Why top signals could be less obvious this cycle

This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe . North Korean hackers. Accidentally throwing out your seed phrase. The IRS, DOJ and SEC. Being forced to interact with customer service departments at exchanges. As far as scary monsters in crypto go, those would be far up the list. Still, none scarier than the notion that the bull market has peaked without securing generational wealth. All that has everyone searching for top signals. Hints that the fun is over for another four years. Trump’s stupidly successful memecoin launch is a decent candidate. Especially so paired with bitcoin’s new all-time high around his inauguration. Was that the top? It would be easy to agree if crypto was like it was in 2021. Back then, in the midst of the monster bull run, there were really only two memecoins — dogecoin and shiba inu — and both hit enormous peaks along with bitcoin. Except, DOGE and SHIB didn’t peak at the same time . Looking back, the rotation between them is totally obvious. DOGE, in blue, exploded from about $1 billion market cap to over $80 billion between January and May 2021, alongside bitcoin’s own rally from $20,000 to over $64,000. It then drained as bitcoin corrected but never really came back at size. SHIB (in purple) shined instead, rallying from $3 billion market cap to almost $40 billion between September and the end of October — matching bitcoin’s rally almost exactly. So, in retrospect, the Great Dog Coin Rotation was probably the most obvious top signal for the last cycle. This time around, it’s much harder to tell. The most simple read is that memecoins in 2021 topped out alongside bitcoin. So maybe a major rally in memecoins might mark the end in 2025. Except, there are just so many new launches — FARTCOIN, GOAT, AI16Z, PENGU, SPX and now TRUMP — making it difficult to spot an actual top for memecoins overall. One peak and correction feeds into another and into another. The DOGE-SHIB rotation on steroids. To bears, that might sound like a risky game of musical chairs. But to the bulls, it probably sounds just right. Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter . Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter . Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more. The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.