Well-known trader Ansem: Although the popularity of Meme coins has declined recently, I still believe that this trend will continue

Odaily Odaily News: Well-known trader Ansem said at Messari's Mainnet conference in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday that he would treat the recent celebrity coin trend differently, following the controversy surrounding the apparent rugpull phenomenon, which made celebrities rich but hurt retail investors. Ansem, whose real name is Zion Thomas, said in a fireside chat with YAP Global Assistant Director Debra Nita: "One thing I have to get used to is that anything that is even remotely related or associated with me will be taken as an endorsement because I have a lot of fans online. You have to be more careful about assuming the best side of everyone. Finances are important." "The original argument was that there was a lack of consumer applications in the crypto space - I don't want to say PMF (product market fit). They lacked a path to enter the Web2 space," Ansem said, adding that celebrities with "millions of fans" can use their "social capital" to re-attract people's interest. However, he admitted that this does not always work. For example, rapper Sexyy Red’s team reportedly owned 90% of the PRESI token supply at launch, while the token Caitlin Jenner pledged to promote is down 99% from its all-time high. “One reason this cycle (Meme coins) are doing well is because Solana enables retail investors to trade with very little money. And the user experience for people trading online is much better than in the last cycle,” said Ansem, who was also an early backer of Solana. He noted that high fees on the Ethereum mainnet limited trading cycles in previous cycles. Although the Meme coin industry has begun to cool recently, Ansem still believes that this trend will continue for a long time. He also said he is particularly interested in emerging chains, including Monad, Berachain and Movement, as well as “alt-VMs” such as Move-VM and Solana’s SVM. (The Block)