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Celebrity tokens continue to bleed with some Memecoin traders losing six figures
These six tokens of five different mainstream celebrities have similar trading patterns: an initial jump in price before a crash.
The SEC has taken legal action against various celebrities, such as Kim Kardashian, for promoting cryptocurrency tokens.
(Photography)
Published May 30, 2024 at 2:46 pm EST.
In recent days, implementing a token is one of the things that mainstream celebrities have done entering or re-entering the crypto space. But this handful of celebrities launched the tokens only to see the prices of their respective coins plummet shortly after.
On Sunday, Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner’s token based on her last name began trading on Solana. The next day, American hip-hop artist Rich The Kid deployed RICH and on Tuesday Solana saw Australian rapper Iggy Azalea launch his MOTHER token.
On Wednesday, Nigerian singer-songwriter Davido launched DAVIDO via Pump.Fun, Ohio-born rock star Trippe Redd posted the contract address of his Solana-based BANDO token on X (formerly Twitter), and Jenner launched another token with the same ticker but on Ethereum.
To know more: Solana attracts attention from mainstream celebrities Caitlyn Jenner, Davido, Iggy Azalea, Rich The Kid and Trippie Redd
These six tokens from five different mainstream celebrities all have a similar trading pattern: an initial rise in price and then a precipitous drop. Over the past 24 hours, Azalea’s MOTHER token fell 41%, Rich The Kid’s RICH token slipped 52%, while Jenner’s Solana token fell 67%.
Trippie Redd’s BANDO, which generated a 24-hour trading volume of $22.73 million, is trading at $0.00020, well below its initial launch price of $0.00047. Jenner’s token on Ethereum is trading at a higher price than it started, yet in the hours following its rally, which peaked at 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the token’s value dropped by nearly 70%.
While some have profited from successfully trading these celebrity tokens, “many traders have lost money trading the $JENNER celebrity token on #Solana, even the trader who previously made $3.7 million in 5 days on [memecoin] $BOME,” he wrote cryptoanalysis investigator Lookonchain on X. Memecoin trader BOME lost over $133,000 in one day of trading JENNER.
Wallet drain linked to Davido during spaces with Ansem
Even though DAVIDO has risen in the last 24 hours, the token has lost most of its gains. The token traded near a cent around 6 PM EST on Wednesday and is currently trading at $0.0029, a decline of 72%.
Lookonchain also pointed out Wednesday evening that the wallet address that DAVIDO created on Pump.fun he had spent seven SOL worth approximately $1,190 to acquire nearly 203 million DAVIDO tokens, more than 20% of the entire supply before dumping them in multiple transactions. For Guardaonchainthe DAVIDO distributor address sold 121.88 million tokens for approximately $474,400.
Additionally, while Davido was in a Twitter space with popular memecoin trader Ansem, which started just before 9pm EST on Wednesday, the DAVIDO wallet address was trading DAVIDO for SOL via DEX aggregator Jupiter, according to the blockchain explorer Solscan.
Privileged activity around Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER
Davido’s case was not a solitary case involved in suspicious activities. The team behind Bubblemaps, an onchain tools platform, has identified insider activity on Azalea’s MOTHER token. “Insiders bought 20% of the supply at launch, before Iggy Azalea (@IGGYAZALEA) made the announcement, and have already sold $2 million,” he wrote the team on the 10th Wednesday.
Specifically, a wallet address dug up to 12% of the total supply, nearly 119 million MOTHER tokens, before Azalea announced the token contract address on X. The wallet address has since dumped all of its MOTHER tokens.
Davido, Azalea, Rich The Kid, Trippie Redd and Caitlyn Jenner launching their own tokens last week was not the first time mainstream celebrities have promoted a token, nor the first time cryptocurrency traders have seen prices plummet token prices associated with celebrities.
Wale.Moca, consultant to the Immutable gaming platform and Mocaverse identity project, examined the performance of similar projects and She said“Not surprisingly, they’re all dead, and most of them are robust.”
The US Securities Exchange Commission had taken legal action against celebrities promoting crypto tokens. For example, in October 2022, the SEC charged Kim Kardashian “for advertising on social media a cryptocurrency security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment received for the promotion.”
The Bubblemaps team warned that “more celebrity tokens will come” and urged people to remember “that most of them end up becoming worthless and are often plagued by insider trading.”
