"Fraud involving the use of celebrity X's account to issue coins" is frequent. Is the hype around celebrity meme coins coming to an end?

Author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher

On January 24, Binance announced the launch of the new MEME coin VINE's contract, with the price of VINE rising over 100% within 24 hours. This is another celebrity MEME coin representative that has quickly launched on exchanges following the Trump family Meme.

Since the issuance of the Meme coin TRUMP named after him on January 18, the market capitalization of this coin has rapidly climbed to nearly $80 billion within two days. Meanwhile, the Meme coin MEANIA, named after his wife, also once surpassed the $5 billion mark, and even the Meme coin "BARRON," named after his younger son, saw its total market capitalization sharply rise to about $400 million.

The astonishing price increases of this series of MEME coins have not only made the Trump family wealthy but have also created a group of millionaires and even multi-millionaires who became rich overnight by purchasing these Memes. Every day, users on X are showcasing their huge profits from buying Meme coins. This has left investors who missed out on TRUMP feeling regretful, hoping to quickly capture the next hundredfold celebrity Meme coin to make up for previous losses.

Faced with such enormous economic benefits, the issuance of MEME coins by celebrities is becoming a new hot topic in the market, with dozens of celebrity Meme coins appearing on various social platforms every day, making it hard for users to distinguish between real and fake.

Chaos: New celebrity coins emerge daily, impersonation of celebrities to issue fake coins, and continuous Rug pull stories

The frenzied atmosphere surrounding celebrity Meme coin speculation seems to have provided opportunities for criminals, who exploit investors' urgency by frequently launching celebrity Meme coins for scams, leading to chaos in the celebrity Meme coin market. Currently, multiple new celebrity Meme coin projects emerge daily, but most cannot escape the fate of Rug pulls, and there are often impersonators using celebrity X accounts to issue fake Meme coins, only to delete their posts after selling.

As of now, the only celebrity Meme coin that has launched on Binance after TRUMP is VINE.

On the morning of January 23, Rus Yusupov, one of the early founders of the short video platform Vine, announced on the X platform that he had issued the Meme coin VINE (VINECOIN), along with a video proving it was Vine's token. Previously, on January 19, Musk had indicated that the X platform was considering restarting Vine services, which was interpreted as Musk's counterattack against TikTok. The VINE token's market capitalization surpassed $100 million within an hour of its launch, and by that evening, it surged to $500 million, with a peak price of about $0.5.

On January 24, Binance announced the launch of VINE token perpetual contracts. Following this news, the VINE token briefly rose by 20%, with a 24-hour increase of nearly 90%, currently priced at $0.38, with a market capitalization of about $380 million.

Aside from the VINE token, most other celebrity Meme coins are either issued by impersonators or involve malicious manipulation to inflate prices before selling off, ultimately heading towards a Rug trend.

On the same day that the VINE token was launched on Binance, a Meme coin called ALON, claimed to be created by the founder of Pump.fun, saw its market capitalization rapidly exceed $250 million from a mere $300.

Community users investigated the reason and found that the CTO of the Meme coin issuance platform Pumpfun, alon, had stated on his X account that he had acquired ownership of the token's TG group six months ago and paid for Dexscreener's fees. His statement was interpreted by some crypto KOLs as indicating that the ALON token was indeed the same-name Meme coin issued by Pumpfun's CTO, which was widely circulated in the crypto community, stimulating a short-term price surge.

However, keen users discovered that the ALON Meme coin was created 11 months ago, with a market capitalization consistently stable around $3-4 million. This coin was created by a user named @_a1lon9, while the CTO's Twitter username @a1lon9 did not match, and he had also created a new Meme coin DARKALON just two days prior, with a market capitalization of less than $50,000.

Some community users believe that the timing of the revelation linking the ALON token to Pumpfun's CTO is likely a scheme by market makers to take advantage of the hype around celebrity Memes to inflate prices before selling off, and the Pumpfun CTO has stated he did not create the token. The ALON token quickly fell from $250 million back to around $25 million.

Despite Binance Alpha announcing the addition of ALON that afternoon, this positive news did not drive up the price of ALON. On January 25, the ALON token was priced at $0.025, with a market capitalization of $25 million.

In fact, before the ALON token, there had been an increasing number of scams involving "hackers stealing celebrity X accounts, issuing Meme coins to pump and dump, then deleting posts and running away."

First, on January 21, hackers impersonated the official X account of the Cuban government @CubaMINREX, posting three Meme coins CUBA1.0, CUBA2.0, and CUBA3.0 within 24 hours. The market capitalization of the first generation CUBE1.0 even soared to $30 million at one point, while the modern coin has been taken over by the community, priced at $0.014, with a market capitalization of only $14 million.

On the same day, the official Nasdaq X account was hacked, posting a fake Meme coin STONKS, which saw its market capitalization rise to $80 million before crashing to $1 million; the Brazilian president's X account was hacked to release a Meme coin BRAIZIL, which surged to millions before quickly plummeting to hundreds of thousands.

On January 23, the late antivirus software founder John McAfee's X account published the AI Meme coin AIntivirus (Ainti) token contract. Subsequently, his wife Janice Elizabeth McAfee retweeted and promoted it on her X account, claiming it was to continue McAfee's pursuit of freedom and privacy.

After the launch of the Ainti token, its market capitalization quickly broke $100 million. However, the good times did not last long, as the AINTI token was reported to have significant internal trading activities, with 60% of AINTI distributed before its launch, and some addresses had already sold off. Due to negative news, the AINTI token fell from a high of $1 to $0.16, with a market capitalization of $16 million at the time of writing.

Currently, the scam of "impersonating celebrity X accounts to issue Meme coins" is still ongoing, especially with the theft of deceased celebrities' X accounts to issue coins for profit.

On January 24, someone impersonated a fake account of basketball superstar Michael Jordan on X to promote a token, even though Jordan himself does not have any X account.

That afternoon, ChainCatcher reported that someone was impersonating former BIGBANG member T.O.P on X to issue the Meme coin BIGBANG.

Today, there was also a fake account impersonating BlackRock CEO Larry Fink issuing the meme coin Rock.

Consensus on Celebrity Meme Speculation: Enter on-chain, run fast enough, never buy on CEX

Despite the frequent scams in the celebrity Meme coin market, there are still users hoping to capture a coin with wealth opportunities.

Recent community discussions—"missing out on Trump, being trapped by the president's wife coin MEANIA, being toyed with by Cuba multiple times, VINE's volatility, buying ALON at a high, encountering the Brazilian president's Rug…"—truly reflect the users' helplessness and dilemmas in chasing celebrity-backed Meme coins.

Some users have even summarized a new valuation system for celebrity MEMEs: presidential coins valued at $10 billion, presidential wife coins at $5 billion, tech founders at $1 billion, and celebrity coins at $500 million.

Faced with the endless stream of Meme coins, experienced old players in the market have already discerned the speculation rules: enter on-chain quickly, run fast enough, and never buy on CEX.

"As long as I run fast enough, the Rug can't catch me," this is vividly reflected in the trading data of the kanyefnf.sol address. According to Ai Yi's data, this user quickly bought 80.01 million STONKS coins at the launch for 49.95 SOL, with an extremely low cost ($0.0001607). After the price rose, they decisively sold all tokens before the crash, ultimately making a profit of $867,000. However, most investors were not so lucky and ended up buried in losses.

In this regard, on-chain player MO (pseudonym) deeply feels that on-chain Meme is essentially a game of speed, where it’s about who enters early, who can cash out quickly after the rise, and speed determines everything. Especially at this stage, celebrity Meme coins have evolved into a PVP game at the second or minute level, with a new Meme coin often not lasting more than three days in popularity.

K also mentioned in a Space that every time a "godly plate" appears, the next day or two is basically extreme PVP. At this time, everyone is releasing a kind of anxiety about missing out, which is not suitable for re-entering the market.

As for why not buy on CEX? This is because the costs of acquiring assets or trading on-chain and on CEX are different. Once a Meme coin is listed on an exchange, its market capitalization often rises to hundreds of millions or billions, leaving very limited room for growth, and most cannot escape the fate of falling prices. Users find it easier to acquire low-priced chips on-chain in the early stages, with market capitalizations generally around tens of millions, and if the market capitalization exceeds hundreds of millions, there is still several times of upward potential.

Regarding this wave of Meme coin speculation, an old OG user who has experienced the previous cycle of celebrity NFTs stated that this wave of celebrity Meme coin speculation is even more theatrical than the previous NFTs. At least NFTs have an image that can be used as an avatar, while celebrity Meme coins are really just a string of numbers.

Currently, the stories of getting rich from Meme coins on the market are hard to distinguish between truth and falsehood, with many involving collusion between market makers and KOLs, all to lure investors into buying. The popularity of celebrity Meme coins is also declining, as it is difficult to find players with greater influence than the Trump family.

He again reminds that investing in Meme coins must be cautious, and comprehensive judgment should be made from multiple angles, including identifying fake X accounts to prevent Rug pulls.