Kanye meme market capitalization exceeded 3 billion dollars in seconds, reportedly involved in insider trading.

Written by: J1N, Techub News

Renowned singer Kanye West (Ye) officially launched the cryptocurrency project YZY Money and its token YZY. The project team claims that YZY is issued on Solana and employs a random contract mechanism to prevent front-running. The team’s share is released through locking and gradual unlocking, and payments can be made using Ye Pay and YZY Card. Shortly after YZY went live, its market value exceeded $3 billion within just one hour, with a rise of up to 1414.8%. BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes even reached out to Kanye on social media, stating that he has bought YZY and jokingly said, “Please don’t rug me.” As of the time of writing, GMGN market data shows that YZY has fallen to $0.97, with a decrease of 70% within 2 hours.

Unlike previous celebrity token launches, Ye has introduced YZY Money, Ye Pay, and YZY Card this time, seemingly aligning with the Trump family’s WLFI to add so-called application scenarios to the token. More notably, the official documentation for YZY Money includes a “class action waiver” clause, explicitly requiring users to waive their rights to join class action lawsuits and bear related legal costs. This rare clause indicates that the YZY project considered potential legal risks from the outset, attempting to safeguard the project with a systematic “defensive mechanism.”

Behind this seemingly tight layout, with a comprehensive application scenario…

Lookonchain tweeted that although Kanye has officially announced the launch of YZY, the liquidity pool only contains YZY itself and does not include USDC. This means that developers can flexibly operate YZY by continuously adding or removing liquidity, which is quite similar to the previous LIBRA project. Several insider wallets have clearly made early arrangements, with one address starting with 6MNWV8 even attempting to purchase YZY a day in advance. On the day of launch, this wallet bought 1.29 million YZY for 450,611 USDC at a price of $0.35 each, and then sold 1.04 million of them for $1.39 million, leaving about 249,907 YZY (worth about $600,000), with an initial profit of over $1.5 million.

The surface-level “fair token distribution” of the project, however, hides the reality of capital and information asymmetry manipulation. Like previous celebrity token launches, it has become a game for retail investors. In fact, if we look at Kanye’s past methods, we wouldn’t be surprised by these operations.

Back in February this year, Kanye West revealed on the X platform that someone was willing to pay 2 million dollars for him to promote a Memecoin, intending to use his influence to scam fans. He not only firmly rejected the offer but also publicly shared the chat records, stating that he “would not issue a coin” and would only work on products he likes and understands. He criticized the token hype as being akin to sneaker speculation, essentially deceiving young fans.

However, things quickly took a turn. Weeks later, media reported that Kanye was preparing his own cryptocurrency YZY, with a distribution plan indicating he would receive a 70% share, tying the token to the Yeezy brand as a payment tool. Following that, he stated on Twitter that he would launch an official Meme coin and even hinted at a token named “Swasticoin.” Meanwhile, Kanye’s account behavior became increasingly erratic: he frequently retweeted Zhao Changpeng’s posts only to suddenly unfollow him, instead following other fund founders; most tweets were deleted, retaining only a few related to Zhao Changpeng. These unusual actions led outsiders to suspect that his account may have been taken over by someone else, with rumors circulating that he might sell the account rights to the BarkMeta team for 20 million dollars. Although Kanye later denied it, the controversy did not subside.

In fact, this is not the first time Kanye has “flip-flopped” in the crypto space. As early as 2021, he sold music works and merchandise through NFTs, only to later publicly deny NFTs, claiming he wanted to focus on real-world creations. However, just a few months later, he applied for trademarks related to the metaverse and NFTs, even deleting his previous denial statements. Such vacillation makes it difficult for the outside world to judge his true stance, greatly damaging his credibility among fans.

Looking at the above cases, similar to Jay Chou’s “Jay Chou Bear” NFT, Yu Wenle’s zombie NFT, or NBA celebrity Shaquille O’Neal’s DAO project Astrals, these stars once led a speculative frenzy, but almost without exception, ended in failure. History has told us: regardless of how high the individual’s popularity is, or how novel the theme is, these types of cryptocurrency or NFT projects led by internet celebrities are destined to struggle to achieve long-term value, and instead resemble a short-term “fan economy harvesting” capital game.