Flynngao: My analysis and the technical indicators are unrelated. From a broader experience, coins with a lot of imagination usually have a strong figurehead or a similar doctrine behind them. For example, like Do Kwon’s Terra, the Spell of those days, and projects backed by SBF/FTX all share this similar pattern. In my view, Darkfarms has this kind of potential, including his operations with BOME, accepting donations only, not selling the coin, providing significant liquidity, and his profound understanding of Meme culture — understanding the mindset behind popular culture, why Memes become popular, and what makes people angry.

Of course, looking at these analyses now seems very reasonable, but the decisions were made within just ten to twenty minutes back then, followed by placing bets. At the time of investment, adrenaline was probably running high, making it difficult to feel fear. Overall, besides these reasons for the decision, I think luck also played a significant part, as I didn’t end up investing in a Memecoin that got rugged.

BOME was listed on Binance very quickly, which led some to speculate whether there was market manipulation or institutional involvement behind it

Flynngao: Honestly, I feel like that’s not the case. This actually confirms one of my points — that it’s sufficiently decentralized, with a large number of retail investors participating, which is what made its power so immense. In the past few days, many copycat versions have emerged, possibly with market manipulators involved, but it’s still not clear who the second biggest player is, assuming BOME is the leading one.

I don’t engage with these copycats. The mechanism, how to invest, and how much money is used to pump might not be important. What matters in the end is whether there’s a kind of cultural element behind it, whether the figurehead is powerful enough, whether the vision is grand enough to give investors the resolve to hold it until a certain point. Once people believe it’s just another copycat, everyone tends to treat it purely as a get-rich-quick scheme. Not to say BOME isn’t a fast game, but once it becomes purely a fast game, its rate of destruction accelerates, lacking pure believers like SHIB and PEPE have within. Not to mention BTC, which has many pure believers and original sects of people who only believe in BTC. I think the real market value is propped up by these people, not by everyone who rushes in just wanting to make a quick buck.

BOME experienced a significant correction on its fourth day. Does this mean the rally is over, and what could the future hold?

Flynngao: From my perspective, I’m not particularly concerned about these fluctuations in BOME. I use PEPE as an example to explain. Let me talk about what I did a week before buying BOME. Aside from SHIB, I also bought BONK, and it was a choice between BONK and PEPE at the time. I had been observing PEPE for a long time. It surged, got listed on exchanges, then dropped to many new lows, oscillating back and forth. I’ve always thought PEPE was a good choice, and so was BONK. They share common features: large fluctuations, high trading volumes, and a deeply ingrained culture, with continuous interest in trading these coins.

Choosing BONK over PEPE wasn’t a big mistake in my view; I followed my logic in investing and don’t regret missing out on PEPE’s growth. I believed that this bull market would produce ten billion-dollar Memecoin on Solana. SHIB had already done so on Ethereum, and it seemed unlikely for another ten billion-dollar event to occur there in this cycle. At that time, I felt that even if it wasn’t BONK, BONK had the potential to outperform PEPE. Therefore, my investment was strictly based on this logic, not on the growth outcome of PEPE. Of course, there’s a bit of regret not diversifying my investments, but I prefer to buy only one or two tokens to fully capitalize on the profits. So, when it came to BOME, I saw many similarities with PEPE and its potential, which is why I invested.

As for the future of BOME, I’m not too worried. Observing PEPE, it went through a long grinding process. What follows is waiting for the end of this grinding process and then a larger growth phase. Essentially, BOME is only in its fourth day since launch. The intense focus on this coin makes it feel like a much longer time has passed. I believe BOME deserves much more time to grow. Even in a bear market, PEPE’s explosion took about a year to materialize. I think in the early stages of a bull market, this process might not take as long. Of course, this analysis depends on whether any new tokens on Solana could challenge it. If not, I think it’s still worth continuing to observe and hold it.

Compared to DOGE, SHIB, and PEPE, it seems that with BOME, there’s a greater emphasis on Darkfarms’ background as a Pepe artist rather than focusing on the culture of BOME itself. What is BOME’s culture?

Flynngao: Essentially, it’s as if the cultural value is being attributed to Darkfarms. In my view, it’s like concretizing culture onto one person. Whether that’s good or bad, I think it requires further observation. For the previously mentioned Memecoins, their emergence was completely spontaneous, promoting certain symbolic meanings. Now, BOME has a central figure with his own interpretations of culture. How this influences the coin’s progression is experimental.

Recently, there have been over 7,000 new SPL tokens created daily. What stage has the Solana market reached?

Flynngao: For Solana, I believe it’s far from the end. After buying BOME, the first thing I did was convert a significant position of another coin entirely into SOL. I had initially planned to buy SOL after a pullback, but I thought that even if I hadn’t profited from BOME, the growth driven by BOME that led to an increase in SOL’s price was an opportunity I had to seize.

In this bull market, Solana itself plays a crucial role in the main narrative. It’s a major player in the competition for who will claim the third spot in the entire crypto space. Thus, SOL is also a coin I’ve decided to hold for a longer period, and BOME reminded me, giving me the opportunity to invest money not spent on BOME into Solana.

As for the Memecoin market, it always comes in waves. I think the current trend might be heading towards a correction. During the correction period, things will cool off. But the Meme trend, I believe, will continue for quite some time, including various scams and the evolution of new playstyles, similar to what was done in the previous cycle on Ethereum. Everyone wants to replicate that on Solana, and the history of the crypto space is a continuous cycle. Investing in crypto is essentially finding the right opportunities within these cycles to reinvest and make money.

Do Memecoins on Ethereum still have a chance?

Flynngao: Even though Ethereum is sometimes criticized for a lack of creativity, it still produced a hot coin like PEPE, which grew far beyond my initial expectations. I believe that Ethereum itself is not in an innovation recession, but rather it needs more time to consolidate. It’s currently in a period of consolidating its position. The construction of new infrastructure also requires more time. Attention will return to Ethereum once new developments emerge. So, I think Ethereum still has opportunities; it’s just that the innovation in new infrastructure construction genuinely needs time to develop.

With major VCs like Paradigm investing, I feel that innovation is being stifled. They seem less purely motivated to pursue decentralized innovation than before because the primary goal for VCs is profit. Since the last bull market, the push for decentralization has actually weakened. This is also why Memes have become popular indirectly this round. People are tired of playing with overvalued VC-led infrastructure projects, where the real benefits to participants and to the blockchain ecosystem are minimal. From the last cycle, the only lasting contributions were Uniswap and Aave, with flourishing trade lending and DEXes. DeFi, up to now, has not attracted much attention this cycle. The ceiling for infrastructure projects is easily reached. Any infrastructure project can reach a valuation of ten billions, with VCs suppressing growth potential, leaving little room for others’ attention, unlike Memecoins, which have almost unlimited growth potential. For example, DOGE, with Musk saying it could surpass BTC, sets its ceiling as BTC; SHIB aims to surpass DOGE, and so on with PEPE and now BOME.

Returning to Ethereum, it’s more about mature money entering Ethereum. It needs more time to consolidate its position until some truly innovative developments emerge. In the meantime, other blockchains like Solana come along, continuously striving to surpass Ethereum.

For investors with a certain foundation in the crypto industry and on-chain, who are looking to participate in the Meme craze, what advice can you offer? Are there any pitfalls or traps they should avoid?

Flynngao: The first piece of advice is definitely to control your position. With Memecoins, if you can avoid playing, then avoid it. If you do decide to play, be prepared for it to go to zero. Also, have a strategy for when to sell. There’s no need to hold on after making a profit in hopes of reaching ten billion-dollar market cap; earning and running is winning.

Casual Conversation

Have you sold any BOME yet?

Flynngao: Not yet.

Reaching $3 billion target market capitalization may result in a partial sell-off

Flynngao: The initial goal of $1.2 billion has already been passed, and I felt it could be sold or held. I chose not to sell, mainly to observe its further development, as the time it took was shorter than expected. I believe in giving it space; even if it doesn’t reach $3 billion, even after a significant drop, returning to the original goal of $1.2 billion market cap wouldn’t be too difficult.

How did you come up with the $1.2 billion figure?

Flynngao: It was more of an intuitive judgment, without any special reason. Looking at its growth curve at the time, I thought it would definitely surpass $1 billion, and after that, it might reach around $1.2 billion.

Would you continue to buy more if the price drops?

Flynngao: I wouldn’t rule out buying more. If BOME’s market cap falls below $1 billion again, and I truly believe it could reach $3 billion, then I would gradually increase my position without hesitation. The reason I haven’t bought more is that the overall trend hasn’t been definitively established yet.

Binance listing doesn’t seem like their style.

Flynngao: As an exchange, they definitely covet the trading fees, and Binance has profited significantly from this wave. With a single day’s trading volume reaching $680 million and 30% of the coins ending up on Binance, it’s quite a victory for them.

Other shares

Flynngao: I’m now all in on SOL, expecting it to rise to $500, and I might hold it until 2025.