Getting involved in memecoins can be overwhelming. For every rags to riches memecoin story that you hear, there are many cautionary tales about rugs and scams.

While it is completely understandable that new crypto investors avoid memecoins altogether, there truly are incredible opportunities out there to get in on the ground floor of something special.

Complicating matters even more is that standard technical analysis (TA) isn’t very useful for low market cap coins, which makes hunting for these gems as much of an art as it is a science.

This article examines the bull and bear cases for $SKI and discusses important considerations before investing in any memecoin.

Answering the Question of Memecoin Utility: The Power of Tokenizing Culture and Community

Meme skeptics love to point out that the coins have no intrinsic value or utility. In other words, there is not usually any technical innovation or practical use case for your standard memecoin.

While there is some truth to this idea, there are two aspects to any meme, not just memecoins, that this argument overlooks:

• Memes capture (tokenize) cultural themes and feelings. In internet culture pre-dating cryptocurrency, meme images have a long history.

• For the people that feel connection to a meme, they offer a sense of belonging to a movement. In other words: community.

An example of the original doge meme https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_%28meme%29

It is difficult to over-emphasize this point. Consider this single slide from Murad Mahmudov’s The Memecoin Supercycle presentation at Token2049 in Singapore:

In the case of SKI, there are a combination of factors that speak to this type of utility:

• Animal-based memecoins, dogs in particular, have historically done very well. You only have to look at Doge, DogWifHat, and Shiba Inu for examples

• Rabid cult-like X community that rivals any other community out there. They are in the trenches, retweeting, liking, and commenting on each other’s posts constantly.

Few communities have each others’ backs like SKI. Small accounts (<200 followers) tweeting about the coin routinely get hundreds of engagements.

So what cultural themes exactly are being captured by a dog wearing a ski mask? That’s open to interpretation, but a few elements to consider:

• As mentioned above, dog imagery goes way back in internet culture

• Golden retrievers in particular are a gregarious, friendly breed

• Ski masks symbolize anonymity and action while also being meme-able and fun. Gives a feeling of joyful rebellion.

• Juxtaposition of the anonymity of the ski mask with the obviousness of the dog is absurd, speaking to an existential quest for meaning in a nihilistic world.

If Murad’s idea that memecoin popularity has its roots in the increasing disconnectedness, loneliness, and dissatisfaction with modern life, then SKI has all the ingredients to rocket straight past the moon and blast out of the galaxy.

A True Community Token Organization

Community Token Organization (CTO) is a term usually reserved for a project that is built around a community first.

SKI, however, started out quite differently.

When it first launched in April of 2023, it pumped significantly in value right away, but almost immediately the developer pulled liquidity (AKA cashed out) in a blatant rug pull.

Usually that’s the end of the story, but in this case the SKI community fought back hard, buying back in.

It was also discovered by a Kaizen analyst that the token was originally released with a ‘tax siphon’ embedded in the smart contract. It was later disabled during the community takeover and is no longer an issue.

It was a valiant effort, but the summer of 2024 was brutal for the entire crypto market. SKI eventually lost 98% of it’s value from the previous all time high. The SKI community held strong though until September when markets finally picked back up and gave the scrappy coin new life.

Key Opinion Leaders

As you can see from the chart, the September/October pump was impressive, but then something truly special happened starting in November. This is where it’s interesting to look at the role of Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs).

In case you were wondering, the Kaizen Crypto community had a buy alert on SKI on Nov 4th. No big deal…

It’s not uncommon for a crypto project to get popular influencers on board. Often they are actually recruited; offered some of the coin (usually locked for a period of time) in exchange for promoting the coin on their platform.

SKI took a different approach. Now being 100% community owned with nothing held in reserves for marketing or insiders, the SKI community would not have been able to easily bring KOLs on board even if they wanted to.

Luckily, at this point SKI was already on the radar of influential YouTube channels, as well as inside of the Kaizen trading community during the November dip.

Brian Jung’s video mentioning $SKI in November 2024

Coincidentally, another influential person started making buys shortly after the above video was released: United States Congressman Michael Collins.

It also can’t be ignored that Representative Collins is a MAGA Republican. In other words, he’s very much a part of the ‘in’ crowd with the new administration that will be influencing crypto policy for the next several years.

All of this activity in just the past few months has already scored major wins for the SKI community. One Kaizen member invested $50,000 at just the right time and saw that turn into over $1 million in just a few weeks.

Top Dog of Base

As the altcoin market has evolved, each chain has tended to have its own version of certain narratives rise to the top. For example, Ethereum has SHIBA and Solana has BONK. Base, as you can probably guess, has SKI. This is why you often see it refered to as the dog (or top dog) of Base.

Regarding the Base network itself, there are many reasons that the Kaizen team is bullish on Base. These are just a few:

• Developed by Coinbase, arguably the team with the best track record in all of crypto.

• The base network, backed by Coinbase and plugged into the Coinbase smart wallet, is set to onboard millions of people to decentralized applications.

• Functionally, the network performs really well and has minimal fees.

• Integration between Coinbase and Coinbase wallet is hands down the most user friendly way to introduce people to the world of decentralized exchanges and apps.

As SKI continues to rise in prominence on Base, and Base itself continues to grow in market share, Kaizen believes that a compounding effect will take place and SKI still has multiple x’s in its near future.

The Bull Case For $SKI

Even with all of the action SKI has already had over the past few months, SKI remains a top Kaizen pick for several reasons:

• Continued exchange listings: SKI continues to get listed on new exchanges every week, but has not yet cracked the tier 1 centralized exchanges. When that happens it should pump quite nicely.

• Coinbase Listing: The elephant in the room is that $SKI is on the Base chain, which is Coinbase’s baby. Coinbase does not have many memecoins listed, and at SKI’s marketcap and with the strength of it’s community, it should be a shoe-in for listing. This would make SKI available to hundreds of thousands of potential new investors.

• More KOLs talking about SKI: More YouTubers and other influencers are talking about SKI every day, adding to the hype.

• The United States’ first crypto-friendly regime is in place and finding its footing. A key player in the current congress is a known SKI holder.

• Record High Base Inflows: With Base inflows already breaking record highs in crypto, continued money flow into meme coins on Base can be expected.

• Viral SKI Mask Trend: While the SKI mask trend hasn’t gone viral yet, it could easily happen as crypto continues to go mainstream, creating additional hype. It’s not hard to imagine cute TikToks and Reels of people putting ski masks on their own dogs.

The Bear Case

As excited as the Kaizen team is about SKI, there are a few reasons why you might want to hold off before investing your rent money:

• Why is Coinbase (and other tier 1 exchanges) taking so long to list it? Some of the recent coins that have been listed ahead of SKI have mystified market watchers.

• Is being 100% community driven somehow holding it back? Could it be that not having high profile KOLs locked into their positions is somehow viewed as a liability?

• It is truly a meme coin that does not have utility with a larger project in development (compared to a coin like DEGEN, which is a memecoin but also part of the Farcaster project). It’s possible that T1 exchanges are hesitant to embrace memecoins with no additional product they support.

• Just like with any coin that has already experienced massive recent gains, it is important to consider that it may be in an extended consolidation, or even bearish, phase.

How To Buy SKI Mask Dog

As of now, SKI is still not available on tier 1 exchanges. The best way to buy it is through a Decentralize Exchange like Uniswap. This process can be tricky, so make sure to read through our How To Invest In Crypto For Beginners guide completely before diving in head first.

Once you have the following in place you should be good to go:

• Hot wallet

• Funded with a stablecoin (USDC, USDT, etc.) on the Base network

• Wallet connected to app.uniswap.org

• Use your own google-fu to find the proper contract address and make sure it matches this one: 0x768be13e1680b5ebe0024c42c896e3db59ec0149

The official SkiMaskDog.com website also has a solid step by step guide to walk you through the full process.

It is highly recommended that you fully understand the process and verify everything in the above steps against what the official website states.

Conclusion

In summary:

Yes, the Kaizen team is bullish on SKI heading into 2025. But if you’ve made it this far in this article, you will have also seen how many different factors are considered as a potential low market cap meme coin is evaluated:Purpose (utility) of the coinHistory of the coin (overcoming initial rug and community takeover)Quality of the meme itself (artistic value, “fun” factor)Smart contract audit (tools like DexScreener make this easier)Role of community, KOLs, and overall market conditionsNot every small cap memecoin will have these same factors in it’s favor. It’s important to evaluate them on their own merits on a case-by-case basis.Should you invest in SKI now that it’s already recently hit major all time highs?Only you can decide that, but with the tips in this article, you might have a shot of getting in on the ground floor of the next 100x small cap meme coin.