Ansem, the mono-named crypto-trading extraordinaire, says he has learned to be more discerning regarding the celebrity-backed memecoins he will endorse. On stage at Messari’s Mainnet conference in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday, the cryptocurrency social media influencer said he would have approached the recent trend of celebrity-themed tokens differently following controversy over apparent rugpulls that enriched the famous and hurt retail traders.
“One thing I've had to get used to as well is just, like, anything I'm tangentially close to or related to people can take as an endorsement just because of how having a lot of followers online works,” Ansem, whose real name is Zion Thomas, said during a fireside chat with YAP Global Assistant Director Debra Nita. “You have to just be more careful with assuming the best out of everybody.”
“Finances are important,” he added.
Memecoins have had an explosive year, particularly following the debut of Pump.fun on Solana in January, which created an easy-to-use launchpad for users to mint tokens. Celebrity involvement in web3 has also started ticking up as the price of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies rebounded following the market crash of 2022.
While some laud the presence of familiar faces from the sports, music and entertainment industries as a way to bring people into the fold, many, if not most, celebrity-endorsed crypto projects have been fraught, including several that Ansem has posted about and seemingly backed.
But now, following the launch of his new blockchain project Bullpen, and the beginning of a boxing career, it appears the trader of memes is looking to make amends and get serious.
"It's interesting to see Ansem enter a new era," Nita told The Block in an interview. "I think he has broadened the scope of his interests, going beyond memecoins and celebrity coins to projects that will have a big impact on the industry like altVMs. After receiving criticism, he’s also considering the influence of what he says more thoughtfully, which is another positive shift."
“The original thesis was that consumer apps in crypto lack —I don't want to say PMF [product market fit]. They lack ways to break into the web 2.0 arena-like area,” Ansem said, adding that celebrities with “millions of followers” can use their “social capital” to recapture people’s interest.
However, he acknowledged that it doesn’t always work out. For instance, rapper Sexyy Red's team reportedly owned 90% of the PRESI token supply at launch, while Caitlin Jenner’s token, which she promised to promote, is down 99% from its all-time high.
One “reason this cycle specifically that [memecoins have] done well is Solana has enabled retail to trade with very little amounts of money. And the UX for people trading onchain is a lot better than it was last cycle,” Ansem, an early Solana supporter, said. He noted that high fees on the Ethereum mainnet limited previous trading cycles.
Although the memecoin sector has begun to cool off recently, Ansem still sees the trend as having long legs.
“Since they saw [tokens like DOGE rally] last cycle, people already had that in their head of memes going that high. So, it's not really that difficult for people to take the same trades and have the same mindset,” Ansem said.
Discussing the phenomenon, Ansem said that frequently memecoins are the first trend to take hold on new Layer 1s, partly because token holders will look for ways to spend their funds. He said that he’s particularly interested in emerging chains, including Monad, Berachain and Movement and “alt-VMs” (as opposed to the Ethereum Virtual Machine) like Move-VM and Solana’s SVM.
While often seen as a joke, Ansem said the memecoins are a powerful tool for tracking what has captured the zeitgeist. In that sense, they’re as real a crypto “primitive” as foundational elements like open finance and privacy.
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