The Meme Investing culture has grown roots. It has now spread from GameStop, AMC, Silver to the Cannabis sector. This comes as a subset of WallStreetBets, the rather renowned group on Reddit forum, move on to Cannabis stocks, effectively boosting one stock, Tilray (TLRY) 51% in one day, and pushing up a handful of other Cannabis stocks in the process.
No one respects the power of the retail army more than the blockchain platform founder of TRON, Justin Sun. He bought over $10m worth of GME stock, $1m of AMC and some Silver too. He has so far lost millions on those trades, but he nevertheless predicts that the nature of the industry is changing. The events of the last month have shown us that yes, the small investor does have the power to drive the markets, if he is just able to form a community.
The topic of shorting stocks is always controversial, as this investing type is based on an investor or firm betting on the demise of a company, perhaps not so good for the karma. Maybe then the "short squeeze," brought on by the ‘retail army’ is a form of karmic punishment?
Market Manipulating Middlemen
One thing is for sure, brokers like Robinhood can be seen to have manipulated the situation by starting and stopping trading to suit them. This resulted in frustrating and irritating their clients, who were blocked from closing or opening new positions, or moving existing ones to other brokers. This is something that the SEC is exploring.
This is not the first time that Robinhood has been accused of market manipulation either. In December 2020, the trading app had to pay $65m to the SEC for failing to provide clients with best prices for trades. The SEC said that although Robinhood markets itself as the "commission-free" broker, it is in fact more expensive than many of its counterparts.
Cutting Out the Middleman
While brokers are able to manipulate markets, there has never been a better time for a product that can effectively remove the middleman. That is where the blockchain comes in, with its decentralized nature, meaning no intermediaries in the middle of transactions. The blockchain automatically updates and solves its own calculations, with no human interference.
That is why DeFi or decentralized finance is having a field day, with investors throwing money at it. It currently has over $1.9 billion locked in for various projects of decentralized apps (dApps). DeFi projects are financial in nature and they require no intermediate brokerage firms, nor banks to conduct transactions.
TRON and the Meme Investing Culture
TRON’s founder is all for the meme investing culture and for the power of the people. His platform, TRON, is all about democratizing content and aligning the buyers with the sellers, while effectively cutting out the streaming service middlemen, like Netflix.
It must be doing something right, as TRON currently processes more Tether transactions as a result of its competitive fee structure than Ethereum. TRON users are able to move Tether across the network for fractions of a cent, in comparison to Ethereum’s skyrocketing charges.
When Will Blockchain Be in the Mainstream?
It is clear that blockchain is here to stay, but when will it pass the critical mass to be considered mainstream? There are over 64 million wallet users currently. 50 million is usually the number considered when looking at whether a product is in the mainstream. It took the internet seven years to pass that number. The industry might be showing the numbers of mass adoption, however it is still a relatively immature industry and time alone can iron out the wrinkles of the blockchain. In the meantime, the people have spoken and as a result, the future of investing and content streaming will never be the same again.