ICM - Past, Present, Future.

Past, Present, Future

Internet Capital Markets (ICM) represent a transformative shift in how businesses, startups, research projects, movements, memes, and video games are launched and funded—as tokens on blockchain networks like Solana. This allows anyone with an internet connection and some SOL to participate in global capital markets, bypassing traditional equity holdings.

The evolution of speculation in ICM includes: Original ICOs (2017 era): Investments based on promises, often leading to "hot potato" games where value relied on greater fools, with examples like Bitconnect and Dentacoin. VC Heaven (2021 bubble): Institutional capital drove high valuations and poor incentives, but also birthed legitimate products like Solana, Uniswap, and Ethena. This era brought growing pains, with overvalued tokens but real protocol advancements. Return to Extremes (Post-FTX): Innovation in Tokenization tech (pumpfun) A mix of pure memes (e.g., dogwifhat, pepe) and narratives like AI, where projects mature from memes to legitimate ventures (e.g., REI). This reflects the industry's maturation, emphasizing that not everything is a scam—stablecoins and tokenization have massive use cases beyond memes.

The new ICOs (Aug. 2024): With liquidity pooling interest around Pumpfun, Web3 founders often excluded from VC exposure can "fair launch" their tokens alongside their projects. Notable examples are Griffain, Assetdash, KOLscan (acquired), and Collaterize.

Believe in Something (Present - 2025): Advances in DEX tech (MeteoraAG) now allows web2 founders to tokenize their startups, movements, and ideas, without the risk of founder liquidity/ holdings getting sold (rugged) while also receiving up to 1-2% in all trading volume as 'fees' that they earn in a custodial wallet. Some of these products have gone on to being invested and backed by AllianceDAO (Polycule) + 3 more!

Tokenized Equity (Future - ?): Current speculators are renegades betting into a new market without much security. Recently the SEC launched "Project Crypto" that gave a regulatory framework that has created an "open season" for Tokenized Equity on chain. As of today, (aug. 19th '25) many are currently speculating that this will give more institutions a hunger for ICM projects with the security only Equity can provide. There a few first movers in this - (MetaDAO)

ICM.RUN will be helping to write the future of Tokenized Equity + ICM infrastructure