Did memecoins stress-test crypto’s infrastructure?
Empire co-host Santiago Santos makes the case that memecoins have actually helped push infra forward…just not in the way you think

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“Memecoins are stress-testing infra,” Empire co-host Santiago Santos said on the Empire roundup this morning.
Santos compared it to the porn industry stress-testing the internet. Good times.
“ I get really excited about the fact that we’ve come such a long way in building infrastructure … [and you] see a line of sight into actually becoming the future of finance, like tokenizing stocks,” he continued.
The point Santos makes is a personal favorite of mine, as I’m sure you’re aware.
We’re seeing a lot of developments happening, and I’m speaking to a new founder almost every day about their projects and raises. It’s hard not to — even as an objective bystander — respect the amount of work that’s gone into getting crypto to this point.
It’s also just so inherently “crypto” for the space to use memecoins as a stress test. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they seem to have a use case after all (but don’t tell the SEC).
With the Digital Asset Summit next week, my assumption is that we’ll see more bullishness, given that DAS is offering something that a conference like ETH Denver couldn’t: a look behind the scenes of what the institutions are up to. And we know that’s going to play a big part this cycle.
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