Author: Frank, PANews
MEME's market welcomed a group of special guests.
Recently, a number of celebrities including Caitlyn Jenner, IGGY AZALEA, and Davido have entered the crypto market and issued their own MEME tokens. On May 28, Caitlyn Jenner, a former Olympic champion and an important member of the Kardashian family, issued the eponymous token $JENNER, which attracted the attention of crypto players. Subsequently, female rapper Iggy Azalea issued a token called MOTHER, and Nigerian rapper Davido issued the DAVIDO token.
These tokens have attracted market attention in a short period of time. Among them, JENNER has the highest increase of 698 times, and MOTHER has the highest increase of 644 times. Within just a few days of issuance, the market value of these tokens basically reached millions of dollars, and then these tokens fell by more than 80% from their highs on average. Are these celebrity MEME coins the new wealth code, or another "scythe" with its own halo?
Who is the real driving force behind the scenes?
On the evening of May 27, a MEME coin named JENNER was launched on Pump.fun, and Caitlyn Jenner subsequently posted a tweet with the link. At first, people thought it was another RUG scam after hackers stole Twitter accounts, because the creator sold all of his tokens shortly after the opening. With Caitlyn Jenner and her team members posting videos to confirm, the token was truly confirmed to be released by her. IGGY AZALEA also had a similar process. Three hours after the release of the token, IGGY AZALEA posted the token address on Twitter to confirm that it was her. This operation process leaves room for possible advance layout, and also attracts attention by repeatedly attracting topics. Therefore, discussions on social media about the operators behind celebrity MEME coins are rampant, and there are several key figures behind the promotion of this series of tokens.
The first person behind the scenes who jumped out was Sahil Arora, who is the operator of JENNER and MOTHER. Sahil is notorious in the crypto field for manipulating the price of MEME many times. In an interview with decrypt, he said, "I have connections with almost all celebrities," and claimed that he deployed JENNER tokens. Through his Twitter account @Habibi_Comm, he introduced it as "an influential marketing company that connects celebrities with suitable projects and publishes them in cryptocurrency!" On Twitter, Sahil Arora said that in addition to making Caitlyn Jenner and IGGY AZALEA rich, he is also pushing more celebrities to issue MEME tokens. Judging from the tweets, there are indeed several porn stars who interact with him, but more interactions with Paris Hilton and KATY PERRY only stay at his unilateral forwarding of each other's tweets. The entire crypto community is also full of condemnations of Sahil Arora, and Caitlyn Jenner and IGGY AZALEA also denied the rumors of whether they cooperated with him.
In addition to Sahil Arora, another crypto KOL Ansem and American rapper Soulja Boy were also involved. Ansem was pointed out as the expert behind IGGY AZALEA. According to @miladyalchemist user, in a Space, IGGY AZALEA asked, "How many times do you think we can pump and dump the tokens or something else before people will find out?" Ansem replied, "Crypto users can abuse them many times, and if there is a possibility of bringing them money, they will still come back for more abuse." He also suggested that IGGY AZALEA wear developer socks and cat ears to attract attention. IGGY said that he would contact Soulja Boy to plan together later.
Soulja Boy responded to others' doubts on Space by saying: "Buy my tokens, make some money, and shut up." According to @zachxbt, Soulja Boy participated in at least 73 MEME coin promotions and 16 NFT airdrops. Almost all of these projects promoted by him returned to zero or plummeted after shill, and he often deleted the relevant content afterwards to distance himself from the matter. Previously, he was sued by the SEC for illegally selling TRX and BTT.
In addition, Solana officials are also considered to be the promoters of celebrity memes, and they once tweeted to welcome DAVIDO. This move, accompanied by the decline of the token, also caused strong dissatisfaction in the community.
Celebrities posting memes is not a good business
As cryptocurrency holders become a group that both Trump and Biden are competing for in the presidential campaign, more and more celebrities seem to have seen that issuing MEME coins seems to be a good business that can gain both fame and fortune, but the reality does not seem to be the case.
Unlike celebrities entering the crypto industry to issue NFTs in 2021, issuing MEMEs is fast and efficient, and even the cost of designing NFTs can be saved. Thanks to the popularity of the one-click coin issuance tool Pump.fun, this round of celebrity MEMEs are basically concentrated on the Solana chain. If everyone can issue MEMEs, then the technical threshold will no longer be a problem for MEME tokens, and influence will become a more critical factor.
As for the motivation of these celebrities to issue MEME coins, Caitlyn Jenner claimed in SPACE that she joined the crypto field because of the depreciation of the US dollar. She believes that cryptocurrency is the best way to preserve the value of assets. In addition, Caitlyn Jenner is also a supporter of Trump. She said that if the market value of the JENNER token issued on the Ethereum chain reaches 50 million US dollars, she will donate to the Trump team. However, Caitlyn Jenner sold 250 SOL (worth about 41,500 US dollars) in a short period of time after releasing the token, which seems to indicate that she does not have much confidence in her crypto assets. According to @lookonchain monitoring, Caitlyn Jenner's deployment address released 12 tokens in the next 4 days and earned 400,000 US dollars.
From an economic perspective, MEME seems to be a good business for quick profits. Davido sold $430,000 in 11 hours after launching the token, and still has a position worth $207. According to Twitter user @PixSorcerer, Davido had previously promoted six projects including RapDoge and dumped $300,000 on fans.
For celebrities with greater influence, relying on MEME coins to harvest users seems to be more trouble than gain, after all, the traces on the MEME coin chain can be checked, and the income is not as high as imagined. The MOTHER tokens held by IGGY AZALEA have not been sold yet. In addition to destroying some of them, she still holds tokens worth about $170,000. IGGY AZALEA said on Twitter: "I just think it would be hot to want to do something positive." She also said that if a carpet situation occurs, she will continue to burn her tokens.
In addition, celebrities who issue MEME also face the risk of being harvested by the operation team. A Twitter user said that the MEME tokens launched by Soul Ja Boy, Rich The Kid and other entertainment stars on pump.fun are all connected to Arora's wallet address. If this is true, it proves that Sahil Arora may be the driving force behind Jenner's tokens, and selling the tokens in a short period of time is also his operation. Perhaps in order to break away from Sahil Arora, Caitlyn Jenner chose to re-issue a token on Ethereum on May 30.
Most people do not approve of celebrities issuing coins
At present, this wave of celebrity coin issuance has not ended. NBA star Paul Millsap tweeted: "@IGGYAZALEA, let me know more about @solana! I want to introduce it to some of my NBA boys..." Another music superstar Katy Perry has 106 million followers on Twitter. On May 31, she posted a "LFG" and was also speculated to launch MEME coins. Previously, Katy Perry used pizza to interact with the audience on stage during Bitcoin Pizza Day.
The comments received by these celebrities who issued MEME coins are still mostly negative. PANews launched a poll on social media, "What do you think of overseas celebrities/Internet celebrities who cross-border #MEME?" 65.7% of users chose "scythe, cut and run, firmly resist", and only 6.6% of users thought "it can also be regarded as a propaganda industry."
In fact, seven celebrities including Davido, Adin Ross, Lindsay Lohan, and Lindsay Lohan have promoted fraudulent crypto assets since 2017. Among them, Lindsay Lohan was sued by the SEC and paid a fine of $614,000.
Looking at the history of celebrities issuing crypto assets, both Jay Chou's Phanta Bear and Stephen Chow's Nobody have fallen below the issue price, leaving their fans with nothing but a mess. Hayden Adams, co-founder of Uniswap, suggested what celebrities should do for investors through MEME coins: "Celebrity coins are not necessarily bad in concept, they are just badly done. Who will be the first celebrity to launch a token and do something real and interesting with it without giving it away?"
Perhaps, the best way for celebrities to enter the crypto world is to truly love it and use their influence to bring new vitality to it. The ultimate result of repeatedly harvesting with a meaningless token is nothing more than overdrawing trust and exhausting the resources.
