Who is the Popular Murad? The New "Meme Leader" Holding Over $24 Million in Meme Positions and Onboarding Institutions in 20 Minutes

Introduction to Meme Coins and the Latest Trend

Meme coins appear to be experiencing a new wave of excitement in this cycle. At the end of last year, the first wave of Solana meme craze was launched, represented by coins like MYRO, SILLY, and WIF. The second wave of meme mania originated from the presale wave launched by BOME and SLERF in March 2024. Since then, voices criticizing VC coins have gradually spread, and increasingly more meme coins have been listed on centralized exchanges, gaining gradual acceptance. As the bull market transitions to bear market conditions and altcoins generally underperform, meme trading tools like Pump.Fun have further fueled the meme mania through infrastructure improvements, triggering the third wave of meme trends.

After overcoming the so-called September curse, the cryptocurrency market has ushered in a new wave of trading boom, and new internet celebrities have become the most popular memes. Recently, the meme abstraction has returned, bringing with it yet another wave of meme enthusiasm.

From Bitcoin Maximalism to the Godfather of Cult Memes: Who is Murad?

Recently, on-chain detective ZachXBT revealed the wallet address of order master Murad Mahmudov. This revelation quickly sparked heated discussions in the cryptocurrency community: should a cryptocurrency user who hasn't been accused of any crime be so "exposed"? ZachXBT's reasoning was that people should make more informed decisions about tokens they purchase rather than simply following KOLs with large followings.

Murad, a meme coin KOL who recently became famous, gained complete popularity in cryptocurrency circles with his super cycle thesis for meme coins at the TOKEN2049 conference. He once boldly predicted that Bitcoin would reach $10 million USD and is now considered the next generation of prominent figures following meme master Ansem. The reason he can inherit this mantle is that Murad's calls are highly effective.

Murad holds three meme coins in his revealed wallet: SPX, APU, and MINI. On Twitter, Murad also created a list containing these three meme coins. Additionally, the list includes MOG, POPCAT, GIGA, and other established meme coins that have all achieved significant gains in recent times. The meme coins called by Murad share one common characteristic: they all possess a certain cult quality.

Cult refers to a culture of highly devoted and fanatical followers. Fans display extreme enthusiasm and loyalty toward something specific, such as a character, brand, idea, or work. This cultural phenomenon usually revolves around a niche but influential group that differentiates itself from dominant culture through shared beliefs, behaviors, or interests. In the cryptocurrency field, what exactly are cult memes and why should they be promoted? Everything could start with Murad.

If you search for Murad Mahmudov on Google, beyond his recent viral speech on the meme coin super cycle, you'll find interviews and articles by Murad about Bitcoin before 2022, including pieces titled "The Definitive Argument for Bitcoin" and "Bitcoin: Past and Future." From these titles alone, you can see he is a pure Bitcoin maximalist.

Murad graduated from Princeton University and went to China to study and trade for a year in 2013. There he met an American in the foreign circle in Beijing, the fifth employee of a leading exchange platform. Through this friend, Murad learned about cryptocurrency and launched his career.

However, before 2016, Murad did not work full-time in cryptocurrency but worked at traditional financial institutions like Goldman Sachs and Glencore. After resigning, Murad became a Bitcoin Maxi. From 2017 onwards, Murad accomplished much in cryptocurrency, writing on-chain analysis articles, conducting trading investments, and even participating in DeFi development. In 2018, Murad created a community of tens of thousands of people and was once considered one of the leading Bitcoin analysts, growing his portfolio five times in just seven months.

In 2019, Murad founded a fund called Adaptive Capital, but good times didn't last long. When the March 12, 2020 crash occurred, the fund couldn't respond adequately to the sell-off due to "insufficient infrastructure." Adaptive Capital had no choice but to announce bankruptcy. After Adaptive's collapse, Murad continued investing in Bitcoin and startups but became less active on social media.

In 2022, Murad announced his return to social media and rekindled his passion for cryptocurrency. But it was only in 2024 that Murad found the main task of this new cycle: seeking true cult memes. He stated in an interview: "In early 2024, I started trying to understand meme coins from a first-principles perspective." By June, Murad began sharing his meme trading philosophy and objectives with the community.

Murad's appearance has also changed from a shy, short-haired financier to a counterculture image with long hair and a beard. This is consistent with the cult culture he promotes—at least it's not traditional.

The Cult List: How Murad Speculates on Memes

Between June 25 and September 13, Murad compiled a list of cult memes that he believed would explode in the next meme super cycle. As Murad became increasingly popular, the list became the new bible of trading, with many people copying the format and creating their own lists.

The impact was significant, with SPX leading the way—its market cap rose from $20 million in July to over $600 million. This dramatic increase demonstrates the power of Murad's influence and the effectiveness of his selection criteria.

Why did Murad choose these specific meme coins? In interviews, he has summarized his meme coin screening criteria as follows:

Focus on mid-cap coins with market capitalization between $5 million and $200 million

This range allows for significant upside potential while maintaining reasonable entry points for investors.

Prefer Solana and Ethereum, excluding Base, Ton, and Sui, because whales will park their wealth on the former two

As Murad explains: "These chains are like large bank accounts, and once they truly understand that meme coins will dominate the altcoin market in this cycle, money will flow very rapidly."

Projects must be at least six months old

Murad believes that "time cannot be faked and represents real commitment. Assuming each of us has a lifespan of 80 years, time itself represents a very serious investment of resources."

Murad spent six to seven months using Twitter and Telegram accounts to join various Discord and Telegram groups of different meme coins to understand the atmosphere, culture, and what community members were discussing. He firmly believes that "investing in memes is actually investing in people." Murad considers cult memes to be the next major trend.

By studying on-chain data, market value, holder distribution, decentralization degree, and other indicators, while avoiding major derivative currencies, political coins, celebrity coins, most animal coins, newly launched popular coins, and single KOL memes, Murad has developed a comprehensive filtering system.

Murad's screening criteria essentially involve selecting tokens that have been in circulation for at least six months and have experienced at least two 70% declines. These projects have demonstrated resilience and genuine community support beyond initial hype.

The current meme coin market has been divided into several tiers. Large amounts of capital can choose to buy blue-chip meme coins with high market values that are expected to double. Murad positions himself as a middle ground, focusing on finding undervalued meme coins that meet most of his filters.

These projects might only have one or two indicators that don't meet his standards, but they can be easily improved and enjoy extremely enthusiastic community support with relatively low prices. Murad calls this strategy the "price and conviction index" and believes investors should seek projects with extremely high conviction but low prices.

The Super Cycle of Meme Coins

The "price and conviction index" typically applies only to meme coins because the success of platforms like Pump.Fun and Polymarket demonstrates that good cryptocurrency products don't necessarily require tokens. Murad believes the best tokens don't require products. PEPE and WIF could be those meme coins that are doing things seriously.

But lacking products doesn't mean they lack utility. Murad contends that the best meme coins have more functions than almost all altcoins. They provide entertainment, reduce loneliness and identity issues, achieving the goal that DAOs were originally supposed to reach. They bring resonance, emotional connection, sense of mission and meaning, entertainment and happiness, while also promoting charity, storytelling, and legend-building.

In his TOKEN2049 speech, Murad pushed the thesis to the extreme, arguing that meme coins will overturn VC coins and even all altcoins. The core of the meme coin super cycle, he asserted, is that people in the market gradually realize that meme coins are stealing value. "Any cryptocurrency asset that doesn't distribute cash flow to your portfolio or serve as a store of value is essentially a meme coin, and 99.999% of altcoins are nothing but meme coins with a few extra steps."

DeFi investor RedSkull stated bluntly that in the future, cryptocurrency projects will be divided only into those with revenue and those without. "If your project has no revenue, then it belongs to a meme. You compete with other memes to see who is more worthy of the speculative prize; if it's a revenue project, categories are based mainly on revenue competition and are compared based on standard price-to-earnings multiples."

When measuring the impact of this twenty-minute speech, on one hand, the number of cult meme coins that Murad has "called" has indeed increased significantly, and on the other hand, it has attracted many people who were previously unenthusiastic about meme trading. This has even influenced some institutional VCs, stating they would include meme coins in their investment portfolios.

This is sufficient to demonstrate that Murad has injected new vitality into the meme coin market. This is due to his mature and systematic understanding of memes and his screening criteria. Perhaps it can also be attributed to his trading and analysis experience in the Bitcoin field over recent years. But why did Murad transform from a Bitcoin maximalist to the godfather of cult memes today?

The Ultimate Vision of Meme Philosophy

To understand Murad's meme philosophy, perhaps we must start from Bitcoin's origins. As an OG cryptocurrency enthusiast exposed to Bitcoin since 2013, Murad grew up with Bitcoin and Bitcoin community culture. The wealth of blogs, books, and Bitcoin maximalist literature provided Murad the perfect foundation for understanding and researching meme coins.

Murad believes that the rise of meme coins is a byproduct of the cryptocurrency industry system, and this system itself is a byproduct of the legal monetary system. Therefore, the existence and emergence of meme coins are driven by external forces and are similar to the economic crisis that inspired Bitcoin. The key point is that the monetary system is collapsing, but Bitcoin and meme coins behave in completely opposite ways, like two ends of a horseshoe.

On one hand, the crisis has pushed people toward a more solid alternative: Bitcoin. On the other hand, the collapse of the fiat monetary system will also push people toward speculative behavior. This is particularly evident during periods of inflation. Everyone's money cannot maintain its value, so people will choose to take risks and gamble.

This structural reasoning leads Murad to believe that meme coins will have the same extreme cultural effect as Bitcoin, and can almost be considered a new type of religious fanaticism, with their holders displaying this fanaticism.

This is the fundamental reason why Murad admires cult memes. His research materials on memes include "The Future of Religion and Future Religion," "American Gods," "The Anti-Meme Department," "The Society of the Spectacle," and others. The research conducted in these books relates to the evolution of beliefs and ideologies, cultural and social dynamics, and mechanisms of information dissemination. These are important for understanding the nature of memes, their mechanisms of spread, and their profound impact on individuals and society.

Part of Murad's tweeting style has also become similar to that of a modern philosopher after being immersed in these books, using short and concise phrases to share philosophies related to memes.

"The key to finding undervalued meme coins is emotion; they must make you feel something."

"The lower the global fertility rate, the greater the market value of cult memes, because children give meaning to people's lives, and if people are having fewer children, they will seek meaning elsewhere."

"Excess money supply + excessive loneliness + scarcity of meaning = money flowing into excessively speculative activities, since there is 'more money' in the system compared to four years ago and 'more loneliness,' and therefore resources must be more speculative than in 2021. The personalities of the most active 300 community members permeate the general culture and atmosphere of the meme."

From Murad's perspective, a meme is not a trace but a culture and an attribute. In a more abstract way, memes are about meaning, while cult memes have grander imagination.

Becoming the Next Religion

If asked more directly what a cult meme is, Murad's answer is that a group of people gather with extreme fanaticism for a certain cause. "The ultimate dream of meme coins is to become the next religion, so you have to attend their Discord, Telegram, and social spaces to see how much cult, passion, and religious atmosphere exists in that community."

Extreme fanaticism is the characteristic of religion. In essence, religion can offer a variety of different things to its audience—for some it provides community, for others guidance, for others an object of faith and a sense of belonging, something that transcends themselves. Of course, religion also provides some lifestyle advice and answers to some very difficult questions about existence and so on. And these are all things that future cult memes can do.

If cryptocurrency is a religion, it is centered on a revolution in currency, finance, and commerce. Here the gods are fungible, narratives are flexible, financial expectations are scalable, and cryptocurrencies replace "we believe in God" with "we believe in our coins."

Matt from Zee Prime Capital sees meme coins themselves as a simple social game of ups and downs, a new form of lottery loosely related to capturing the zeitgeist. But meme coins still have broader potential. The current form of meme coins is still quite rudimentary because they don't focus on sustainability but pursue rapid pumping and dumping, and price increases have become the most effective marketing tool.

However, future meme coins can go beyond this, and price increases are just a means to a larger goal. Meme coins are not just carriers of culture but also perform distribution functions, making them not just amusing at the meme level but closely integrated with lifestyle products to form a true cultural phenomenon. This evolution represents the maturation of meme coins from speculative assets to cultural movements with real-world impact and community engagement.

FAQ

Who is Murad? What is his background and influence in the cryptocurrency field?

Murad is a prominent cryptocurrency opinion leader renowned for his expertise in meme coins and market predictions. He pioneered the Memecoin Super Cycle concept and holds over $24 million in meme positions, significantly influencing institutional adoption.

Which meme coin projects are included in Murad's over $24 million meme positions?

Murad's primary meme coin holdings include SPX, APU, and MINI, which collectively represent his over $24 million meme position portfolio.

How did Murad successfully attract institutional investors to the meme coin market in 20 minutes?

Murad attracted institutional investors by promoting a straightforward strategy: buying top-tier meme coins and holding long-term. His influential social media presence and confident market conviction convinced institutions to enter meme positions rapidly, leveraging FOMO and demonstrating strong conviction in the sector's potential.

What are the risks of investing in meme coins? Why are institutional investors starting to pay attention to this field?

Meme coins carry high volatility and liquidity risks with limited fundamental value. Institutions are interested due to speculative potential, cult-like communities, and proven market demand—DOGE reached $95B market cap, demonstrating mainstream appeal and investment opportunities in this emerging asset class.

As an ordinary investor, how should you view investment advice from memecoin leaders like Murad?

Follow leaders with proven track records like Murad who demonstrate deep market insights. Their strategic positioning in memecoins and institutional connections provide valuable signals. Study their methodology and timing rather than blindly copying trades. Successful meme leaders often identify early opportunities that generate substantial returns, making their guidance a reliable reference for informed decisions.

What is Murad's investment strategy and coin selection logic?

Murad advocates long-term holding strategy for high-performing meme coins, emphasizing patience through market volatility to accumulate wealth. He focuses on early-stage potential tokens with strong community momentum and timing market cycles strategically.

What is the difference between meme coins and traditional cryptocurrency projects?

Meme coins are community-driven assets lacking formal development teams or business models, offering higher volatility and speculative potential compared to traditional crypto projects with established fundamentals and use cases.