SCENE’s 2024 Story of the Year: The Boom—and Bust—of Celebrity Meme Coins

Celebrities and crypto? Nothing new about that, proper? Ever since Brock Pierce—who as a baby starred within the Walt Disney film, The Mighty Geese—co-founded Blockchain Capital, in 2013, a number of the world’s most well-known people, from Donald Trump to Lindsay Lohan, have leaned into crypto to see what was in it for them.

Some celebrities had been ready to make use of their glitzy names to pump current crypto initiatives, with predictable outcomes. The SEC introduced actions in a dozen instances over the previous decade, starting from Kim Kardashian to Floyd Mayweather Jr., who had been fined over their promotional actions. Celebs had been additionally among the many many people tarnished in the FTX scandal that virtually introduced down the crypto business.

So celebrities being part of crypto—not new. What is new, and have become a dominant theme final 12 months, was the arrival of the superstar meme coin. As meme cash changed NFTs because the degen’s favourite option to gamble, the superstar meme coin emerged, with almost a dozen stars launching their very own cash up to now 12 months.

These influencers should not simply selling the cash, they’re truly creating cash in their very own picture, selling them and, in some instances, looking for companies round them. For higher—and, much more frequent, for worse.

Conventional traders usually consider that Bitcoin traders have excessive threat tolerances, however meme coin degens are the actual mavericks—taking pictures it out within the Wild West with tokens that may skyrocket or collapse with a second’s discover. 

And nowhere is that extra evident than on the favored meme coin-launching platform, Pump.enjoyable. 

It was the Olympic decathlete Caitlyn Jenner who kicked off the superstar meme craze by launching her meme there. Pump.enjoyable, it ought to be famous, is the place folks do outrageous issues to get consideration. One fellow threatened to kill a goldfish until you purchased his meme coin; one other threatened to sit on the toilet till his token reached a $50 million market cap (and truly shaved off one eyebrow when it hit $10 million). Some went even additional off the deep finish, together with a dude who set himself on fire.

In Could, on this circus setting, Jenner determined to launch her token—posing with Donald Trump, who was then mounting his re-election bid. 

It’s arduous to overstate how insane this second was—actually, a lot of folks believed that there was no approach this was Jenner. Clearly her X account had been hacked. After which she posted a video with a weird Snapchat filter on, main some observers to consider it was an AI deepfake rip-off. Even the creator of Pump.enjoyable was initially gobsmacked.

“I used to be shitting my pants,” pseudonymous Pump.enjoyable co-founder Alon informed Decrypt. He stated the occasion was one of many craziest moments within the firm’s brief however vigorous historical past: “We revealed a tweet about it—that she launched a coin and stuff—after which we had been like, ‘Did she even launch a coin?’ I used to be questioning what was happening. It was so bizarre.”

It seems that Jenner’s stunt had been enabled by crypto promoter Sahil Arora, who had signed a contract with Jenner promising to launch the token. In accordance with the contract shared by Arora and reviewed by Decrypt, he agreed to pay the “expertise”—Jenner— $50,000 upfront and to supply her 80% of all generated income. 

It might have been the actual deal at the beginning, however Jenner virtually instantly cried foul, claiming  that Arora didn’t uphold his aspect of the cut price.

“FUCK SAHIL,” Jenner tweeted at a Decrypt reporter, who had requested about Arora. “He SCAMMED us.” Jenner informed Decrypt in Could that Arora had gone “radio silent after exhibiting a few wire transfers” and that the crypto promoter nonetheless owed her “lots of money.” Arora didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark on the time—however that was solely the start for Sahil.

After launching a Pump.enjoyable token with R&B singer Jason Derulo, who equally claimed he’d been bamboozled by Arora, the promoter informed Decrypt the drama had been “orchestrated.” When requested why Derulo can be calling him out publicly, Arora stated it was all “part of the script.”

Arora then went on to launch tokens for rappers Wealthy the Child and Lil Pump—all of whom later complained concerning the expertise. Different celebs then adopted swimsuit, with rappers Cardi B and Waka Flocka Flame and singer Sean Kingston additionally launching their very own respective tokens—although with none public involvement from Arora.

Knowledge visualization startup Bubbleworks, who went after Arora in a long X thread, stated the promoter made $30 million representing celebrities who launched meme cash this 12 months.

“Many of those tokens had been launched with apparent crimson flags from day one,” Nick Vaiman, co-founder and CEO of Bubblemaps, informed Decrypt. He pointed to elements similar to “closely managed provide, malicious intent, and clear methods to rug-pull and dump on retail traders.” 

Not all of the superstar meme coin launches resulted in tears. The exception was SCENE’S Particular person of the Yr, Australian musician Iggy Azalea. Although her token MOTHER caught warmth from Bubblemaps as a result of 20% of its provide was sniped at launch, she claimed this was executed with out her information. That could be true, however as Bubblemaps on-chain sleuths identified on the time, the one approach a token will get sniped like that’s by somebody leaking the coin’s contract handle to a gaggle of insiders early.

However, the tides of notion turned after Azalea held a Twitter Areas, demonstrated her crypto information, and slammed Arora within the course of.

“After we discovered that she knew what she was doing, we had been tremendous bullish on her,” Alon informed Decrypt. “It was wonderful—an awesome feeling.”

Because the months handed, extra celebrities created tokens and deserted them. Jenner even launched an Ethereum token, inflicting her origins Solana token to crash in worth.

So how are these superstar meme tokens doing?

On the time of writing, Jenner’s Solana token sits at a market cap of $357,000 whereas her Ethereum is at simply $139,000—a fraction of the $42 million and $7.5 million peak market caps they respectively hit earlier than plunging.

Jason Derulo’s JASON token is down 97.8% from its peak to a market cap of $783,000, Waka Flocka Flame’s FLOCKA is down 99% to $238,000, and the massively bundled WAP is down a whopping 99.65% to lower than $138,000.

“Most celebrities go in right here with the worst fucking intentions,” Azalea informed Decrypt. “I do not suppose a single fucking certainly one of them desires to make a crypto token. I feel they suppose that is one thing they’ll extract fast liquidity out of, after which they need to fuck off.”

For sure, with these tokens crashing and celebrities abandoning their initiatives, the primary lawsuit has been filed. In November, a gaggle of traders filed a class action lawsuit against Jenner and her supervisor Sophia Hutchins, accusing her of fraudulently misrepresenting her Solana meme coin and failing to register it as a safety.

Jenner’s crew didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.

Some crypto legislation specialists say prepare for extra civil litigation: “We’re going to see an uptick in lawsuits involving celebrity-endorsed meme cash,” cyber legislation lawyer Andrew Rossow informed Decrypt. “Celebrities will start to search out themselves more and more accountable not only for their promotional actions, however probably as ‘sellers’ of those digital property, opening them as much as a wider vary of authorized repercussions.”

“The Jenner lawsuit serves as a transparent warning to any superstar who believes they’ll use their fame to overpromise and underdeliver a meme coin launch solely to make a fast buck,” digital property lawyer Carlo D’Angelo informed Decrypt.

Movie star meme cash have been framed by advocates as being nice for onboarding the subsequent era of crypto merchants. Arora, for instance, informed Decrypt that he kick-started the superstar meta to make crypto extra mainstream than ever.

“For a pattern to succeed, it ought to attraction to a mainstream viewers and it ought to generate no less than a small variety of winners to maintain hope and encourage others.” Bubblemaps’ Vaiman completed. “As an alternative, superstar initiatives have solely extracted liquidity from retail, leaving everybody else as losers.”