Are memecoins the new NFTs for celebrities?

From PFP NFTs to Solana memecoins, mainstream celebrities have entered the web3 ecosystem under community-centered chants and short-lived hype.

Memecoins may have entered a new lease of life with the launch of their celebrity token on Solana (SOL) last week, adding a new layer of excitement to the memetic culture influencing crypto.

Caitlyn Jenner recently shipped a coin called JENNER, launched via SOL-based memecoin portal Pump.fun. Shortly after trading opened, developers attacked users and crashed the price of the token, and Jenner came under scrutiny for allegedly organizing a rug-pulling operation.

Later reports revealed that a notorious fraudster named Sahil was behind the incident. Sahil allegedly took advantage of Jenner’s ignorance of the web3 domain and used his role as a middleman to profit from the celebrity’s memecoin.

Enter Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER memecoin

Less than 48 hours later, Australian rapper and OnlyFans model Iggy Azalea released a token under her MOTHER hashtag. According to DEX Screener, Azalea’s famous cryptocurrency has increased by over 30,000%, reaching a market value of $30 million.

The Sahil user also launched an IGGY coin to satisfy Azalea’s excitement, poaching millions with yet another pump-and-dump offering.

Iggy Azelea successfully launches secret memecoin 🤯

A token named about 2.5 hours ago $iggy was released, briefly rose to $4-5 million, and then sold.

It is also a token named $MOTHER was started.

Iggy tweeted this about 30 minutes ago and it rose to $15 million. pic.twitter.com/GexTU81rSZ

— TylerD 🧙‍♂️ (@Tyler_Did_It) May 29, 2024

Azalea moved away from Sahil’s IGGY, joining X Spaces to promote her money, share her admittedly basic knowledge of web3, and promote interest in the decentralized meme ecosystem. “It’s a gamble, it’s a game. That’s why it’s fun. Play the game or don’t play the game. It’s your decision,” Azalea said during an online conversation.

Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER memecoin | Source: DEX Screener Is it good for the industry, or do you want to highlight cryptocurrency’s gambling weakness?

Some might say this trend is reminiscent of the NFT boom of 2020/2021, when 10,000-piece digital collectibles dominated crypto feeds. Investors have spent thousands, sometimes millions, on Ether (ETH) and other cryptocurrencies to own so-called crypto art born from controversial illustrations and blockchain algorithms.

Despite all-time sales of $64.6 billion, the high sales and excitement from Yuga Labs’ top-notch collections like Bored Apes Yacht Club and Crypto Punks have since faded. Skeptics argue that the NFT era is a flash in the pan, using the industry’s decline as a lightning rod to cast aspersions on the broader crypto industry.

Similarly, memecoins have drawn the ire of experts and industry observers. According to crypto.news, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) CTO Eddy Lazzarin examined the memecoin space and likened the meme ecosystem to a risky casino.

Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko urged developers and users to devote resources to more permanent efforts as scams and hyper-volatile meme projects raise hundreds of millions of dollars within hours. Additionally, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin criticized racist meme protocols and called for the community to grow beyond gambling to support better projects.

Overall, expert consensus shows that there is skepticism about memecoins, but these projects continue to be launched every day. Binance reported that approximately 500,000 memecoins have been released since April 1. Meme tokens have ranged from political satire like BODEN to animal-inspired projects like CATWIFBAG, turning speculative traders into overnight millionaires and sometimes financially ruining participants.

Everything that has financial incentives at its core will be stripped down to its essence thanks to blockchains and the ease of tokenization and market creation; It won’t be pretty, but it will bring out what was always there. https://t.co/EE8zYZ19tU

— Chris Burniske (@cburniske) May 29, 2024