Are memecoins the new NFTs for celebrities?

From PFP NFTs to Solana memecoins, mainstream celebrities have entered the Web3 ecosystem amid community-centric chants and short-lived hype.

Memecoins may have incorporated a new lifeline as celebrity tokens debuted on Solana (GROUND) last week, adding a new layer of buzz to the memetic culture taking over crypto.

Caitlyn Jenner recently shipped a coin called JENNER launched via the SOL-based memecoin portal pomp.fun. Shortly after trading opened, developers pounced on users and caused the price of the token to plummet, drawing attention to Jenner for allegedly orchestrating a rug pull.

Reports later revealed that a notorious conman called Sahil was behind the incident. Sahil allegedly took advantage of Jenner’s ignorance about the Web3 space and used his role as a middleman to profit from the celebrity’s memecoin.

Enter Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER memecoin

Less than 48 hours later, Australian rapper and OnlyFans model Iggy Azalea posted a token under the ticker MOTHER. According to DEX Screener, Azalea’s famous crypto surged over 30,000% and peaked at a market cap of $30 million.

User Sahil also launched an IGGY coin to siphon the Azalea hype, thereby making millions in another pump and dump bid.

Azalea distanced herself from Sahil’s IGGY, joining X Spaces to promote her piece, share her admittedly rudimentary knowledge of Web3, and express her interest in the decentralized meme ecosystem. “It’s a bet, it’s a game. That’s why it’s fun. Play the game or don’t play it. It’s your decision,” Azalea said in an online speech.

Memecoin MOTHER by Iggy Azalea | Source: DEX filter

Good for the industry or highlighting the underbelly of crypto gaming?

Some may say this trend is reminiscent of the NFT boom of 2020/2021, when 10,000-coin digital collectibles dominated the crypto waves. Traders have spent thousands, sometimes millions, on Ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies to own so-called crypto art born from controversial illustrations and blockchain algorithms.

Despite an unprecedented $64.6 billion in sales, the highs and hype of blue-chip collections like Yuga Labs’ Bored Apes Yacht Club and Crypto Punks have since waned. Skeptics say the NFT era was a flash in the pan and used the sector’s decline as a lightning rod to cast aspersions on the crypto industry as a whole.

In the same way, memecoins have drawn the ire of experts and industry observers. By crypto.news, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) CTO Eddy Lazzarin scrutinized memecoin space and compared the meme ecosystem to a risky casino.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko urged developers and users to devote resources to more sustainable projects as hyper-volatile scam and meme projects raised hundreds of millions in just hours . Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of Ethereum slammed racist meme protocols and called for community growth beyond gaming to support better projects.

Overall, expert consensus suggests doubts around memecoins, but these projects continue to launch. Binance reported that nearly 500,000 memecoins had been released since April 1. Meme tokens ranged from political satires like BODEN to animal-inspired projects like CATWIFBAG, turning speculative traders into overnight millionaires and sometimes financially destroying participants.

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