Author: Arain, ChainCatcher
In 2024, the Memecoin track emerged as a dark horse, and it grew into a super cycle amid mixed reviews, which surprised many Old Money investors.
In the Memecoin trading battlefield, there are genius scammers who set up "wealth traps" with cunning means, big players who play the game in the market with precise judgment and operation, influencers who use their influence to bring traffic to tokens, and order-calling kings who influence market trends by shouting orders... These annual figures took the stage and jointly created the Memecoin carnival feast.
Alon
Without the Memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, this Meme feast might have been halved. Therefore, in this sense, Alon is a key figure in igniting the Memecoin craze of 2024.
Alon created and launched the Pump.fun platform in January 2024, providing a place for users on the Solana blockchain to create and trade cryptocurrencies, allowing users to create Solana tokens for free in a minute.
As of December 26, 2024, the platform has created over 5 million Memecoins, including several larger Memecoins such as Billy, Michi, and Shark Cat. The platform has also laid the foundation for the mass production of celebrity Memecoins, including Lggy Azalea's MOTHER token, Andrew Tate-backed DADDY, and Jason Derulo's JASON, among others.
Although mass producing Memecoins could lead to market saturation, it is undeniable that Pump.fun has provided a platform and opportunity for the development and innovation of Memecoins, having a profound impact on the overall development of the Memecoin ecosystem.
Murad
One of the top Memecoin KOLs in 2024, also known as the 'Meme Theologian'.
Murad has two main achievements: one is the successful investment in $SPX, and the other is becoming famous for proposing the Memecoin Supercycle theory.
Murad believes that the Memecoin Supercycle theory posits that Memecoins are acquiring attributes and speculative premiums from value coins, entering a 'Meme Supercycle,' meaning that Memecoins will not only surpass traditional cryptocurrencies but also change investor behavior and market trends, evolving from mere internet jokes into legitimate investment assets with passionate followers.
When Murad first held $SPX, the market capitalization of this coin was only $10 million, but it has soared to over $700 million, with unrealized gains of up to $8.3 million. While holding this coin, he actively spread investment ideas on Twitter. His holdings and calls have had a certain impact on the price trends of these coins, attracting the attention and following of many investors. In addition to $SPX, Murad also holds coins like giga, pepe, sigma, apu, and popcat, favoring mid-to-high market cap 'cult-like' Memecoins.
According to Murad's own summary, he mainly adopts the 'Price and Faith Index' investment strategy, which posits that investors should look for projects that have high faith but low prices, meaning those that are undervalued but meet most screening criteria. These Memecoins usually have only one or two indicators that have not reached the standard, are easy to improve, and have extremely passionate community support.
After appearing and giving a speech at Token2049, Murad's status in the Memecoin circle reached a new level, as more investors began to study Memecoins due to his systematic Memecoin investment and strategy— including some VCs.
Ansem
Another top KOL in Memecoins in 2024, comparable to Murad.
However, compared to Murad, Ansem's trading labels are heavier, and he believes that technical analysis is more important than fundamental analysis. Ansem has mainly attracted market attention for investing in BONK and WIF. On October 30, 2023, Ansem posted on social media 'bonk great coin', initially recommending BONK when its price was only $0.0000005618. Subsequently, BONK surged, and by March 2024, its price had broken through $0.000045, an increase of over 80 times.
As for WIF, it can be said that it was gradually called to a market cap of $3 billion by Ansem. On December 12, 2023, Ansem stated on social media that only WIF had the potential of SHIB, and on December 16, he posted 'WIF = SHIB'. After that, within four months, WIF's price surged from $0.09 to a historic high of $4.85, an increase of over 520 times.
Due to frequently recommending some small-cap Memecoins that resulted in losses for followers, Ansem currently bears some public criticism, with other KOLs accusing Ansem of openly 'cutting leeks'. In response to the criticism, Ansem stated that he is merely selecting the best trades in the market and cannot ensure the success of every trade, but he has helped more people than he has harmed. Some analysts have backtested the investment returns of Ansem's previous recommendations, finding that most coins would yield negative returns if bought after Ansem's recommendations.
Sahil Arora
Due to being 'attacked' by multiple celebrities, this Indian scammer caused a stir in the market when the news broke, resulting in significant losses for many investors.
Sahil Arora is a serial entrepreneur who started multiple crypto projects from 2020 to 2023. Although they ended in failure, he still made a significant profit.
In 2024, Sahil Arora found business opportunities in Memecoins, utilizing his influence and verified mark on Instagram to contact numerous celebrities and collaborate with them to issue tokens. He typically holds 25%-40% of the token supply while helping these celebrities issue Memecoins, quickly selling the tokens after the celebrities' tweets, treating the investments of fans as his 'exit liquidity.'
For example:
Spent $200,000 to have Jason Derulo tweet to promote the token;
Signed a contract with Caitlyn Jenner to issue the token JENNER, agreeing to a $50,000 advance payment and 80% revenue sharing, but the cooperation turned into a farce, with Jenner accusing him of breach of contract and publicly berating him, stating that he had cheated her and owed her 'a large sum of money';
Issued tokens for celebrities like Rich the Kid and Lil Pump, who also complained about similar experiences;
Data company Bubbleworks analyzed that Sahil Arora earned approximately $30 million this year by acting as an agent for celebrities to issue Memecoins.
Iggy Azalea
Australian rapper Iggy Azalea is likely considered a leading figure in the 2024 celebrity Memecoin trend. In fact, Sahil Arora has also had ideas about Iggy Azalea, wanting to help her launch the Memecoin $LGG, but it was not very successful.
Iggy Azalea decided to issue a Memecoin herself. The reason was that she discovered someone was impersonating her to issue coins on Telegram, so she launched the token MOTHER on Pump.fun on May 28, 2024, focusing her 7.6 million-follower X account on promoting MOTHER coins. She deleted all posts before May 29, published 2,245 posts about MOTHER, placed a link to MOTHER's Telegram channel on Instagram, and paused her OnlyFans to guide fans to the Telegram channel. Within a week of issuance, the price of MOTHER coins surged by 1200%.
Subsequently, Iggy Azalea appeared in multiple community Spaces, interacting with community members, replying with voice messages, and even appearing on the ThreadGuy podcast to share her insights on cryptocurrencies and Web3.
As Memecoins gain popularity, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed dissatisfaction with the celebrity Memecoin craze, believing these coins are only meant to enrich celebrities and early users without any practical use. Iggy Azalea immediately clashed with V God, posting a parody picture of herself holding a baby V God, stating 'he's both angry and hungry', leading to a temporary 150% increase in the price of the $MOTHER token, and driving the rise of 'family tokens' like $DADDY and $SON.
Iggy Azalea not only retaliated but also opened an online store after clashing with V God, offering products that can only be purchased using MOTHER, such as T-shirts, and announced that phones and monthly phone plans could be purchased using either MOTHER or SOL to prevent the value of $MOTHER from becoming worthless.
Caitlyn Jenner
Caitlyn Jenner is a celebrity from the American flag television show and a former track athlete. Like Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner’s media influence and public image attract more attention to memecoins. However, unlike Iggy Azalea, the Memecoin issued by Caitlyn Jenner was not successful, ultimately leading to her being sued by investors.
In May 2024, Caitlyn Jenner issued a token named $Jenner on Pump.fun, posting a photo of herself shaking hands with Trump on her Twitter account along with the $Jenner token link, and tagged several famous crypto KOLs, calling them 'crypto kings'. She then published a story about the $Jenner token, and her agent Sophia also shared it.
Due to Caitlyn Jenner's prior lack of involvement in the crypto field, her fans suspected that her account had been hacked. However, Caitlyn Jenner stated that her account had not been hacked and released a video of herself to clarify, asserting that $Jenner was indeed released by her team.
During a period of significant price fluctuations due to various doubts, Caitlyn Jenner's Twitter account held a Space, where her agent Sophia intended to personally clarify rumors. However, Sophia mentioned in the Space that the team might launch a new token, leading to a market sell-off of $Jenner, although Caitlyn Jenner later claimed that the team would only focus on $Jenner and would not launch any other tokens, which did not help.
According to monitoring by Lookonchain, Caitlyn Jenner earned 2,381 SOL (approximately $405,000) by launching 12 MEMEcoins on Solana in the past 4 days of May 2024.
On November 13, 2024, Naeem Azad and Mihai Caluseru filed a class action lawsuit in the California federal court as British and Romanian citizens, respectively, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting investors to purchase unregistered securities, resulting in significant losses.
To spend $400,000 on her fans' value, attracting legal troubles, one wonders if Caitlyn Jenner feels it was not worth the cost?
James Wynn
The annual rising star in the calling market, once made $25 million due to holding PEPE, but also faced a setback due to poor behavior.
James Wynn quickly bought PEPE coins within a day after the coin was launched, and posted extensively on Twitter, with at least 24 promotional posts about PEPE coins on April 16, 2023 alone, boosting the popularity of PEPE coins on social media and attracting more investors and attention from the meme community.
On May 1, the price of PEPE coins rose 100 times compared to James Wynn's cost. James Wynn was found to have transferred his PEPE coins to multiple new addresses and gradually consolidated his assets to the main wallet jwynn.eth through operations from multiple wallet addresses, ultimately transferring funds to an exchange address. Media statistics show that James Wynn made approximately $25 million during the surge of the PEPE token, with an initial investment of only $7,644.
Subsequently, James Wynn started calling out the ELON token. On April 24, 2024, James Wynn tweeted 'I think I have a 1000x for you, who wants it?' One hour before posting the tweet, he had just completed positioning two accounts in the ELON token, and then disclosed relevant information about the ELON token, which saw its price increase nearly 100 times in a short period.
On April 27, the price of ELON suddenly dropped by 70%. James Wynn subsequently announced on Twitter that he had cleared his positions and indicated that the ELON token had problems. In fact, he had cleared his positions using another rarely used address as early as 3 AM on the 25th, and his liquidation led to the collapse of the ELON coin. Statistics show that during this operation, both of James Wynn's accounts ranked in the top ten for profits, with earnings of approximately $350,000.
Due to James Wynn's liquidation actions directly leading to the collapse of the ELON price, his image in the community has been damaged, as he was accused of cutting the leeks.
Justin Sun
Such a celebrity event still needs Justin Sun.
In August 2024, TRON launched the SunPump Beta version, claiming to be the first Memecoin platform in the TRON ecosystem based on the concept of fair distribution. SunPump can be understood as a counterpart to Pump.fun. Although TRON claims that SunPump is not a project of Justin Sun, the public still associates Justin Sun with SunPump.
After the launch of SunPump, Justin Sun spared no effort in promoting it and predicted that the TRON chain would soon give birth to a Memecoin with a market value exceeding $1 billion, stating the deep integration of TRON with meme culture.
Additionally, Justin Sun has also made moves in other areas of Memecoins. For example, he invested $10 million in the forked token SHIB, becoming the largest investor in that project.
In 2024, Justin Sun gained significant attention in the Memecoin scene due to the 'expensive banana' incident. He paid $6.24 million for the conceptual artwork (a banana taped to a wall) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan and ate it during a livestream as a tribute to meme culture, sparking public discussions about meme culture. Through this incident, he successfully combined art with meme culture and expanded its reach.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk is already a heavyweight figure in the cryptocurrency space. Although he does not deliberately promote the history of Memecoins, he certainly has a mark in the development history of Memecoins. Elon Musk believes that memes are a form of modern art that can efficiently convey information and emotions, and he has stated, 'Whoever controls the meme, controls the world.' This statement reflects his understanding of meme culture.
The most well-known Memecoin investment by Elon Musk is Doge (Dogecoin). In 2020, Musk began frequently posting about Dogecoin on Twitter, such as tweets like 'dogetothemoon', bringing Dogecoin into the view of global investors. In early 2021, Tesla CEO's tweet 'doge' with a rocket emoji caused Dogecoin's price to skyrocket, breaking the historic threshold of $1. Additionally, Musk had planned for Tesla to accept Dogecoin payments, but the plan was later suspended. In April 2023, Musk changed the icon of X to a Shiba Inu, resulting in a 30% rise in Dogecoin that day. In 2024, Musk paid tribute to the original dog Kabosu behind the Dogecoin meme in a post on X, sparking a bullish trend for Dogecoin.
Besides Dogecoin, Musk has inadvertently promoted some Memecoins (note that this is different from calling out):
In December 2023, Musk announced the launch of the first AI model GROK, and a Memecoin of the same name was subsequently established, rising fivefold in two days (however, some revealed that GROK was created by a scam artist, and the coin later plummeted);
On January 9, 2024, Musk changed his Twitter bio to (CTO) chief Troll Officer, resulting in a surge in TROLL coin prices;
On January 16, 2024, Musk posted a meme image containing elements of memes and smiley faces, causing the price of the previously deployed token SMILEY on Ethereum to surge, with a daily increase of up to 895%;
Musk's words and actions are closely watched in the cryptocurrency space, often leading to a flood of Memecoins created around him or inspired by him, such as the 'ClosedAI' token, which surged over 2800% within three hours after Musk criticized OpenAI.
Recently, Musk changed his Twitter avatar to a meme character resembling the Pepe frog and directly changed his name to Kekius Maximus. PEPE responded with a price surge, and multiple Memecoins based on the Kekius Maximus concept also began to rise sharply.
Donald John Trump
The soon-to-be president of the United States, who is also a former president, Donald John Trump is often associated with Musk and brings some trading opportunities for Memecoins. At least so far, Donald John Trump has been the one caught in the crossfire.
In May 2024, at the Trump card NFT gala held at Mar-a-Lago, a participant introduced the 'boden' meme coin with a market value of $240 million to him, to which Trump replied, 'I don't like that investment.' However, the meme coin subsequently surged 25% on Wednesday, reaching a peak of $0.42.
On August 12, 2024, a $TRUMPMemecoin related to Trump reportedly had a trader spend 0.052 ETH (about $96 at the time) to purchase 608,650 'TRUMP' tokens. By June 2024, the market value of this coin had soared to $788 million.
