A review of those short-lived celebrity Meme coins

Author: Jesse Coghlan, CoinTelegraph; Translation: Deng Tong, Golden Finance

Celebrity-themed cryptocurrencies experienced a brief moment of glory in 2024, as public figures sought to capitalize on their fame amidst the steady rise of cryptocurrencies.

However, the ‘celebrity Meme coin’ has seen a sharp decline in value since its launch, or a significant drop from its peak.

Let’s take a look at the Meme celebrity tokens that will disappear without a trace in 2024.

凯特琳·詹纳 (Caitlyn Jenner) 的 JENNER

Former Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner launched her eponymous JENNER token at the end of May through the Solana memecoin launcher Pump.fun.

This release has been overshadowed by chaos, as many believe that Jenna’s X account has been hacked.

Even the now deleted video ensuring that she was not hacked is considered a deepfake, as other celebrities, including Jenner’s step-sister Kim Kardashian, have faced harsh crackdowns from the SEC for promoting cryptocurrency tokens.

Bubblemaps represents that in the subsequent issuance of celebrity tokens, a batch of wallets held a quarter of the token’s supply and sold it in advance, generating $500,000 in sales.

Jenner blamed Arora for the token’s early price drop, claiming that he cheated her team. She then launched the token on Ethereum, which, according to CoinGecko, has now essentially lost all value, down 98.5% from its peak.

In November last year, Jenner faced a collective lawsuit for promoting these tokens, which alleged that she and her manager, Sophia Hutchins, “fraudulently solicited financially inexperienced investors […] to purchase unregistered securities.”

Mother Iggy

Australian rapper Iggy Azalea (real name Amethyst Kelly) is known for her popular single ‘Fancy’ ten years ago. In May, she launched the wildly popular Mother Iggy (MOTHER) token, which is part of a controversial series of celebrity token issuance activities initiated by Sahil.

MOTHER was launched after Azalea accused Arora of using her likeness to launch the token. MOTHER peaked at 23 cents in early June, but is currently down about 87% and has been trading at around 5 cents for most of the year, according to CoinGecko.

MOTHER briefly topped 20 cents shortly after its launch, but has not been able to rise again since. Source: CoinGecko

This is not because Azalea lacks effort. She - or someone on her team - has made posting about the token a full-time job, with countless posts about the token on X and Telegram every day.

The retired rapper has also tried to give Meme Coin “utility” by launching an online crypto casino called Motherland a few days before Christmas, which accepts the token and has also relaunched her telecom company, Unreal Mobile, whose phones and plans accept MOTHER.

Cryptocurrency analytics firm Bubblemaps claims that MOTHER saw internal activity at launch, with a handful of wallets buying 20% of the supply before Azalea’s public announcement, and then the wallets immediately sold off, making a $2 million profit.

Earlier this year, lawyers said that U.S. residents Azalea and other American celebrities may conflict with the local Securities and Exchange Commission, which claims that most cryptocurrencies are securities.

Hawk Tuah (HAWK)

Haliey Welch rose to fame in June after the controversial release of the Hawk Tuah (HAWK) Meme Coin, bringing her catchphrase back into the spotlight.

HAWK was launched in December. According to Bubblemaps analysis, the internal wallet purchased the token and then sold a large amount of tokens at the time of release.

Welch denies her team’s involvement in any internal activities, but by then, HAWK had become a PR nightmare, with community comments on her X post indicating that the token had already become a pariah.

She “copied and pasted” HAWK’s token allocation and issuance schedule.

Welch and her token team, including Alex Shultz, also known as the ‘Hollywood doctor,’ who runs Memetic Labs, a cryptocurrency consulting firm for celebrities, then went live on X and were live-streamed by YouTube investigator Stephen Fenderson, also known as Coffeezilla.

The live stream was later removed from X.

The sharks began to lay out in this farce, lawyers captured HAWK buyers, and on December 20, they filed a collective lawsuit against Shultz, OverHere, its founder Clinton So, and the organization behind the token, Tuah the Moon Foundation.

To avoid being mentioned in the lawsuit, Welch issued her first public statement since December 20, stating that she is assisting in the class action lawsuit related to the token and urging HAWK holders to contact the law firm leading the lawsuit.

Other celebrity Meme coins

It is reported that more celebrities promoted tokens this year, but these tokens have now fallen from their peak and have been accused of large-scale insider trading, etc.

Jason Desrouleaux The artist’s eponymous token, Jason Derulo (JASON), followed a similar issuance pattern, with its price plummeting and being accused of having an internal distribution.

JASON is down more than 98% from its highs, and the last time Derulo posted information about the coin was in September, after not posting it for two months.

American rapper Cardi B (Belcalis Cephus) released her WAP (WAP) token in October.

WAP has dropped by 99.7% from its peak and is accused of allocating more than half of the tokens to insiders. So far, Cardi B has only posted about 5 X posts about the token.