The Boom Is Back… Stocktwits, Robinhood, Memecoins And The Degenerate Economy
Good morning from London.
I am working from the breakfast table at Ham Yard (great hotel in SOHO) for a few hours.
A boom, melt up is underway in the markets if you had not noticed.
President Musk posted this the other day on his megaphone regarding Twitter growth (LOL measured in seconds):
All-time high usage of this platform!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk)
6:47 AM • Nov 8, 2024
The election is over and the masses have moved on to the business of surviving and living their degenerate lives.
One thing EVERYONE can learn from Musk is how to market your product. Always be cheerleading, pitching and marketing. It helps of course to own a bullhorn!
In the ‘cheerleading/pitching/marketing’ spirit of Elon, Stocktwits is seeing record metrics as well including the most important for us…attention/time on site which is 1.5 times more than Twitter’s:
Stocktwits users LOVE Stocktwits.
Obviously Twitter has a much bigger audience than Stocktwits, but with respect to engagement, Stocktwits does not deploy algorithms that push people to anger/click bait as quickly as possible. Stocktwits is a choose your own adventure based on your ticker interests. This strategy has not been great for scaling users over the years, but it is nice to know that users engage at incredible levels if you leave them alone.
Way back in 2007 I had the idea for Stocktwits because of my behavior using Twitter. I believed people would share their stock market ideas and opinions publicly. I remember sending the first $cashtag – $RIMM – on my Blackberry to Fred Wilson and he called it genius – so you can blame him – and off I went to start Stocktwits.
It has been a long journey but we got the basic premise right and had immediate product/market fit. People love talking about stocks/markets and now crypto all day long.
In 2014, our fund Social Leverage made a seed investment in Robinhood (quick story here) and in 2015 Stocktwits integrated the Robinhood API because I believed people would trade from anywhere if they trusted the pipes. We were right again. Tens of thousands of Stocktwits users quickly signed up and integrated their accounts. It was really cool and fun.
Here is my post from November 2015 and the original product look and integration.
In 2019, Social Leverage invested in Alpaca (fund 3) because we believed there would be thousands of Robinhood’s around the world and they would need the best API’s (pipes). Today, Alpaca in is over 50 countries powering millions of brokerage accounts. One example is Midas in Turkey. The degenerate economy is global and thriving. Options and crypto are not just in high demand at Coinbase and Robinhood.
Which brings me to today…
With Bitcoin reaching $90,000 and Dogecoin in 40 million wallets with a $40 billion valuation, I believe memecoins are here to stay.
Because I believe they are here to stay, I believe that Stocktwits needs to be in the middle of the action, so we partnered with Spot.dog (founded by my friend Nicky Montana) to make it happen.
I opened my FIRST memecoin account through Stocktwits and Spot the other day and it is pretty wild and fun.
The cool thing is I did it from my Stocktwits account in just a few clicks. You can quickly move money from a debit card or as I did from my Coinbase account. We have integrated Spot in all the crypto and memecoin ticker pages on Stocktwits to make it easy for anyone to get started.
Here are the screenshots on Stocktwits as I click the ‘trade’ button from a Stocktwits memecoin ticker:
Way back in 2015 @Stocktwits integrated @RobinhoodApp API into the platform and opened tens of thousands of accounts (see old screenshot)
Stocktwits is again leading social trading revolution with Spot.dog memecoin trading integration- so easy to get started… x.com/i/web/status/1…
— Coronado ‘Porch’ Lindzon (@howardlindzon)
7:57 AM • Nov 12, 2024
It might be a fad, but it sure feels like the future.
The purists are going to freak out…but I think freaking out is a feature, not a bug of degeneracy and this trend/phenomenon.
The whole idea of this social investing trend that got me excited back in 2006 when I started Wallstrip and then Stocktwits was everyone ‘could’ finally learn the language of the markets which includes money, investing, trading and speculation.
Memecoins are the fastest, funnest, wildest, siliest way to learn to trade and invest with real money.
Will people abuse it? Yes of course.
Is it for everyone? NO.
While I have never caught the crypto bug I have allocated and participated. Thank goodness as it relates to my retirement.
NFT’s made no sense to me, but I participated and I own a few worthless ones somewhere. It has not been easy to learn, play or invest.
Memecoins make so much sense to me because it is so easy (almost too easy) to set up a wallet and get started. Memecoin exchanges are full contact war/rugby/football (digital contact of course). Anything goes. Buyers better beware. Because there are no rules I assume the game is rigged and that means I am alone to fend for myself.
Try it out and let me know what you think.
