I finally got home yesterday, and today I spent some time just sitting here thinking about what really went wrong with the market we all used to love.
I get it. Markets evolve, environments change, and the way memecoins are traded today is completely different from what it used to be. I'm not against change, but I think I've finally narrowed it down to two things that really fucked up this ecosystem.
Attention became everything, and deployers got lazy.
Remember when teams would actually put some thought into launching a memecoin? They'd come up with an original idea, build a website, create a Twitter account, work on the branding, and genuinely try to figure out how to capture market share within the ecosystem. There was actual effort behind making something people wanted to be part of.
And if you managed to get enough eyes on it, your chart would get absolutely slammed with buys.
Now look at what we've become.
A deployer wakes up, scrolls Twitter, finds some random narrative that might resonate with people, spins up a coin, bundles 20-30% of the supply, and attaches a tweet to the launch.
Maybe they'll tag the original post. Maybe they'll use a second anonymous account to tweet something like "Holy shit, look what I just found" or "This could actually be the next runner."
Pay for DEX, attach the tweet, and congratulations, you've officially launched your memecoin.
That's it. That's the entire fucking business model now.
And here's where I think things really went wrong.
Why would a deployer spend weeks building something when they can launch 10-15 coins a day, bundle the supply, and make more money doing a fraction of the work?
Some get traction, most don't. Doesn't matter. Move on to the next one. Rinse and repeat.
The worst part is that this became the norm. New deployers enter the ecosystem, look at what's working, and copy the exact same playbook. Nobody wants to put in the effort anymore because the market has shown them they don't have to.
So now we're sitting in a giant cesspool of D+ memes, recycled narratives, fake discovery tweets, and bundled supply, with everyone wondering why nothing has the same staying power it used to.
And I think that's what bothers me the most.
We used to trade memes that were trying to become something. Now we're trading launches that were designed to be sold.
I'm not saying every coin back then was some masterpiece or that the old market didn't have its own bullshit. Of course it did. But at least there was an incentive to build something that people might actually care about tomorrow.
Today, the incentive is to extract as much as possible before tomorrow even comes.
I don't think people necessarily stopped loving memecoins. I think the people making them stopped giving us a reason to.
And until that changes, I don't know how we get that old feeling back.
Curious if anyone who's been around long enough sees it differently, because the more I think about it, the more I believe we didn't lose the culture overnight.
We slowly rewarded the people who were killing it.
This is the most serious 48 hours in cybersecurity history.
"Black October" they're calling it
It seems every *hour* there's a new incident, that in a typical year, would be one of the biggest incidents of the *entire year*
SUMMARY OF THE LAST 48 HOURS:
YEAR-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical year, these would be among the biggest incidents of the year):
1. PHP2Shell: a hole in the software behind ~70% of websites. Governments took sites offline.
2. eMudhra: the master keys that prove websites are real were cracked. One was the number 4.
3. California: data on every public school student since 2023 stolen, including disability status
4. Railway: hackers stole customers' secret keys from a hosting platform used by millions of developers
5. Zeabur: 321,810 accounts breached. The company is shutting down.
6. LiteLLM: an AI tool downloaded 3.4 million times a day was poisoned with a password stealer
7. GitLab: a 10-out-of-10 severity hole in every version since 2014
8. Cairn: criminals used an AI hacking tool to break into 100+ companies
9. Ahold Delhaize: hackers knocked the owner of Food Lion and Stop & Shop offline
10. Onamae: malware planted on up to 26,739 customer servers in Japan
MONTH-LEVEL INCIDENTS (In a typical month, these would be among the biggest incidents):
11. Signal: a bug could leave your mic and camera on after you hang up
12. NGINX: 3 critical holes in software running ~1/3 of websites
13. HTTP/3: a single connection can crash 7 of the 10 web server types tested
14. Plex: hackers breaking into home media servers
15. SafePay ransomware: FBI warns it has hit 600+ critical infrastructure organizations
16. Palo Alto: ransomware gangs breaking in through company firewalls
17. Bullhorn: platform used by 10,000+ companies knocked offline
18. Medi-Cal: 970,000 patients' data stolen
19. WordPress: hackers stole a plugin maker's keys and used them to plant backdoors on websites
20. AOMEI: backup software's update server handed out a backdoor
21. Meta Muse: Meta's AI agent exposed users' personal and business secrets
22. Tor: 333 relays hijacked to steal logins
23. TiDB Cloud: database company's cloud breached
Also serious:
24. State Bank of India: India's biggest bank confirms a data breach
25. OVHcloud: hackers slipped a password stealer into a cloud company's official tool
26. Siemens: a software hole being used to spread malware
27. North Korea: state hackers launch a new attack campaign on South Korea
Two critical vulnerabilities have been identified in PHP, a widely used programming language that powers websites and web applications. These vulnerabilities (CVE-2026-109618 and CVE-2026-109619) could allow malicious cyber actors to remotely execute code in PHP core, potentially compromising sensitive data and networks.
The FBI urges organizations to take the following steps now:
➡️ If an immediate update is not feasible it is recommended that organizations take the system offline until it can be fully mitigated.
➡️ Immediately update affected PHP installations following the guidance on https://t.co/rDrPSxB3zX. Inventory where PHP runs in your environment, prioritizing internet-facing systems and vendor products that bundle PHP.
➡️ Monitor web servers for suspicious activity, including PHP processes unexpectedly launching command shells or downloading files. Ensure appropriate process-monitoring capabilities are in place to help identify potential exploitation.
➡️ If you find signs of compromise, isolate affected systems, preserve your web server and PHP logs, and report it to your local FBI field office or https://t.co/iqgVZIbCru. Those reports help us identify the actors involved and warn other organizations before they become victims.
For the latest information, follow PHP’s announcement on https://t.co/rDrPSxB3zX, CERT-EU Security Advisory 2026-018, and CISA’s Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog.