Celebrity MEME coin generally fall more than 8 percent, and the encryption market says no to foreign "sickles".

Author: Frank, PANews

The MEME market has welcomed a group of special guests.

Recently, a number of celebrities such as Caitlyn Jenner, IGGY AZALEA, Davido, etc. have started to enter the cryptocurrency market and issue their own MEME tokens. On May 28th, former Olympic champion and important member of the Kardashian family, Caitlyn Jenner, issued the token $JENNER, triggering a frenzy among cryptocurrency players. Subsequently, female rapper Iggy Azalea issued a token called MOTHER, and Nigerian rapper Davido issued the token DAVIDO.

These Tokens have attracted the attention of the market in a short period of time. Among them, JENNER pumped up to 698 times, and MOTHER pumped up up to 644 times. In just a few days of issuance, the market capitalization of these tokens basically reached millions of dollars, and then these Tokens falls by more than 80% from their highs on average. Are these celebrities MEME coin new wealth code, or are they just another "sickle" with their own halo?

Who is the real mastermind behind the scenes

On the evening of May 27th, a MEME coin named JENNER was listed on Pump.fun, and then Caitlyn Jenner posted a tweet with this link. Initially, people thought it was another eyewash scam after a hacker stole the Twitter account, because the creator sold all of their tokens shortly after the opening. It wasn't until Caitlyn Jenner and team members posted videos to confirm that the token was truly released by her. IGGY AZALEA had a similar process, confirming her token address on Twitter three hours after releasing the token to confirm that it was her. This kind of operation process leaves room for possible advance layout, and by repeatedly attracting attention, it has earned enough eyeballs. Therefore, the discussion about the behind-the-scenes operators of the celebrity MEME coins on social media is heated, and there are several key figures behind the promotion of this series of tokens.

The first behind-the-scenes pusher to emerge is Sahil Arora, who is the author of JENNER and MOTHER. Sahil has gained notoriety in the crypto field for manipulating the price of MEME multiple times. In an interview with Decrypt, he claimed to have connections with almost all celebrities and claimed to have deployed the JENNER token. Through his associated Twitter account @Habibi_Comm, described as an influential marketing company that connects celebrities with suitable projects for cryptocurrency issuance! On Twitter, Sahil Arora stated that in addition to making Caitlyn Jenner and IGGY AZALEA rich, he is also pushing for more celebrities to issue MEME tokens. From the tweets, it does appear that several celebrities are interacting with him, but more interactions with people like Paris Hilton and KATY PERRY only involve him retweeting their tweets. The entire crypto community is filled with condemnation of Sahil Arora, and both Caitlyn Jenner and IGGY AZALEA have denied rumors of collaboration with him when responding.

In addition to Sahil Arora, another encryption KOL Ansem and American rapper Soulja Boy are also involved. Ansem is pointed out to be the operational expert behind IGGY AZALEA. According to @miladyalchemist users, in a Space, IGGY AZALEA asked "How many times do you think we can pull Token long up and sell and sell or whatever, people will find out?" Ansem replied: "encryption users can abuse them long times, and if it is possible to bring them money, they will still come back for more long abuse". And IGGY AZALEA is advised to wear developer socks and cat ears to attract attention. IGGY said it would contact Soulja Boy to plan it later.

Soulja Boy responded to someone's doubts on Space, saying, 'Buy my tokens, make some money, and then shut up.' According to @zachxbt, Soulja Boy has participated in at least 73 promotions of MEME coins and 16 NFT airdrops, most of which he advocated for ended up going to zero or experiencing a big dump, and he often deletes related content afterwards to distance himself. Previously, he was sued by the SEC for illegally selling TRX and BTT.

In addition, the Solana official is also considered a promoter of celebrity memes, and has tweeted to welcome DAVIDO, which has caused strong dissatisfaction in the community along with the token's decline.

Celebrities Making MEMEs Is Not a Good Business

With cryptocurrency holders becoming a contested group in the presidential elections of Trump and Biden, more and more celebrities seem to see the issuance of MEME coins as a lucrative business, but reality seems to prove otherwise.

Unlike celebrities entering the encryption industry and issuing NFTs in 2021, the issuance of MEME is fast and efficient, and the cost of designing NFTs can even be saved. Thanks to the popularization of the one-click coin issuance tool Pump.fun, this round of celebrity MEME issuance is basically concentrated on the Solana chain. If everyone can issue MEME, then the technical threshold will no longer be a difficulty for MEME tokens, and influence will become a more critical factor.

As for the motivations of these celebrities to issue MEME tokens, Caitlyn Jenner claimed in SPACE that she entered the crypto field because of the depreciation of the US dollar. She believes that cryptocurrency is the best way to preserve assets. Additionally, Caitlyn Jenner is a supporter of Trump. She stated that if the market capitalization of JENNER tokens issued on the Ethereum chain reaches 50 million US dollars, she will donate to the Trump team. However, shortly after Caitlyn Jenner released the tokens, she dumped 250 SOL (worth about 41,500 US dollars), seemingly lacking confidence in her own crypto assets. According to @lookonchain monitoring, Caitlyn Jenner's deployment address released 12 tokens in the following 4 days, earning 400,000 US dollars.

From an economic perspective, MEME seems to be a good business for quick profits. Davido sold $430,000 worth of tokens within 11 hours of launch, with holdings worth $207. According to Twitter user @PixSorcerer, Davido had previously promoted six projects including RapDoge and sold $300,000 to fans.

For more influential celebrities, it seems not worth the effort to rely on MEME tokens to harvest users, after all, the on-chain traceability of MEME tokens can be checked, and the returns are not as high as imagined. IGGY AZALEA still holds MOTHER tokens worth about $170,000, except for destroying a portion. IGGY AZALEA tweeted, 'I just feel like doing something positive would be popular,' and she also said that if there is a rug pull situation, she will continue to burn her tokens.

In addition, there is also the risk of celebrity-issued MEME being harvested by the operating team. A Twitter user indicated that MEME tokens launched by multiple entertainment celebrities such as Soul Ja Boy and Rich The Kid on pump.fun are linked to Arora's wallet address. If this is true, it also proves that Sahil Arora may indeed be the driving force behind the Jenner token, and selling tokens in a short period of time is also his operation. Perhaps in order to break away from Sahil Arora, Caitlyn Jenner chose to reissue a token on Ethereum on May 30th.

Most people do not approve of celebrities issuing coins

For now, this wave of celebrity coin issuance is not over. NBA star Paul Millsap tweeted: "@IGGYAZALEA, let me know more about long @solana! I'd like to introduce it to some of my NBA boys.." The other is music superstar Katy Perry, who has 106 million followers on Twitter. On May 31, an "LFG" was released, which is also speculated to be MEME coin. Previously, Katy Perry used pizza on stage to interact with the audience on Bitcoin Pizza Day.

And most of the evaluations received by these celebrities who issued MEME coins are negative. PANews launched a poll on social media, 'How do you view overseas celebrities/internet celebrities crossing over to issue #MEME?' 65.7% of users chose 'Big scythe, play people for suckers and run away, resolutely resist', while only 6.6% of users believed 'It can be considered as a promotion industry'.

In fact, since 2017, including Davido, Adin Ross, Lindsay Lohan, and others, 7 celebrities have promoted fraudulent encryption assets. Lindsay Lohan was also sued by the SEC for this and paid a fine of $614,000.

Looking at the history of celebrity token issuance, whether it's Jay Chou's Phanta Bear or Stephen Chow's Nobody, both have fallen below the issuance price, resulting in a disappointing outcome for the fans. Uniswap co-founder Hayden Adams suggests that celebrities should do something for investors through MEME coins: "Celebrity coins are not necessarily bad in concept, they just executed poorly. Who will be the first to launch a token, do something real and interesting with it, and not give up on its celebrity?"

Perhaps, the best way for celebrities to enter the crypto world is to truly love and leverage their influence to bring new vitality. Repeatedly harvesting meaningless tokens will only result in overdrawing trust and exploiting others.