Celebrities Coins have become a hot topic on CT this week, taking the frenzy of meme coins to a new level.
On Monday, the sudden emergence of the meme coin $JENNER skyrocketed overnight, with its development team consisting of Caitlyn Jenner, a member of the famous American influencer family with 33 million Twitter followers. Jenner not only knows how to use Pump.fun but also interacted with a series of meme OGs from the crypto community like Ansem and Paul in the comments section to generate hype for the token.
Last night, Celebrities Coins once again dominated the meme section with trading activity. Female rapper Iggy Azalea tweeted on X, saying, “Don’t disappoint your mom,” and included the contract for the meme coin $MOTHER, which surged thirty-fold in just two minutes.
This morning, Iggy Azalea even hosted a Space and interacted with the community, with almost all of her posts being related to meme coins.
Iggy had quit Twitter last year due to the “toxic atmosphere,” but has been active again since May. She has been in contact with Sahil Arora, the issuer of the $JENNER token, and also launched her own meme coin called $IGGY.
Sahil Arora is a key figure in this celebrity meme coin trend. In an interview with Decrypt, he revealed that he has been involved in many celebrity projects, saying, “Sometimes I approach them, but most of the time, they come to me, and then I choose who to collaborate with. This is the only way to make cryptocurrencies more mainstream and benefit from the attention economy.”
Are celebrity meme coins good or bad?
While Sahil sees celebrity-issued meme coins as a way to make cryptocurrencies more mainstream, there is a significant divide in the community regarding these coins.
Many believe that the celebrity meme coin trend will come and go like the previous meme coin presale frenzy. Others argue that celebrity meme coins will inevitably end up like celebrity NFT projects: full of empty promises, obvious fan exploitation, and leaving a bad taste in the mouths of newcomers to cryptocurrencies.
The chart below shows the final fate of celebrity coins and celebrity NFT projects launched in the past, indicating that the high multiples and profits are temporary, and they ultimately end up at zero or rug.
Image source: Autism Capital
Crypto KOL Larp von Trier even bluntly stated, “I would rather die poor than support celebrity coins.”
But another crypto KOL, dubzy, sees this as a good thing, considering it a form of onboarding. If a newcomer is scammed or loses money by following these celebrities into cryptocurrencies, it can still be a way for them to learn about cryptocurrencies and be more cautious in the future.
“The initial loss can ignite the fire within them. Some people may quit, calling cryptocurrencies scams and never turn back, and that’s okay. Not everyone can handle the trenches, and not everyone can succeed. Ultimately, it’s all entertainment.”
These comments have sparked a lot of discussion in the comments section and can even be seen as a field study on how to attract the masses. Chris Burniske, former head of crypto at Ark Invest and current partner at Placeholder VC, commented, “Cryptocurrencies will be criticized for revealing the truth about modern culture without embellishment.”
If the first phase of meme coins in this cycle was about tokenizing attention, the current celebrity coins are tokenizing social status.
This morning, Pump.fun announced its support for live streaming, which means that from meme coin creation, launch, to marketing operations, Pump.fun provides an all-in-one, user-friendly SaaS platform. This seems no different from live streaming e-commerce on Douyin (TikTok). If you are a celebrity, your livestream won’t lack traffic, just like what these celebrity meme coin issuers are doing.
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