Original author: Arain, ChainCatcher
In 2024, the Memecoin track rose unexpectedly, with mixed reviews, and grew into a super cycle, causing many Old Money to be taken aback.
On the Memecoin trading battlefield, there are genius scammers who have set up "wealth traps" through cunning means, big players who have gambled in the market through accurate judgment and operation, influencers who have brought traffic to tokens, and shillers who have influenced market trends through shilling... These annual figures have taken the stage, jointly creating the grand celebration of Memecoin.
Alon
If it weren't for the Meme launch platform Pump.fun, this Meme carnival might have been half as lively. Therefore, 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 users on the Solana blockchain 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 Memecoins such as Billy, Michi, and Shark Cat. The platform has 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.fun 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.
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 the 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 faith index" investment strategy, which believes that investors should look for projects with high faith 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 Token 2049, 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 stronger trading label and believes that technical analysis is more important than fundamental analysis. Ansem gained market attention mainly through investing in BONK and WIF. On October 30, 2023, Ansem posted on social media "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 exceeded $0.000045, a surge of over 80 times.
As for WIF, it can be said to have been hyped up to a $3 billion market cap by Ansem. On December 12, 2023, Ansem claimed on social media that only WIF has the potential of SHIB, and on December 16, he posted "WIF = SHIB". Subsequently, within 4 months, the price of WIF soared from $0.09 to a historical high of $4.85, a surge of over 520 times.
Due to frequently recommending some small-cap Memecoins that caused followers to lose money, Ansem is currently burdened with some lawsuits, with other KOLs accusing Ansem of openly "harvesting the leeks". Facing the accusations, Ansem claimed that he was only choosing the best trades in the market, and could not guarantee the success of every trade, but he has helped more people than he has harmed. Some analysts have backtested Ansem's past recommendations, and 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 incident was exposed, this Indian scammer caused a sensation in the market, resulting in huge losses for many investors.
Sahil Arora is a serial entrepreneur, who started multiple crypto projects from 2020 to 2023, which all 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, 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 token JENNER, agreeing to pay a $50,000 advance and an 80% revenue share, but the collaboration turned into a farce, 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
The 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 found someone impersonating her to issue tokens on Telegram, so she decided to launch the token MOTHER on Pump.fun in May 2024, and focused her X account with 7.6 million followers on promoting MOTHER, 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 through 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, without any 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 temporarily caused a 150% surge in the $MOTHER token price and also triggered a "family token" trend, with tokens like $DADDY and $SON also emerging.
Here is the English translation of the text, with the specified terms translated as requested:Lggy Azalea not only knows how to 'shill', after 'shilling' V-God, she opened an online store that only accepts MOTHER to purchase T-shirts and other merchandise, and also announced that MOTHER or SOL can be used to purchase phones and monthly phone plan subscriptions, avoiding the worthlessness of $MOTHER.
Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner is an American reality TV personality and former track and field athlete. Similar to Lggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner's own media influence and public image have attracted more attention to Memecoin, but unlike Lggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner's issued Memecoin was not successful, ultimately leading to her being sued by investors.
In May 2024, Caitlyn Jenner issued a token called $Jenner on Pump.fun, posting a photo on Twitter of herself shaking hands with Trump and including a link to the $Jenner token, also highlighting several famous crypto KOLs as "crypto kings". She later posted a Story about the $Jenner token, which was also reposted by her agent Sophia.
As Caitlyn Jenner had not previously been involved in the crypto space, her fans suspected her account had been hacked. However, Caitlyn Jenner stated that her account had not been hacked and released a video of herself to refute the claims, confirming that the $Jenner token was indeed issued by her team.
During the period when the token price fluctuated greatly due to various doubts, Caitlyn Jenner's Twitter account hosted a Space, where her agent Sophia planned to personally refute the rumors. However, Sophia stated in the Space that the team might issue a new token, causing the market to start selling off $Jenner, and although Caitlyn Jenner later claimed the team would only focus on $Jenner and not issue 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, British and Romanian citizens respectively, filed a class-action lawsuit in a California federal court, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting investors to purchase unregistered securities, causing them to suffer significant losses.
Consuming $400,000 of her fans' value for her own consumption, and bringing legal troubles, it's unknown whether Caitlyn Jenner feels it was worth it.
James Wynn
The annual newcomer 'shill' king, who once raked in $25 million by heavily investing in PEPE, but also crashed due to his ugly eating habits.
James Wynn quickly bought in on the PEPE token within a day of its launch, and heavily 'shilled' it on Twitter, posting at least 24 promotional tweets about PEPE on April 16, 2023 alone, helping to increase the hype of PEPE on social media and attracting more investors and the Meme community's attention.
On May 1st, the PEPE token price had increased 100-fold compared to James Wynn's cost, and he was discovered to have been transferring his PEPE tokens to multiple new addresses and gradually consolidating the assets to his main wallet jwynn.eth, before transferring the funds to exchange addresses. Media reports estimate that James Wynn made around $25 million from the PEPE token's surge, with an initial capital of only $7,644.
Subsequently, James Wynn started 'shilling' the ELON token. On April 24, 2024, James Wynn tweeted "I think I have a 1000x for you guys, who wants it?", and within an hour of posting the tweet, he had just completed positioning in two accounts in the ELON token, then revealed the ELON token information, and the ELON token price surged nearly 100-fold in a short period of time.
On April 27th, the ELON price suddenly dropped 70%. James Wynn then announced on Twitter that he had cleared his position, and claimed ELON had issues, when in fact he had already cleared his position using another rarely used address at 3am on the 25th, causing the ELON token's collapse. It is estimated that James Wynn made a profit of around $350,000 through this operation across the two accounts.
Due to James Wynn's clearing behavior directly causing the ELON price collapse, it has damaged his image in the community, with him being directly accused of 'harvesting the leeks'.
Justin Sun
For such a celebrity event, it has to involve Mr. Sun.
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 SunPump is not Justin Sun's project, in the public mind, Justin Sun will still be associated with SunPump.
After the launch of SunPump, Justin Sun spared no effort to promote it, and posted that the TRON chain will soon give birth to a Memecoin with a market cap of over $100 million, claiming the deep integration of TRON TRON and Meme culture.
In addition, Justin Sun has also been deploying in other Memecoin areas. For example, he invested $10 million in the SHIB fork token SHIB Ultra, making him the largest investor in the project.
In 2024, Justin Sun's most out-of-the-circle event in Memecoin was the "Expensive Banana" incident. He purchased the conceptual art piece "The Comedian" (a banana taped to a wall) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for $6.24 million, and ate it live, paying tribute to Meme culture, which sparked public discussion on Meme culture, and through this event, he successfully combined art and Meme culture, and expanded the reach of Meme.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk has already become a heavyweight figure in the crypto and digital currency circle, although he did not intentionally promote the historical progress of Memecoin, but he definitely has a hand in the development history of Memecoin. 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 memes, 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" with a rocket emoji caused the Dogecoin price 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 logo to a Shiba Inu, and Dogecoin surged 30% that day. In 2024, Musk paid tribute to the original Doge meme dog Kabosu in an X post, triggering a bullish trend in Dogecoin.
In addition to Dogecoin, Musk has also inadvertently helped to promote some Memecoin (note that this is different from 'shilling'):
In December 2023, Musk announced he would launch his first AI model GROK, and a Memecoin of the same name 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 bio to (CTO) chief Troll Officer, and the TROLL token price subsequently 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 statements are closely watched by the crypto and digital currency circle, and the market often produces a large number of Memecoin creations themed around 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, 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 the Trump Card NFT Gala held at Mar-a-Lago, a participant introduced him to the "boden" meme coin with a market value of $240 million, and 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 Memecoin related to Trump, $ TRUMP, reportedly had a trader spend 0.052 ETH (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.
