Arc: the 100x happened before Day One

Before Arc became public, native USDC on the chain was already becoming its own little market. People wanted to be positioned so badly that Arc USDC reportedly traded at premiums approaching 80%, with OTC fees on top.

I saw it and refused to touch it.

Paying almost $2 to get $1 onto a chain because you’re scared somebody might buy a dog before you sounds exactly like the kind of decision that ends with you explaining on X that it was “a learning experience.”

Unfortunately, some of the people willing to get there early made an obscene amount of money. One wallet bridged through Long on September 8 and spent $487 buying $LONG at approximately $0.0000136. That position eventually reached $578,000 in unrealized profit.

Another trader bought 12.1M $ARGUS for $1,200, sold only 1.8M for $30,900 in profit and at one point still had approximately $332,000 sitting in the remaining position.

$361,000 estimated PnL from $1,200.

So while thousands of people were preparing their wallets for “Arc Day One”, Day One had already happened for somebody else. But finally the public arrived.

ARGUS reached $35M.
TOLLY went to $25M.
LONG touched $17M,
COOL to $7.9M.
ARCAT to $5M.

And within hours you could already see Arc making mistakes that had nothing to do with the technology. ACT FUN arrived as another launchpad and rugged shortly after launching. Many more projects followed after, I mean that’s normal, it happens always with new chains.

Then we got one of the stupidest episodes I’ve seen during a chain launch. There was already a $DUKE based on the Arc founder’s dog. Another $DUKE appeared. Accounts connected to the Arc team started giving attention to the new one.

So we had reached the point where Arc didn’t even need another ecosystem to vamp its memes. Arc was vamping Arc. This is exactly where I think they misunderstood what made the Robinhood trenches work.

Robinhood never launched its chain saying: Guys, please gamble on our memes.

The original thesis was RWAs. Then tokens like PONS or CASHCAT appeared. People started trading them, volume followed, launchpads appeared and Robinhood realized that this completely unintended part of the chain was generating attention.

They ONLY reacted to it.

Arc looked like it was trying to skip that entire process and go directly to deciding what everyone should care about. You can’t assign attention, especially not in crypto.

Stop trying to manufacture the culture of your chain. Give people somewhere worth being and they’ll create it themselves.