The meme coin market is highly competitive, and the SEC chairman's speech has sparked a new era of Compliance.

This week, the cryptocurrency market experienced a wave of positive momentum with the easing of Sino-U.S. trade relations and CPI data meeting expectations. Although there was a brief flash crash on Thursday evening, it quickly recovered, and the price of Bitcoin still remains above $104,000. The overall market performance is mixed; a certain trading platform surged initially due to its inclusion in the S&P 500 index, but then dropped 7.2% due to regulatory investigations and user data theft. A bankrupt trading platform is about to start a $5 billion compensation, but some institutional investors have already begun to sell off their Bitcoin ETF holdings. Meanwhile, the geopolitical situation remains tense, with an overall increase in wait-and-see sentiment.

The competition in the meme coin market is heating up, with three major platforms, Pump.fun, Believe, and LetsBONK.fun, engaging in fierce competition over token launches, liquidity, and community influence. At the same time, the Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission delivered an important speech on asset tokenization, providing a clearer regulatory framework for the issuance, custody, and trading of crypto assets, signaling that a new era of compliance and mainstreaming is about to arrive.

1. The meme chaos intensifies

With Believe joining the ranks against Pump.fun, the competition in the meme market has intensified this week among the three major platforms: Pump.Fun, Believe, and LetsBONK.fun. Especially in the battle for the Ticker of Glonk, the three platforms have launched a frenzied exchange of blows. Tom, the founder of LetsBONK.fun, and Alon, the co-founder of Pump.Fun, have been calling out trades on social media, taking this meme craze to its peak.

1. The reason Pump.Fun became the target of criticism.

Pump.fun does not need to issue tokens due to its strong cash flow, but instead profits by regularly selling Solana, which suppresses the price of Solana. According to statistics, Pump.fun has sold approximately 3.868 million SOL over the past year, with a total value of 702 million dollars, at an average price of 183.3 dollars.

In addition, Pump.fun stands out alone in the Solana ecosystem, lacking a competitive landscape, which is not conducive to the long-term development of the ecosystem. Pump.Fun accounts for 71% of the daily token issuance on Solana, especially after the launch of PumpSwap in March 2025, which directly competes with other decentralized exchanges and further consolidates its market share. This dominance may stifle innovation and lead to a homogenized ecosystem.

To respond to competitive pressure, Pump.fun announced on May 13 the launch of a creator revenue sharing program, sharing 50% of PumpSwap's revenue with token creators.

2. The Web2 gameplay of Believe

The founder of Believe is 26-year-old Australian entrepreneur Ben Pasternak, who developed the game Impossible Rush, which has over 500,000 downloads, at the age of 14. He dropped out of school at 15 and moved to New York, where he founded the social trading app Flogg, securing $2 million in funding and becoming one of the youngest entrepreneurs to receive venture capital in Silicon Valley.

In January of this year, Ben Pasternak created the Web3 project Clout on Solana, with the first launched token being named after the founder, Pasternak. On April 28, Clout was renamed to Believe, and the Pasternak token was renamed to LaunchCoin, becoming the new platform coin, after which the coin price began to soar. The platform attracted market attention by launching multiple meme coins with a market cap exceeding ten million.

Believe has developed a new approach by bringing talent from Web2 into Web3. For example, the Yapper project released in the early hours of May 15, launched by Emmet Halm from Harvard, who has previously introduced several hit products in the Web2 space and successfully exited twice. The market capitalization of this meme coin quickly soared to the tens of millions level. Believe's model may continue in the short term and attract more Web2 teams to join due to its wealth creation effect.

3. LetsBONK.fun

LetsBONK.fun is supported by many senior figures in the Solana ecosystem and has launched popular projects such as Useless, Hosico, and Ikun. If you want to participate, you can follow founder Tom and ecosystem supporter Bonk Guy, who often publicly recommend projects on social media.

4. Robot Wars

The Believe platform allows users to launch new tokens by replying to any post on social media and mentioning a specific identifier. This process is simple and quick, with smart contracts being deployed immediately, significantly lowering the launch threshold. This mechanism has led to a large number of bots monitoring new launches on social media and quickly buying in to take advantage of the initial price increase, transforming the meme battlefield from the initial person-to-person to machine-to-machine.

In this model, when Believe officials and their founders directly recommend a certain meme project, early interest groups often have already laid out their plans in advance, making the risk for retail investors wanting to enter appear extremely high.

5. The competitive landscape of the meme market

Although Pump.Fun still holds a leading position in the Meme market, its market share is being eroded by emerging launch platforms. From almost monopolizing the entire Solana meme market to its current position being seriously threatened, the ultimate winner of this meme war is yet to be determined. However, for retail investors, when three platforms are competing against each other, it may just be the golden era of meme gold dogs.

2. Keynote Speech on Asset Tokenization by SEC Chairman

1. Asset Issuance

Current Situation and Challenges: Currently, only a few crypto asset issuers have completed legal issuance through registration or specific rules. The information required by existing issuance forms may be irrelevant or unimportant to investment decisions regarding crypto assets, as most projects do not have a traditional corporate structure and revenue is primarily token-based.

Regulatory Objective: The SEC plans to establish clear and reasonable guidelines for the classification of crypto assets as securities or investment contract-bound assets, addressing the uncertainty faced by issuers in determining whether an asset constitutes a security. For non-compliant projects with tokens that have already been issued, the SEC still offers registration exemptions or safe harbors, as long as they can be rectified.

2. Custody

Regulatory Objective: The SEC plans to provide greater choice for registrants when deciding how to custody crypto assets, clarify the types that qualify as "qualified custodians," and consider reasonable exemptions for self-custody to accommodate common practices in the crypto asset market.

3. Transaction

Current Situation and Innovation: The SEC supports allowing registered platforms to trade a broader range of products in response to market demand, such as providing trading of securities and non-securities through "super apps." This could mean an overall integration of the cryptocurrency and traditional stock markets.

Regulatory Objective: The SEC plans to modernize the regulatory framework for alternative trading systems to better accommodate crypto assets and explore further guidance or rule-making to facilitate the listing and trading of crypto assets on national securities exchanges.

Conclusion

1. Strict regulation will curb fraud and make the market more standardized. The SEC's rigorous oversight, enforcement actions, and penalty mechanisms will significantly reduce fraudulent projects. With clear compliance pathways and investor protection measures, the crypto market will become more standardized and transparent, enhancing long-term development confidence.

2. Asset tokenization is becoming a mainstream asset issuance method that is efficient, transparent, and highly liquid. The United States occupies a global high ground in asset issuance through the regulatory framework of the SEC. In the future, the SEC may further control asset issuance rights through clear rules, attracting global project parties to register and issue coins compliantly in the United States.

3. Market liquidity will significantly improve, and the scale will further expand. Tokenization has bridged the traditional U.S. stock market with the crypto market, significantly enhancing overall liquidity. The market capitalization limit of individual tokens will further break through, driving rapid expansion of the crypto market and attracting more institutional investors to participate.