Overnight, the hottest narrative in the crypto space became “Internet Capital Markets.” A number of crypto projects and founders, led by Solana’s new Launchpad platform Believe, began releasing this phrase, which, along with “Believe in something,” became the new slogan for the on-chain bull market.
So what exactly is the so-called Internet capital market? Will it become a short-lived hype slogan like the previous Content Coin of the Base ecosystem? What related targets are available?
Financing methods in the post-VC coin era
In a financing PPT a few years ago, Solana mentioned that it wanted to be a Nasdaq on the chain, or a blockchain that runs at the speed of Nasdaq. Judging from the current crypto ecosystem, Solana has indeed achieved this in terms of speed. However, as asset issuance gradually becomes the biggest meta-narrative in the crypto field, Solana has become less sexy as a Nasdaq that only provides trading functions.
After a series of product updates such as Pumpfun, Timefun, and Clount, Solanas high throughput and low latency make it suitable for building a global decentralized capital market, rather than just imitating Nasdaqs trading model. The market currently needs an open, permissionless financing and trading ecosystem that covers a variety of assets from meme coins to NFTs to startup projects, which is more in line with Solanas technical advantages.
Lily Liu, Chairman of the Solana Foundation, is an evangelist for Solanas commitment to building the Internet Capital Markets. She has explained on various occasions online and offline that the Internet Capital Market refers to the creation of a global financial infrastructure through blockchain technology, allowing 5.5 billion Internet users to participate in asset transactions in the capital market. This vision defines ICM as a decentralized financing method that breaks down the barriers of traditional finance (such as complex documents and high thresholds).
At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of Solana Ecosystem Superteam, mentioned the concepts of Internet Capital Market and FAT Protocol Engineering in the Solana 2025 marketing memo. He believes that in 2024, companies will be listed directly on the Internet and will be able to access more than one billion investors holding private keys - they use the funds in their hands to vote for the future they want, not just stocks, but all asset classes, cultures and concepts worth having.
Virtuals, an AI coin issuance platform that has been heating up rapidly recently, is also doing the same thing. It has launched Genesis, a points-based new issuance mechanism. Users can accumulate points by purchasing Virtuals ecological tokens, staking VIRTUAL, VADER and other channels, and obtain access rights to participate in the issuance of new projects. This is an option for new projects to issue tokens and successfully cold start.
However, the Virtuals ecosystem is mainly focused on the Crypto+AI track, and the platform that currently receives the most attention is a coin issuance platform called Believe, formerly known as the social influence assetization platform Clout. The slogan of the Believe platform is similar to Believe in Something. Users can reply to any tweet with the token name @launch to turn it into a token.
Since its launch on April 27, Believe has demonstrated strong market explosiveness. Not only has it attracted the attention of mainstream projects and founders in the Solana ecosystem, but its revenue is also considerable. According to Believescreener data, the estimated revenue of the Believe platform in the past 24 hours reached US$7.62 million, of which creators earned US$3.81 million.
As Believe’s platform currency LaunchCoin skyrocketed, other tokens launched by the Believe platform also received market attention. These tokens were classified into the concept of “Internet Capital Markets” mentioned above because they created actual products compared to the tokens on Pump.Fun which only had a picture.
ICM related concept coins
The current leading concept of ICM is the Believe platform coin LAUNCHCOIN. In fact, Believe is not technically different from previous token launch platforms. If you have an idea, you can create a token by simply adding @launchcoin on X and writing the token name. If others believe in your idea, they will buy your token. As a creator, you can extract fees to put your idea into practice.
LAUNCHCOIN’s current market value is US$235 million, with a 24-hour increase of 220%.
Related reading: LaunchCoin increased 200 times in one day. How did Believe create a $200 million gold dog after going back to zero? | 10 0x review
BSCREENER
BSCREENER is the platform token of BelieveScreener, a kanban platform of Believe, initiated by @nanowisp, who said that the token transaction fees will be used to pay for website and hosting costs. There is no token utility, no reward mechanism, and no roadmap - just a simple token to help keep the project running.
The current market value of BSCREENER is 13.6 million US dollars, with a 24-hour increase of 2,500%. Since the token has been online for a short time, its subsequent performance remains to be seen.
DUPE
DUPE (Deal Unlocking Price Engine) is a tool for finding similar products proposed by @nikitabier and @ghoshal. Just add dupe dot com before any product page link, and the system will automatically help you find similar products at a lower price.
Currently, DUPE’s market value exceeds 50 million US dollars, with a 24-hour increase of 30%.
AURA
AURA is the platform token of Aurascope, a camera-first mobile app that allows users to scan real-world objects, places, and people to see how they affect your energy, track your daily score, grow your collection, and compete with friends to keep up with your surroundings, and rewards contributors who post on the platform. Its founder is former VC and Rising Star partner @sabakarimm.
AURA’s current market value is $9 million, with a 24-hour increase of 800%.
BUDDY
BUDDY is the CreatorBuddy platform coin launched by @AlexFinnX. CreatorBuddy is an AI assistant that has the authority to post on your X platform. You can ask it any questions related to your past content. The functions include 8 AI tools: content coach, algorithm analysis, content creation, reply assistant, account research, historical review, brain dump and inspiration.
BUDDYs current market value is $12 million, with a 24-hour drop of 4%.
FITCOIN
@fittedcloset is an AI-driven virtual wardrobe app where users can upload their own clothes, match their looks, resell them, and share them with friends. It has been downloaded over 300,000 times and viewed over 300 million times on social media. Over 1 million pieces of clothing have been uploaded to the platform.
FITCOIN’s current market value is close to 7 million US dollars, with a 24-hour increase of 96%.
In addition, there are short video apps Giggles on the Believe platform, where users can get crypto rewards for interaction; SuperFriend, a tool that helps developers visualize and communicate with code bases; PNP, a prediction market platform that does not require liquidity support; Kayyo, an application that focuses on AI combat training and provides personalized training plans; CreatorGen, a tool that can generate hyper-realistic AI influencers; NinjaChat, which integrates multiple top AI tools, and other different applications. They have all issued their own tokens on Believe, and readers can go to the Believe dashboard to view them.
The real proposition of ICM is, who will tokenize good assets?
Although the hype of Believe has caused the market value of Launchcoin to continue to rise, many people in the community still question it, believing that the Internet Capital Markets is just another illusory token-generating bubble, just like the AI Agent craze at the end of last year, which did not generate much actual value in AI applications and was just a carnival of funds and traffic.
However, if we look further ahead, we will find that there is actually a structural shift behind these phenomena - the crypto world is moving from fictional narratives to real arbitrage. As Akshay BD explained in his latest tweet, from the perspective of the capital market, Crypto has already solved the problem of lowering the threshold for asset acquisition. No matter where you are, as long as you have a mobile app and a little stablecoin, you can freely invest in any asset on the chain, without having to bypass the complex banking and brokerage systems, or wait for weeks to open an offshore account. This kind of free accessibility is unimaginable in the traditional financial system.
The problem is that Crypto has not yet solved the issuance mechanism of high-quality assets. The current token market is full of memes, shell projects and hype concepts that have no intrinsic value. This is not the fault of technology, but the natural result of lack of supervision and distorted incentives. In the traditional market, securities issuance has clear thresholds, processes and information disclosure mechanisms, but on the chain, anyone can issue coins at will, liquidity can catch up instantly, and speculators will quickly pour in. This highly free issuance mechanism makes it more difficult for assets with real value to stand out.
Akshay believes that building a system that allows high-quality assets to be issued in the same convenient way is what Solana should consider next. In other words, the ultimate goal of Internet Capital Markets should not be anyone can issue a coin, but making those good assets that were originally difficult to issue and difficult to access become within reach.
The underlying criteria are whether the asset can benefit from the current special economic/geopolitical environment, and whether it is difficult to buy through traditional brokerages and banks. If both conditions are met, then it has reason to be tokenized.
For example, in the past decade, the reason why the US dollar has become the dominant sovereign asset on the chain is not because it is technically easy to tokenize, but because global users have no choice when fighting against the depreciation of their own fiat currencies. The rise of Bitcoin in the 2010s is also a kind of environmental arbitrage - it regards itself as a decentralized hedging asset in the context of excessive currency issuance. Today, if we can identify similar structural demand assets and truly achieve free access through on-chain issuance, this is the true ICM, not a vain narrative, but the realization of institutional dividends.
From this perspective, Believe and LaunchCoin may just be a beginning, a prototype, an experimental breach with obvious entertainment and bubble colors - it may not leave value deposits, but the mechanism path it tries to open up is indeed the only way for some assets to go in the future. In the end, Internet Capital Markets will not be a place where everyone can issue a coin at will, but a place where everyone can easily buy good assets.
