Why now is the perfect time for animecoin?

Ask me at any point in the last cycle about NFT projects dropping tokens, and I’d send you a huge paragraph explaining why that would be a bad idea.

I mean I had good reason. The most successful token launch by an NFT project is no doubt Apecoin, but I’d argue that both Apecoin and Apechain are irrelevant in crypto culture and there’s no noteworthy project that came from Apechain. So I personally wouldn’t call that a success.

And who remembers Cool Cats dropping $MILK? The dollar value plummeted almost immediately and they eventually killed both their token and the game.

That’s why whenever someone would even whisper the word “token” when it came to Azuki, I would quickly try and shut that down as soon as possible. Here were some of my thoughts on tokens back in 2022.

Fast forward to today, hours before the launch of ANIME, the official token for animechain and I couldn’t be more excited and bullish that Azuki is actually launching a token.

So what changed? I’d say it comes down to three key factors: culture, vision, and product.

Fast forward to 2025, and I couldn’t be more bullish on ANIME, Azuki’s official token. So what changed my mind? It comes down to three key factors: culture, product, and vision.

The Perfect Timing and Cultural Shift

Not sure how they did it, but Azuki managed to perfectly time two of their biggest launches.

The first was the Azuki main collection drop in 2022, right during the NFT bull season when any project with good art and an announced roadmap could succeed. Azuki likely would’ve done well regardless, but launching during peak NFT season definitely helped their momentum.

The second perfect timing? This upcoming ANIME token launch. As I mentioned before, tokens were not cool last cycle. Zaga agrees with this point in his interview with Minh:

"From a macro level, we're ready for this. Because if we were ready last cycle, I don't think the world would be ready for this yet. It'll actually be cool this cycle to own tokens."

But now culture has shifted. Platforms like Moonshot made it possible for anyone with a credit card to ape into their favourite memecoins. We’re also seeing a lot more mainstream “influencers” jump in too. Even though most don’t end well (like Hawk Tua), but each memecoin launch brings more exposure to the space.

As Zaga said, tokens are cool now. I mean we literally saw Trump launch his own memecoin a day before inauguration and it pumped to 70$ ATH. My wife’s Dad even texted me saying he wanted to buy TRUMP. That would’ve been insane to see last cycle (especially with Gensler still there).

This is why it’s the perfect moment for Azuki to launch a token. Both CT and web2 have embraced tokens as a new normal. Stealing from Zaga again: "The ticker will be this generation's hashtag."

Azuki’s Clear Vision

At the beginning, Azuki was primarily a cool brand centered around NFTs, Web3 and Anime. Even if their vision was always to build a decentralized anime brand, their experimented with different directions:

Like other OG NFT projects, they were still figuring things out. BAYC barely started working on Otherside, Doodles just finished launching spaceships and Luca just acquired Pudgies.

IMO, the vision was set when Zaga and team made three decisive moves: Doubling down on just focusing on the anime industry, deciding to launch animechain and acquiring the anime.com domain.

This is when the anime 2.0 vision was truly born. The idea of co-creating an anime brand and owning culture with a strong community of token and NFT holders.

Unlike most chains that aim to onboard the next 2B users, Azuki decided to hyper focus on revolutionizing the anime industry. This is what sets them a part from broader consumer chains like Abstract or Base.

The Product Ecosystem

With the vision set, Azuki was able to develop the anime 2.0 blueprint that they call the “Full Stack Anime” approach that makes the token launch make sense.

Their product ecosystem is divided into three key groups:

  1. Infrastructure - This is the foundation of the entire anime stack. The anime token will be used as the native gas token here. This will allow everything to be on chain.
  2. Distribution - This is where all the consumer products will live. Anime.com will be Azuki’s flagship product and trying to create THE place to go when consuming anime aka the discord of anime. Anime.com is creating a super app combining the best of crunchyroll, myanimelist, discord/crunchyroll comments section and then adds a section where you can buy merch/nfts of your fave anime. This is also where you’ll be able to use animecoin to buy both physical and digital products.
  3. Content - This is all things related to the Azuki IP. This includes their upcoming episodes and potentially movies in the future. This could also include more IP in the future.

As you can see, animecoin is at the center of this full stack anime approach.

Why It Makes Sense Now

The timing for animecoin is perfect because:

  1. Memecoins are now the norm both in CT and in web2
  2. Retail has better and more ways to purchase tokens (ex: Moonshot)
  3. Anime 2.0 vision was born
  4. Azuki will be launching new episodes to increase IP distribution
  5. Anime.com and other consumer products (teased TCG) on animechain will help onboard web2 users onchain
  6. The animecoin will serve both as a culture coin representing Anime 2.0 and as a utility token within their ecosystem

The team’s worked really hard to get to this point and super excited for the launch of anime and participate in building anime 2.0 with everyone.