Yesterday, Caitlyn Jenner, the stepfather of Kim Kardashian, released the token JENNER. Initially, many users believed it was a case of hacking, but there were several twists that followed, and the token’s market value skyrocketed to $40 million.
While the community was still focused on JENNER, Caitlyn Jenner unexpectedly released a new token called BBARK in the early hours of today. After the announcement, JENNER’s price plummeted from $0.027 to $0.011, a decrease of approximately 60%.
In reality, before Jenner released the pump link, the token had already been sold out on the internal market. The top ten addresses held 49% of the tokens. Following JENNER’s success, many users tried to manipulate the token’s value, causing it to soar from $70,000 to $5 million.
Within a span of just ten minutes, the trading volume reached $20 million, but the token’s price showed no signs of increasing. Data from various websites showed that large holders who bought into the internal market continued to sell, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars from each address.
Shortly after, Jenner posted a new tweet with the phrase “Not just my own token,” implying that the newly released BBARK token was not her personal creation or launch. However, this tweet did not have any significant impact on the traders, and the token’s price remained stable.
A few minutes later, Jenner deleted the previous tweet about BBARK, causing the token’s price to drop by 50%, and the largest holder of the token sold off 10% of their supply. Jenner then updated the tweet, attaching an advertisement label and directly stating that the token was not owned by her but was a promotion for another team’s token. One hour after the token’s launch, Jenner deleted all posts related to BBARK, stating, “That third-party token advertisement has been taken down. As I have said from the beginning, I am only focused on JENNER, and the confusion caused by the advertisement is not worth it.”
After the initial deletion, the token’s market value started to decline, dropping from $2 million to the current $100,000. However, JENNER started to recover and has already regained 50% of its previous drop, bringing its market value back to $20 million.
Is this a case of a clear manipulation? If we assume that this event is malicious market manipulation, we can speculate on the following story: Jenner first used Pump to purchase the majority of the chips, then announced the new token, taking advantage of the FOMO (fear of missing out) sentiment generated by JENNER to make huge profits from selling. Simultaneously, the release of the new token caused a significant drop in JENNER’s price, allowing Jenner to collect chips at the bottom. After completing the profitable selling, Jenner deleted all posts related to the new token to redirect attention back to JENNER and profit from its recovery.
Of course, this is just speculation from a conspiracy theory perspective, and we cannot know the true facts. However, the extreme distribution and dumping of the new token, along with the multiple deletions of tweets and changing narratives, suggest that this is not a simple promotion.
Jenner is the first celebrity to use Pump to launch a token. Unlike the previous mention of false influence by celebrities in the “Pump PVP Handbook,” Jenner is a celebrity who can genuinely monetize her influence. This situation is similar to the peak period of NFTs in 2022 when many celebrities endorsed projects, only to leave behind failed projects after harvesting profits.
As a form of attention economy, meme tokens are more difficult to maintain attention compared to NFTs. They are also harder to generate additional value through operations and creativity, ultimately making them short-term speculative projects for users. For example, today, rapper Rich The Kid (with approximately 2.4 million followers on X platform) also started his Pump token, which quickly surged but has now fallen to the bottom.
As more celebrities join the Pump token trend to monetize their influence, it becomes increasingly challenging for users to profit, and they must be wary of scams that exploit celebrity influence.