"Everything goes, everything comes back; eternally rolls the wheel of [memes]" - Nietzsche, slightly adjusted. 

As the German philosopher knew, things come back more often than not. Class consciousness, for example, or BTC ATH's. But there've been more come-backs: 

Story One

Bluechip NFTs 

For a while now, it's been trendy to say things like NFTs are dead. Overall, a solid claim looking at trading volumes and the floor price of previous cycle darlings. But, there are some outliers: Pudgy Penguins and Milady. 

They couldn't have less in common. Pudgy Penguins is all in on being cute and spreading it to the general public via Instagram and plush toys. Milady, on the other hand, is borderline edgy/insane with an uncomfortably close association with toxic online behavior (such as bullying anorexic girls). 

As different as these two tribes are, they share two things: their floor prices have soared in the past few months, and they both have a meme coin. Miladies are trading around $22k, while penguins have gone from 10 to 20 ETH floor price. 

Chances are that behind these meteoric rises is also the idea that a coin will bring new people to the ecosystem, or at least make the current holders richer - which eventually is also good for an NFT collection; Milady already dropped its $CULT token; which reached a $500 million market cap before falling back to $228 - and created new jokes, as claiming required passing an IQ test. 

Pudgy Penguin's Pengu coin just went live at the time of writing, but as a Solana memecoin, it should bring in countless degens. 

Takeaway: Not all NFTs are dead, but most of the previous pfp collections indeed are. Maybe that's good, because it forces those still around to experiment. 

Story Two

Ripple 

Ripple has made a comeback and went from being best known for a never-ending lawsuit to making countless Ripple army members rich. 

With Trump elected as the next president and speculation that the SEC was going to drop its lawsuit, XRP rallied to $2.74 - reinvigorating all the guys who put their life savings into it.

But that wasn't all for Ripple. On December 11th, New York's regulator green-lighted the launch of Ripple's own USD stablecoin, RLUSD. While the launch date hasn't been confirmed, the XRP army has started their bidding wars already - with one wallet bidding $1,224 for the privilege of purchasing the first RULSD. 

Fortunately, Ripple CTO was there to remind people that it's a stablecoin. The value is expected to stabilize around $1 quickly after its launch. 

"This is not an opportunity to get rich." - Ripple CTO Joel Katz 

Takeaway: Joel probably never heard about reverse psychology. I've also come to the state of mind where I believe that everything can be a memecoin if we just act like it is for long enough. 

Story Three

Quantum computing 

While it never really took hold, a few years ago, crypto had a phase where countless projects would spell doom for the current blockchains and then ask you to buy their coins so they could build a quantum-secure chain. 

The projects are largely dead, but the threat of quantum computing made a comeback thanks to KOLs speaking in hyperboles and Google launching a "state-of-art" quantum chip called Willow. 

If you put the Google blog through bullshitsans you end up with an article full of holes. The use of buzzwords isn't the only downside, they also forgot to mention that the chip can't calculate. 

Neither can I, but at least I can call it girl math. Willow has no excuse. 

That didn't keep any KOLs and SEO addicts from warning us of the imminent break of the security algorithms backing our magic internet coins.

Takeaway: For now, our Bitcoin is safe. And also for the foreseeable future, as quantum computers remain far off.

Fact of the week: Since 'dis the season to send cards again, did you know that the first Christmas Card was designed in 1843 and later auctioned for $6800? The card itself features a Victorian family enjoying their Christmas meal. For more questionable Victorian cards, check out this Guardian article. 🎄

Naomi for CoinJar

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