Memecoins will remain a vital part of the cryptocurrency market and could potentially stand as a new asset class, Maartje Bus, VP of research of crypto data aggregator Messari, said during a speech at BUIDL Asia in Seoul on Thursday.

“Crypto is often criticized for not having use cases for the average Joe, and that is a fair comment,” said Bus. “But memecoins actually have been successful, consistently, in bringing people on-chain.”

In what Bus described as a “full-swing memecoin mania” fueled by the bull cycle following the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds, the meme tokens have multiple appeal factors for investors beyond its lighthearted fun factor.

Bus called memes a way to monetize attention, which could easily be transformed into a prediction market in the case of tokens based on U.S. election candidates. Memecoins can also be looked at as a “long-tail speculative service” like lottery tickets or penny stocks, according to Bus. 

With these points of attraction, memecoins “inadvertently” introduce Web3 newcomers to crypto concepts such as decentralized and crypto wallets, said Bus, calling memecoins the “Trojan Horse” for the next era of crypto-native consumer applications.

Meanwhile, Bus stated the convergence of artificial intelligence and crypto, Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Network (DePIN) and EIP-4844 scaling as emerging trends in crypto along with memecoins.