Original author: Grapefruit, ChainCatcher
On January 24, Binance announced the launch of the contract for the new MEME coin VINE, and the price of VINE rose by more than 100% in 24 hours. This is another celebrity meme coin representative that was quickly listed on the exchange after the Trump family meme.
Since Trump issued the meme coin TRUMP named after him on January 18, the market value of the coin has rapidly climbed to a high of nearly $80 billion in two days. At the same time, the market value of his wifes meme coin MEANIA, which has the same name, has also exceeded the $5 billion mark. Even the total market value of the meme coin BARRON, which has the same name as his youngest son, has risen sharply to about $400 million.
The astonishing increase in the value of this series of MEME coins not only made the Trump family rich, but also created a group of millionaires and even multimillionaires who became rich overnight by purchasing these memes. Every day, people on X continue to show off their huge profits from purchasing meme coins. This makes investors who once missed out on TRUMP coins unwilling to give up, hoping to catch the next celebrity meme coin that will increase 100 times as soon as possible to make up for their previous losses.
Faced with such huge economic benefits, the issuance of MEME coins by celebrities is becoming a new hype hotspot in the market. Every day, dozens of celebrity Meme coins are flying around on major social platforms, both true and false, making users overwhelmed.
Chaos: Every day, celebrity coins are released, fake coins are issued by celebrities, and Rugs are reset to zero.
The frenzy of celebrity meme coin speculation seems to have provided an opportunity for criminals. They took advantage of investors urgency and frequently launched celebrity meme coins to scam people, causing chaos in the celebrity meme coin market. Currently, many new celebrity meme coin projects emerge in the market every day, but most of them cannot escape the fate of Rug zero, and people often impersonate celebrity X accounts to issue fake meme coins, pull up the price and then delete the push.
Currently, the only celebrity meme coin that has been listed on Binance Exchange since 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), and attached a video to prove that it was the token of Vine. Earlier on January 19, Musk said that the X platform was considering restarting the Vine service, which was interpreted as Musks counterattack against Titok. The market value of the VINE token exceeded US$100 million within one hour of its launch, and rushed to the US$500 million mark that evening, with the highest bid being about US$0.5.
On January 24, Binance announced the launch of VINE token perpetual contracts. Influenced by this news, VINE tokens rose by 20% in a short period of time, and the 24-hour increase was nearly 90%. The current price is $0.38, with a market value of approximately $380 million.
Except for the VINE token, most other celebrity meme coins were either issued by scammers or were maliciously manipulated to increase prices and sell off, and eventually they all went the Rug trend.
On the day when the VINE token was listed on Binance, a meme coin ALON, which was claimed to be created by the founder of Pump.fun, quickly saw its market value rise from $300 to over $250 million.
Community users investigated the cause and found that it was the CTO of the Meme coin issuing platform Pumpfun, Alon, who posted on his X account that he had acquired the ownership of the token TG group half a year ago and paid the Dexscreener. His statement was interpreted by some crypto KOLs as the ALON token being the Meme coin of the same name issued by Pumpfun CTO, which was widely spread in the crypto community, stimulating a short-term rise in the coin price.
However, some sharp users discovered that the Meme coin ALON token was created 11 months ago and its market value has remained stable at around 3-4 million US dollars. The coin was created by a user named @_a 1 lon 9, and the CTO’s Twitter username @a 1 lon 9 is not consistent. He also created a new Meme coin DARKALON 2 days ago with a market value of less than 50,000 US dollars.
Some community users believe that the ALON token was exposed at this time and was related to Pumpfun CTO. It is very likely that the dealer took the opportunity to increase shipments under the popularity of celebrity memes, and Pumpfun CTO has stated that he did not create the token. ALON tokens also quickly fell from $250 million to around $25 million.
Although Binance Alpha announced the addition of ALON that afternoon, the good news did not drive up the price of ALON. On January 25, the ALON token was quoted at $0.025, with a market value of $25 million.
In fact, before the ALON token, there have been more and more scams like hackers steal celebrity Xs account, issue Meme coins to pull up the market and sell them, and then delete the posts and run away.
First, on January 21, hackers pretended to be the official X account of the Cuban government @CubaMINREX and released three meme coins, CUBA 1.0, CUBA 2.0, and CUBA 3.0, within 24 hours. The market value of the first generation CUBE 1.0 coin once soared to 30 million US dollars. The modern coin has been taken over by the community, with a price of 0.014 US dollars and a market value of only 14 million US dollars.
On the same day, the official Nasdaq account X was hacked and released a fake meme coin STONKS, which once had a market value of $80 million, and then crashed to $1 million; the Brazilian President X account was hacked and released the meme coin BRAIZIL representing Brazil, which had a market value of tens of millions of dollars and then quickly crashed to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On January 23, the X account of the late antivirus software founder John McAfee released the AI Meme coin AIntivirus (Ainti) token contract. Later, his wife Janice Elizabeth McAfee forwarded and promoted it on her X account, claiming that it was to continue McAfees pursuit of freedom and privacy.
After the launch of the Ainti token, its market value quickly exceeded $100 million. However, the good times did not last long. It was revealed that there were a lot of internal transactions in the AINTI token. The token deployer had distributed 60% of the AINTI before the launch, and some addresses had already shipped the tokens. Affected by the negative news, the AINTI token fell from a high of $1. As of press time, it was quoted at $0.16, with a market value of $16 million.
At present, the scam of impersonating celebrity X account to issue Meme coins is still ongoing, especially stealing the account of deceased celebrity X to issue coins and make money.
On January 24, someone pretended to be basketball superstar Jordan and opened a fake account on X to promote tokens. In fact, Jordan himself did not have any X account.
That afternoon, ChainCatcher reported that someone on the X platform impersonated former BIGBANG member TOP and issued the Meme coin BIGBANG.
Today, a fake account impersonated BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and issued the meme coin Rock.
Consensus on celebrity meme hype: Enter on-chain, run fast enough, and never go to CEX to take over
Despite the frequent scams in the celebrity meme coin market, there are still users who hope to capture a coin with wealth opportunities.
Recent comments circulating in the community - Missed Trump, was trapped by the Presidents wifes coin MEANIA, Cuba played tricks on me many times, VINE skyrocketed and plummeted, took over ALON at a high price, encountered Brazilian President Rug..., can be said to have fully expressed the helplessness and dilemma of users in chasing Meme coins endorsed by celebrities.
Some users have even summarized a new valuation system for celebrity MEMEs: the president’s coin has a market value of $10 billion, the president’s wife’s coin has a market value of $5 billion, the technology founder’s coin has a market value of $1 billion, and the celebrity’s coin has a market value of $500 million.
Faced with the endless emergence of Meme coins, experienced veterans in the market have already understood the rules of their hype: enter the market quickly on the chain, run fast enough, and never go to CEX to take over.
As long as I run fast enough, Rug cant catch up with me is vividly reflected in the transaction data of the kanyefnf.sol address. According to Ai Yi data, the user quickly bought STONKS coins at the beginning of their launch, purchasing 80.01 million coins at 49.95 SOL, with a very low cost ($0.0001607). After the price rose, he decisively sold them, and finally sold all the tokens before the crash, making a profit of $867,000 from the transaction. However, most investors were not so lucky and were eventually buried in it.
In this regard, MO (pseudonym), a young P player on the chain, feels deeply that the essence of chain meme is a game of running fast, which is to see who enters the market earlier and whether they can cash out quickly after the rise. Speed determines everything. Especially at this stage, celebrity meme coins have evolved into a PVP game at the second or minute level. A new meme coin may not even be popular for more than 3 days.
Mr. K also said in a speech at Space that every time a magic disk appears, the second and third days are basically extreme PVP. At this time, everyone is releasing a kind of anxiety about not getting on the train, and this state is actually not suitable for re-entering the market.
As for why not buy on CEX? This is because the cost of acquiring assets or transactions on the chain and CEX is different. Once Meme coins are listed on the exchange, their market value has often risen to hundreds of millions or billions of dollars, and there is very limited room for growth. Most of them cannot escape the fate of falling prices. It is easier for users to obtain low-priced chips on the early chain, and the market value is generally around tens of millions of dollars. If the market value is over 100 million, there is still room for several times of growth.
Regarding this wave of meme coin hype, an old OG user who has experienced the last cycle of celebrity NFTs said that this wave of celebrity meme coin hype is more dramatic than the previous NFT. NFT at least has a picture that can be used as an avatar, but celebrity meme coins are really just a string of numbers.
At present, it is difficult to distinguish the truth from the false stories about Meme coins on the market. There are many joint layouts between market makers and KOLs just to lure investors to take over. The popularity of celebrity Meme coins is also declining because it is difficult to find players with greater influence than the TRUMP family.
He once again reminded that investment in Meme coins must be cautious and that comprehensive judgments must be made from multiple angles, including identifying fake X accounts and preventing Rug pulls.
