Inner development and the other side of memecoins - Interview with Tim

14.01.2025

Since 2013, memecoins have become not just one of the largest sectors of the crypto world, with billion-dollar market capitalization, but also the first cultural phenomenon ever to be tokenized. We hear real stories of turning a small amount of money, invested in some funny frogs or dogs, into profits that caused people to cry with happiness as their lives changed, dreams finally coming true. Among young people, memecoins are seen as the only way to actually "make it."But do we hear different stories? Where people cry. Just cry. Suffering and regretting their lives and former dreams.

This is the other side of memecoins, since we didn't notice how, in tokenizing one social phenomenon like memes, we also tokenized another one - deception. And self-deception.

Personally, I'm less sceptical and critical of large memecoins, they were the ones, which made people the most returns in 2024. However, it's worth to look at them from a different angle in order not to deceive yourself.

Today I talked to Tim (@Innerdevcrypto), a crypto-veteran, observing this space since 2016, and a person who went through a very complicated and very long path of inner development and enlightenment, now helping others engage with crypto and memecoins to face their psychological struggles and mistakes. Unselfishly, with a divine desire to help those who need it.

I'm Dutch by my origin. This is my third cycle. At the end of 2016, I was in Leipzig, Germany. I visited a friend there. I went to a party and met a Chinese guy in the bar, totally drunk, who asked me: "Do you know Bitcoin?". I said "yes". Then he asked if I knew Ethereum. I said I didn't, and he recommended me to buy it. I wrote it down. Later, I studied Ethereum and bought it. Thus, by the end of 2016, I made $10,000 on Ethereum. And a year later, it was $2 million. I took half of the profits, but the other half was lost in the subsequent bear market. Later on, I started studying crypto more and took most profit during the bull run of 2020-2021, deploying it again this cycle. Currently, I live on a permaculture forest garden farm, growing my own food, doing meditations, and hosting sessions on "X". If you go to my pinned post on "X", you'll see 60 articles, and every year I do interviews with the biggest people on Crypto Twitter. My main job, though, is answering DMs from people who lost it all on crypto, every single day. So, I have a unique perspective of both the good and bad sides of this crypto space.

You should definitely have a profound understanding of what it is to deal with crypto, but why do you so generously devote yourself to helping so many people free of charge? Isn't it a hard job? Or can it be seen as a commitment to the crypto community?

No, no, I really enjoy talking to people, helping them with their problems. Crypto has been good to me financially, and I felt like I should give something back. I've been seeing so much degeneracy in crypto, especially right now with all the rug pulls and scams. I felt like... Satoshi created Bitcoin to make a better world, a fair world, still filled with this degeneracy, where lots of young people go all in on memecoins and lose it all. So I wanted to contribute. I started writing, answering DMs, and my Inner Development program. Not a lot of people do what I do, but it's kind of a strange thing in this degenerate space. Yet, I enjoy it, and I also meet many interesting people there. Now, I'm not as actively investing and trading since I've been in crypto for so long. When people ask me serious things, I'm willing to help them. That's why I decided to talk to you. Why not?

Yes, and thank you so much for this! How is it called in Dutch... "Viel dank u"?

Yes, exactly.

Well, you described memecoins as a degeneracy. And I also saw many things happening in the crypto world which can indeed be described with this word, like throwing and losing all your money, but somehow memes have become one of the largest crypto sectors with billions in market capitalization. Why do you think they've become so popular?

Well, first, what do some altcoins like Solana do? They're launched by a group of people with a locked amount of coins, with part of the supply locked up. This happens throughout different cycles. These groups of people start launching new projects every cycle and basically selling these coins expensively to retail, which is ordinary people, while they unload all their bags that they bought earlier.

What memecoins do - they're already on the market with the supply available, unlocked. They are liquid, free for all. People can easily launch their own coin, like you could create a "Kirill Dorokhov Coin". And even if, for example, I'm a large account, I tell all my followers, 'Hey, buy this meme coin!' Let's say there's a total supply of 10 million coins, and you have one million coins, and I have one million coins. If this thing goes up to a market cap of $10 million, well, we both start unloading millions of coins and become millionaires. This shit really happens like this. But memecoins need community, activity, connections in order to run.

Now, why do people invest in this kind of asset? Well, they're tired of those "big Investors" dumping some new altcoins every cycle on ordinary people, claiming some new Layer-1 coin has great value and is going to fix, say, card payments. That's bullshit. The only real value is Bitcoin.

The second reason is economics. We live in a fiat system where fiat money are getting more and more worthless, devalued over time, eating people's savings and opportunities with inflation. People then don't want and can't save money anymore, so they resort to crypto trading or influencing. And here is where degeneracy comes in. People, particularly young people, think they can beat the system by betting all their savings on a random memecoin, hoping to become a millionaire within a week. That's the degenerate casino. And over the years, since I saw Bitcoin at the price of $200 and a couple of other altcoins, this (crypto) space has just become worse and worse.Yes, but if I invested, say, in Pepe, Wif, or Floki coin last January, I would have seen a great return.

Yes, yes, that's why people do it, that's why I do it. But think how many of all memecoins that are being launched every minute become huge in the end? And how does this insane number of memecoins dilute the market cap of all the crypto market?

Sure, there are great returns, but how many people actually bought these memecoins at the bottom? Or any crypto at the bottom of the previous bear market? Look at Wif coin - a 70% drop from last November's high. Barely anyone who bought it in the last 6 months made any profits. You'll always hear stories of turning $100 into hundreds of thousands, but you never hear the other way around - the stories of ruining people's lives are much rarer.And do you think the huge memecoins like said WIF will ever recover to their ATHs?

Maybe, if we have a Bitcoin strategic reserve, Trump announces it, and all the markets go high... Many coins disappeared last cycle, Luna collapsed and never recovered. So in the long term, many will certainly disappear. At least all these memecoins will be wiped out in the next bear market. But a dog that wears a nice hat is more expensive than thousands of Mercedes cars. Insane.

That's why people invest in it.

Yes, but look at its chart since last March - we have a profit distribution phase.

You know, the culture - and this is a culture - of crypto investing and memecoins trading is like traffic rules, like buying the bottom and selling the top (and not the contrary) or holding. It teaches that if you hold a coin, whatever it takes, during the bull run, you'll make it. Can it be applied to large memecoins?

Unfortunately, people have a delusional representation of how much profit they can make. They think of 50x, 100x, but these are absolutely rare cases in crypto. Thus, that's the direct road to losing all your money. The memecoin space is very aggressive, difficult, and emotional.

If you, say, had 150% profits, which is a lot, then maybe it's worth relocating half into Bitcoin before losing everything. I hold most of my trading profits in Bitcoin because in the end, all these shitcoins will disappear. Influencers try to convince people all the way to buy and hold memecoins, all these arrows up, shilling... That's not just degeneracy but a psychological war on people.

It seems like people buy memecoins not just with their money but with their energy.

Yes. That's well said. They put all their emotional energy into it. If they succeed, they mostly (but not everyone) waste all the money on something, get fucked up, and need help. Or, if they lose, they get very depressed. Even more, I know personally of many cases where people killed themselves. When Luna collapsed, I had more than 150 people visiting me on my farm after it. That's why I started my program of Inner Development and help. I wanted to teach people how to take profits, how to be mentally strong and balanced to keep crypto and life emotionally apart.

As for me, Kirill, I keep 5% of my total net worth in risky coins, and most of the net worth in Bitcoin because one thing is making money and another thing is keeping it stable in the long term. Although you can try investing a small amount of money into some memecoins just to see what happens. I did it, and the returns were more or less good, although not high. But I also took losses. I'm a trader though.What do you tell people you help?

When people come, I ask them straightforward, focused questions about what they struggle with. For example, someone says "I'm depressed" and I recommend meditating, stomach problems owing to depressed conditions - fasting diet, "lost so much, my life is over" - you are still alive, you still have your consciousness, a roof over your head, living funds, family, etc. But mainly it's about training the mindset. About realizing that life is so precious and is much more than these memecoins and all our physical, daily matrix concerns, though important. But more important is not being a short-term gambling degenerate, to take profits, build your portfolio over time. Also, staying emotionally strong by not eating too much sugar, meditating, opening your bodily energy, and many different things. Anyway, you can read about the insights, methods, practices, etc., in detail in my articles.

Does it actually help people?

Well, I think I've answered 10,000 DMs last year with one-two hours a day of answering different questions, some about relationships, some about health, some about sexual energy, etc. I think 10 or 20 percent of people take my advice seriously. Some crypto millionaires who visited me flew to Thailand and went through Buddhist practices; some people in Germany resorted to fasting; some started meditating. Some return to degeneracy. In the most difficult cases, when people desperately don't achieve much progress in DMs, I receive them at home, but it happens rarely, and I'm also very strict with privacy and visits.

So, it's about giving good vibes, energy to the universe, and receiving even more energy. That's not something common in the crypto space, but I think the reason my account grew so fast is because people got tired of all this degeneracy, fakeness, and misery.That's astonishing. Simply astonishing - 10,000 DMs... 

Are you a certified doctor?

No, but I trained myself over the years. I was destroyed once in my youth and cured myself in the way I do for different people. I went through years of many psychological, spiritual, physical practices and research. I lived on my forest garden farm for 10 years completely alone, dedicated to inner work. I was very quiet on Twitter for some time in the past but then decided to offer some help since this degeneracy has filled the space.

My sister is a professional psychologist herself, but she sometimes asks me for help.

You know, it's not that hard to learn some techniques from books about how to train your mind or something, but it's much harder to realize where the balance comes from, how to achieve consciousness over your emotions, mental problems, how to open yourself to energies. I don't really treat people with therapy but rather give them available information and instructions on how they can use it for themselves.

By the way, regarding the fakeness in the crypto world, I recently bought a paper book about the history of memecoins on Amazon, and it turned out that the book was completely written by ChatGPT. The book about memecoins was as fake as memecoins themselves. Amazing. But did I understand you right - there should happen a... sorry, I might use the wrong terminology because I've heard all this in a different language... some sort of internal personal enlightenment where you observe your emotions, thoughts, states like clouds passing by, and produce ultimate love for the life around, send this energy into the universe. Is it true?

Yes, it's true. That's what I actually tell people, these are my techniques. And then comes the question of who is observing emotions and thoughts? Is it Kirill? Or the internal "I"? By quieting the mind, you can go deeply into consciousness, into the feeling of your physical body and energies flowing through your chakras or energy channels. Once you genuinely turn inside yourself, you perceive life through pure consciousness, knowing who (or, actually, what) is observing this life.

And most of the people in the crypto space do it the other way around - they first deepen themselves into this degeneracy, sodden with low vibrations like fear or hate, and then think that getting rich is the first thing and getting happy comes second. Like, you don't even have to struggle not to die from hunger every single day, like people in Africa. They are at the last stage of survival, not you.

Also, seeing your coin, especially a memecoin, going up is addictive; it really stimulates dopamine in your head like drugs. They thereby look for fulfillment in something outside, like trading, but not in themselves.

So why do people buy memes?

One, they feel no future in society and start gambling to "make it" with an all-or-nothing strategy. Two, all of this is stimulated by social media, influencers, media. Three, people look for contentment outside, not inside.

Alright, that's clear. But how about memecoins that actually bring some use like Shiba, Floki, or Bonk, which developed their own ecosystem, and...

Ah, come on, if I ask you, which coins will stay and be used after 20 or 30 years? Which coins do we already pay for things with? You know the answer - it's Bitcoin. Look at Ethereum, what's its actual use? Its foundation sells their own coins; Ethereum still hasn't even broken its previous ATH. But it's better than Solana. And Solana is better than Sui. And Sui is better than anything else, and it goes on forever. But above all this is Bitcoin, with limited supply, no bullshit behind. And what's the "Bonk ecosystem"... Do you trust your future to the image of a dog with a baseball bat, which suddenly has some "ecosystem"? Absolute crap. The first real substantial crisis happens, and the first thing people sell is this "Bonk ecosystem", shitcoins, or NFTs for real things.You know, people in Germany still have almost zero idea about Bitcoin; there's still a perception of it as a scam, some dark forest. And imagine telling them about "Shiba Army".

Yeah, that's amazing how, after all these years, people still don't recognize Bitcoin, which faces extremely wide adoption worldwide at a price of $100,000. But the rest... the rest of the market is indeed "the dark forest" in a way, so no wonder why there is such a perception of crypto.

Are memecoins the example of the attention economy?

Totally. Basically, it's all about commerce. They're playing on the desire to get rich fast with these fancy, modern crypto memecoins. It's all about attention - you have to promote your project by all means necessary on social networks so people know, are attracted to it, and buy it with FOMO. Memes are a product of the Web-3 economy and influencer economy.

But, as Murad Mahmudov said, wasn't Bitcoin a memecoin for a while in its early stages?

No, absolutely not. Bitcoin was created to change the world; it has been running from the beginning. Bitcoin is a store of value based on economic math and hard limited supply. Two totally different things.It did sound strange, although there was something in his thesis. Do you really think every social phenomenon can be tokenized? Like creating an Inner Development coin?

(laugh) That's the funny question because someone once told me to actually create the Inner Development Coin with a little Buddha picture and promote it. If I did it, I would have a shitload of money but no followers who come to me for help. I'm not here to scam. You could also create a "Kirill Dorokhov Coin". Elon Musk says one word, and then Fartcoin is created. That's crazy. Whenever you can create attention, you can create a coin. So, yes, I guess attention is key to tokenizing everything.And do memecoins communicate with culture? That's still a cultural phenomenon that was tokenized. Nothing like this has happened before.

Yes, totally. How?

Crypto is already a culture; Web-3 is culture. You have even different coins in different regions, like Japanese Doge. In Islamic countries, or even in Singapore, you're not allowed to create certain coins which go against local rules, laws, traditions. You have nature coins, sport coins, paying with credit cards linked to crypto wallets. The crypto itself is a culture where there are subcultures like memes, AI, or Bitcoin.

The last question: do memecoins with real-life use, like the already forgotten BBQ-Coin designed for payments within the BBQ-loving community, make sense? Or will they be replaced by Bitcoin?

No, absolutely not. Why do we need a coin to pay for, say, barbecue if we already have Bitcoin, even fiat euros? Again, that's all bullshit. The most superior form of money that exists now is Bitcoin. We don't need more shitcoins - we need more coins that will make Bitcoin a better payment method, the L-1 coins.So, we've come to the conclusion that memecoins, with all respect to their growth, community devotions, and role in cultural communication with crypto, should not be seen, as the deceiving media and industry try to convince you, as serious, useful, or life-changing investments, as the way of finding your fulfillment and pleasure, hoping to be rich fast and then happy without any inner work. And without knowing crypto, risk management, and an adequate strategy, the risk of losing money, even in established memecoins, can drain your soul and wallet.

Kirill, you're young; I'm twice your age. Explore the world, meet interesting people, go inside yourself, enjoy what you have, and be grateful. Read my Recommended reading list on my website. One has to realize once that to have a good, stable outer life, you have to have a good, stable inner life. That doesn't mean becoming a monk; you can have your own life at the same time, trade crypto, have ambitions. If you do so, of course, you can play around with memecoins and altcoins for profits but relocate them into Bitcoin, because this is the only store of value in our future. When I was 26, even more than your age, I had my long-term plan and took my inner development seriously, started to have good habits, live healthily, consciously, reading books about spirituality, philosophy, inner work, and practicing it. So I wish you all the best, man, really, you are already on the right path!

Thank you so much, Tim.