Author: Golem, Odaily
This morning, another fast-moving coin appeared on the Solana chain - VINE. The token shares the same name as the short video platform Vine, which Twitter announced the closure of in 2016. The token was launched just 1 hour ago and its market cap has surpassed $100 million, later pulling back to $5 million. But after Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov claimed the dev identity on Twitter, the VINE price skyrocketed, reaching a market cap of up to $240 million, and is currently still maintaining around $200 million.
Vine was a short video platform similar to TikTok, allowing users to create and share video clips up to 10 seconds long on social networks. The platform was launched in June 2012, co-founded by Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov and Colin Kroll. In October 2012, it was acquired by Twitter (now called X), but Twitter announced the closure of Vine on October 27, 2016 as part of a corporate restructuring plan.
Musk has mentioned Vine multiple times, and the market keeps launching new projects
After acquiring Twitter, Musk has expressed the idea of restarting Vine on social media multiple times.
On October 31, 2022, Musk launched a poll on Twitter, asking whether to bring back Twitter's short video app Vine. The results showed that 69.6% of the voters supported the revival of Vine. After the poll results were announced, Musk immediately instructed the Twitter engineering team to restart the short video app Vine, and announced that it would be ready by the end of that year, but it never materialized.
On April 18, 2024, Musk launched the same poll on the X platform, asking whether Vine should be restarted. By that time, Meme coins on Ethereum had already emerged, so multiple Vine-named Meme coins appeared on Ethereum, with the highest market cap reaching $7 million, which has now dropped to zero.
A year later, Musk mentioned restarting Vine again, but this time without launching a poll. On January 19, a user tagged Musk on the X platform, saying "It's time to restart Vine", and Musk responded "Considering it".
On the same day, multiple Vine-named MEME coins appeared on the Solana chain. Among them, the one with the highest market consensus (Fun...D4AU) reached a peak market cap of over $10 million.
Vine's co-founder personally issued a token
Although there are many Vine-named MEME coins flying around the market, none of them have been recognized or interacted with by Vine or Musk.
Interestingly, this morning, Rus Yusupov, one of the co-founders of Vine, personally issued a MEME coin with the same name. Although he sold Vine to Twitter just 4 months after creating the short video platform, and has not owned or participated in the subsequent development and maintenance of Vine, the market quickly reached a consensus that the VINE (6A...pRpump) token he issued is the leader. Other Vine-named MEME coins are close to zero.
But the FOMO is far from over. This afternoon, Rus Yusupov posted that all developer-held VINE tokens are locked until April 20, and will remain locked until Vine is restarted. This announcement caused VINE to surge, with its market cap exceeding $100 million.
Rus Yusupov's address publicly holds 5% of the total VINE supply, which has already been locked. Although the dev lock-up is a positive for the token, apart from Rus himself having a brief relationship with the Vine platform, the MEME coin he issued, like other MEME coins, is just riding the hype and has no real connection to the Vine platform, and the key point still lies with Musk.
It's worth noting that after selling Vine, Rus Yusupov and Dom Hofmann started a new venture in 2017, launching the live game interactive app HQ Trivia. In February 2020, HQ Trivia announced its closure, and although Rus Yusupov later bought the HQ franchise rights and kept it running, there have been no games since November 2022, and HQ Trivia was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store on August 5, 2023.
In the current market environment, the capital capacity of MEME has exceeded the past. Although Vine-related MEME coins have been hyped multiple times in the past, they are still able to attract people's attention, it's just unknown whether Musk will actually fulfill his promise to restart Vine this time.
Whether Rus Yusupov's token issuance is for money-grabbing or to voice for the Vine platform, in a world where even the US President personally issues tokens, it doesn't seem too unusual. After all, people like Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the Dark Web Silk Road, who didn't utilize the hype to issue tokens, are already a rarity.
