Author: Arain, ChainCatcher
In 2024, the Memecoin track emerged as a dark horse, with mixed reviews, and grew into a super cycle, causing many Old Money to be taken aback.
On the Memecoin trading battlefield, there were genius scammers who set up "wealth traps" with cunning tactics, big players who gambled in the market with accurate judgment and operations, influencers who brought traffic to tokens, and "shillers" who swayed market trends - these annual figures took the stage and together created the frenzy of the Memecoin carnival.
Alon
If it weren't for the Meme launch platform Pump.fun, this Meme carnival frenzy might have been half as lively. In this sense, Alon is a key figure in igniting the 2024 Memecoin craze.
In January 2024, Alon created and launched the Pump.fun platform, providing a place for Solana blockchain users to create and trade cryptocurrencies, allowing users to create Solana tokens for free in one minute.
As of December 26, 2024, the platform has created over 5 million Memecoins, including some relatively large ones like Billy, Michi, and Shark Cat. The platform also laid the foundation for the mass production of celebrity Memecoins, such as Lggy Azalea's MOTHER token, the DADDY token endorsed by Andrew Tate, and Jason Derulo's JASON.
Although mass-producing Memecoins can oversaturate the market, it is undeniable that Pump.fu has provided a platform and opportunities for the development and innovation of Memecoins, and has had a far-reaching impact on the development of the entire Memecoin ecosystem.
Murad
One of the top Memecoin KOLs in 2024, also known as the "Meme Theologian".
Murad has two main achievements: one is successfully investing in $SPX, and the other is becoming famous for proposing the Memecoin Supercycle theory.
Regarding the Memecoin Supercycle theory, Murad believes that Memecoins are acquiring attributes and speculative premiums from value coins, and will enter a "Meme Supercycle", where Memecoins will not only surpass traditional cryptocurrencies, but also change investor behavior and market trends, evolving from simple internet jokes into legitimate investment assets with passionate followers.
When Murad first held $SPX, the coin's market cap was only $10 million, but now it has soared to over $700 million, with a floating profit of $8.3 million. While holding this coin, he actively promoted his investment ideas on Twitter. His holdings and shilling behavior have had a certain impact on the price trends of these coins, and have also attracted the attention and following of many investors. In addition to $SPX, Murad also holds giga, pepe, sigma, apu and popcat, preferring medium to high market cap "cult-like" Memecoins.
According to Murad's own summary, he mainly adopts the "price and belief index" investment strategy, which believes that investors should look for projects with high belief but low prices, i.e., Memecoins that are undervalued but meet most of the screening criteria, usually only lacking one or two indicators that are easy to improve, and have an extremely passionate community support.
After appearing and giving a speech at Token2049, Murad's status in the Memecoin circle has reached a new level. Due to his systematic Memecoin investment and strategy, more investors, including some VCs, have started to research Memecoins.
Ansem
Another top Memecoin KOL in 2024, on par with Murad.
Compared to Murad, Ansem has a heavier trading label and believes that technical analysis is more important than fundamental analysis. Ansem gained attention from the market mainly due to his investments in BONK and WIF.
On October 30, 2023, Ansem posted on social media "X 'bonk great coin'", recommending BONK for the first time, when the BONK price was only $0.0000005618. Subsequently, BONK skyrocketed, and by March 2024, the BONK price had once broken through $0.000045, a surge of over 80 times.
As for WIF, it can be said that it was "shilled" by Ansem step by step to a $3 billion market cap. On December 12, 2023, Ansem said on social media that only WIF has the potential of SHIB, and on December 16, he posted "X 'WIF = SHIB'". Subsequently, within 4 months, the price of WIF soared from $0.09 to a historical high of $4.85, an increase of over 520 times.
Due to frequently recommending some low-cap Memecoins, which caused followers to lose money, Ansem currently faces some lawsuits. Other KOLs have accused Ansem of openly "harvesting the leeks", and in response to the accusations, Ansem said that he was only choosing the best trades in the market, and could not guarantee the success of every trade, but he had helped more people than he had harmed. Some analysts have backtested Ansem's past recommendations, and found that most of the coins would have resulted in negative returns if bought after Ansem's recommendation.
Sahil Arora
Due to being "attacked" by multiple celebrities, when the story broke, this Indian scammer caused a stir in the market, resulting in huge losses for many investors.
Sahil Arora is a serial entrepreneur, who created multiple crypto projects from 2020 to 2023, all of which ended in failure, but still allowed him to make a lot of profits.
In 2024, Sahil Arora found business opportunities in Memecoins, using his influence and verified status on Instagram to contact and collaborate with many celebrities to issue tokens. He would help these celebrities issue Memecoins, typically holding 25%-40% of the token supply, and quickly sell the tokens after the celebrities' tweets were released, treating the investments of the celebrities' fans as his "exit liquidity".
For example:
Spent $200,000 to have Jason Derulo tweet to promote a token;
Signed a contract with Kylie Jenner to issue the JENNER token, agreeing to pay a $50,000 advance and an 80% revenue share, but the collaboration turned into a fiasco, with Jenner accusing him of breach of contract and publicly cursing him, saying he had "cheated her and owed her a lot of money";
Issued tokens for Rich the Kid, Lil Pump and other celebrities, who also complained about similar experiences.
Data company Bubbleworks, through data analysis, believes that Sahil Arora made about $30 million this year by acting as an agent to issue Memecoins for celebrities.
Lggy Azalea
Australian rapper Lggy Azalea should be considered a leading figure in the 2024 celebrity Memecoin trend. In fact, Sahil Arora also had his sights set on Lggy Azalea, wanting to help her issue the Memecoin $LGG, but it was not very successful.
Lggy Azalea decided to issue her own Memecoin. The reason was that she discovered someone impersonating her to issue tokens on Telegram, so she decided to launch the token MOTHER on Pump.fun in May 2024, and focused on promoting MOTHER on her X account with 7.6 million followers, deleting all posts prior to May 29, posting 2,245 posts about MOTHER, and placing a link to the MOTHER Telegram channel on Instagram, while temporarily suspending her OnlyFans to direct fans to the Telegram channel. Within a week of its launch, the price of MOTHER token surged 1,200%.
Subsequently, Lggy Azalea appeared in Spaces of multiple communities, interacting with community members, responding to voice messages, and also appeared on the ThreadGuy podcast to share her insights on cryptocurrencies and Web3.
As Memecoins became increasingly popular, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed dissatisfaction with the celebrity Memecoin craze, believing that these coins were only to enrich celebrities and early users, and had no real utility. Lggy Azalea then confronted V-God, posting a meme photo of herself hugging V-God's baby, saying "he's angry and hungry", which caused the $MOTHER token price to temporarily surge 150% and also sparked the "family token" trend, with tokens like $DADDY and $SON also emerging.
LggyAzalea not only knows how to argue, but after arguing with V God, she also opened an online store that can only be purchased with MOTHER to buy T-shirts and other merchandise, and also announced that MOTHER or SOL can be used to purchase phones and monthly phone service packages, avoiding the worthlessness of $MOTHER.
Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner is an American reality TV personality and former track and field athlete, and like Lggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner's own media influence and public image have attracted more attention to memecoin, but the difference is that Caitlyn Jenner's issued Memecoin was not successful, ultimately leading to lawsuits from investors.
In May 2024, Caitlyn Jenner issued a token called $Jenner on Pump.fun, posting a photo of herself shaking hands with Trump on Twitter and including a link to the $Jenner token, also circling several well-known crypto KOLs and calling them "crypto kings". She then posted a Story about the $Jenner token, which her agent Sophia also retweeted.
Since Caitlyn Jenner had not previously been involved in the crypto field, her fans suspected her account had been hacked. But Caitlyn Jenner said her account had not been hacked and released a video of herself to refute the rumors, saying the $Jenner was indeed released by her team.
During the period when the token price fluctuated greatly due to various doubts, Caitlyn Jenner's Twitter account held a Space, and her agent Sophia planned to refute the rumors in the Space. However, Sophia said in the Space that the team might issue a new token, and the market began to sell off $Jenner, although Caitlyn Jenner later claimed that the team would only focus on $Jenner and would not launch any other tokens, it was to no avail.
According to Lookonchain monitoring, Caitlyn Jenner earned 2,381 SOL (about $405,000) in the past 4 days of May 2024 by launching 12 MEMEcoins on Solana.
On November 13, 2024, Naeem Azad and Mihai Caluseru, as British and Romanian citizens respectively, filed a class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting investors to buy unregistered securities, causing them to suffer significant losses.
To consume $400,000 of her own fan value and bring legal troubles, I wonder if Caitlyn Jenner feels it was worth it?
James Wynn
The annual new shill king, who once raked in $25 million by heavily investing in PEPE, but also crashed due to his ugly eating.
James Wynn quickly bought in after the PEPE coin was launched, and heavily shilled it on Twitter, posting at least 24 promotional tweets about PEPE coin on April 16, 2023 alone, helping to increase the hype of PEPE coin on social media and attracting more investors and the Meme community's attention.
On May 1, the PEPE coin price had risen 100 times compared to James Wynn's cost, and it was discovered that James Wyn had transferred the PEPE coins he held to multiple new addresses, and gradually consolidated the assets into the main wallet jwynn.eth through the operation of multiple wallet addresses, and then transferred the funds to the exchange address. Media statistics show that James Wynn made about $25 million from the PEPE token's surge, with a principal of only $7,644.
Subsequently, James Wynn began to shill the ELON token. On April 24, 2024, James Wynn tweeted "I think I have a 1000x for you, who wants it?", and an hour before the tweet, he had just completed the layout of ELON tokens in two accounts, and then announced the relevant information of the ELON token, and the ELON token price surged nearly 100 times in a short period of time.
On April 27, the price of ELON suddenly dropped 70%. James Wynn then announced on Twitter that he had cleared his position, and said that there was something wrong with the ELON token, but in fact he had already cleared his position with another rarely used address at 3 am on the 25th, and his clearing behavior led to the collapse of the ELON coin. According to statistics, James Wynn made a profit of about $350,000 through this operation in the two accounts.
Due to James Wynn's clearing behavior directly causing the collapse of the ELON price, it has damaged James Wynn's image in the community, and he has been directly accused of cutting the leeks.
Justin Sun
For such a celebrity event, Brother Sun is still a must-have.
In August 2024, the TRON blockchain launched the SunPump Beta version, claiming to be the first Memecoin platform in the TRON ecosystem based on the concept of fair issuance. SunPump can be understood as a counterpart to Pump.fun, although TRON claims that SunPump is not Justin Sun's project, in the public mind, Justin Sun will still be associated with SunPump.
After SunPump was launched, Justin Sun spared no effort to promote it, and posted that the TRON chain would soon give birth to a Memecoin with a market value of over $100 million, saying that TRON TRON and Meme culture are deeply integrated.
In addition, Justin Sun has also made deployments in other Memecoin fields. For example, he invested $10 million in the fork token SHIB Ultra of Shib, making him the largest investor in the project.
In 2024, Justin Sun's most out-of-circle event in Memecoin was the "Expensive Banana" incident. He bought the conceptual art work "The Comedian" (a banana taped to the wall) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for $6.24 million, and ate it live, paying tribute to Meme culture, which sparked public discussion of Meme culture, and through this event, he successfully combined art and Meme culture, and expanded the circle of Meme.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk has already become a heavyweight figure in the crypto digital currency circle, and although he did not intentionally promote the historical progress of Memecoin, he certainly has a hand in the history of Memecoin development. Elon Musk believes that meme is a form of modern art that can efficiently convey information and emotions, and he once said "Whoever controls the meme controls the world", reflecting his understanding of Meme culture.
Elon Musk's most widely recognized Memecoin investment is Doge (Dogecoin). In 2020, Musk began to frequently post content about Dogecoin on Twitter, such as tweets like "dogetothemoon", pushing Dogecoin from a relatively niche cryptocurrency into the vision of global investors. In early 2021, the Tesla CEO's tweet "doge" plus a rocket emoji caused the price of Dogecoin to skyrocket, breaking the historical high of $1. In addition, Musk had planned for Tesla to accept Dogecoin as payment, but the plan was later suspended. In April 2023, Musk changed the X icon to a Shiba Inu, and the price of Dogecoin rose 30% that day. In 2024, Musk paid tribute to the original dog Kabosu behind the Dogecoin meme in an X post, triggering a bullish trend in Dogecoin.
In addition to Dogecoin, Musk has also inadvertently brought some Memecoin to the market (note that this is different from shilling):
In December 2023, Musk announced that he would launch his first AI model GROK, and the eponymous Memecoin was subsequently established, which surged five-fold in two days (though it was later revealed that GROK was created by a scam artist, and the coin later crashed);
On January 9, 2024, Musk changed his Twitter personal description to (CTO) chief Troll Officer, and the TROLL coin price then soared;
On January 16, 2024, Musk posted a Meme image, and the price of the SMILEY token previously deployed on Ethereum surged by 895% in a single day due to the Meme and smiley elements in the text.
Musk's actions and words are closely watched by the crypto digital currency circle, and the market often produces a large number of Memecoin creations based on him or inspired by him, such as the "ClosedAI" token, which surged over 2800% in three hours after Musk criticized OpenAI.
Recently, Musk has changed his Twitter profile picture to a Meme image similar to Pepe the frog, and has also directly changed his name to Kekius Maximus. PEPE has surged in price, and several Memecoin concepts related to Kekius Maximus have also started to soar in the short term.
Donald John Trump
The incoming US President, who is also the former President, Donald John Trump, is often compared to Musk and has brought some Memecoin trading opportunities. At least so far, Donald John Trump has been the one on the receiving end.
In May 2024, at a Trump Card NFT gala held at Mar-a-Lago, a participant introduced him to the "boden" meme coin with a market cap of $240 million, to which Trump said "I don't like that investment". However, the meme coin subsequently surged 25% on Wednesday, reaching a high of $0.42.
On August 12, 2024, a $TRUMPMemecoin related to Trump, reportedly had a trader spend 0.052ETH (about $96 at the time) to purchase 608,650 "TRUMP" tokens, and the coin's market value had soared to $788 million by June 2024.
