Data Dialysis Roaring Kitty's "Influencer" Effect: 200 Related MEMEs in 3 Days, Over 90% Untraded

Author: Frank, PANews

The man who led retail investors to battle Wall Street is back. Twitter user @Roaring Kitty (real name Keith Gill) was the initiator of the 2021 retail uprising that skyrocketed GameStop's stock price. On May 13, Roaring Kitty became active on Twitter again, posting a series of short videos and hinting that the community is about to launch a new retail revolution.

Influenced by his return, related MEME coins experienced a surge. Among them, KITTY and GME are the tokens most directly correlated and also the two that performed the best in the market. GME (on the Solana chain) rose as much as 257 times in the past week, while KITTY (on the BASE chain) surged up to 157 times.

MEME Speculations Triggered by Short Videos

In no time, Roaring Kitty once again became synonymous with the market's wealth code, and retail investors began to flock to Roaring Kitty's Twitter content in search of a new wealth code. He seems to be very enthusiastic about posting short videos, releasing dozens each day. Some crypto users have launched related MEME tokens based on his video material, trying to ride the wave of Roaring Kitty's popularity.

Roaring Kitty's videos are mostly edited clips from movies, lasting less than a minute, with no clear theme, but the overall content seems to relate to heroism and rebellion. For example, there are clips of the protagonist from Braveheart shouting "Freedom" before his execution, or scenes of the Avengers battling Thanos. Additionally, he intentionally enlarges the subtitles of these videos and highlights some keywords in red or in a striking manner.

PANew has compiled 46 keywords that appeared in Roaring Kitty's videos in recent days, discovering that the number of MEME coins created on Solana based on these keywords has reached 202. This phenomenon is reminiscent of Elon Musk's influence on Ethereum.

90% of Related MEME Coins Go Untraded

However, MEME players may have overestimated Roaring Kitty's influence, as out of the 202 MEME coins released based on his videos, only one token, JUST UP, managed to gain some traction, rising 10 times shortly after being promoted by a Chinese MEME KOL. However, as the hype faded, the token quickly plummeted, with its price down 94% from its peak, now valued at only $16,000.

The vast majority of other tokens saw no trading activity after their release; only 4 out of the 202 tokens had any transactions.

Why are so many worthless tokens being issued? The main factor is the emergence of one-click token issuance tools like Pump.fun, which have significantly lowered the cost of issuing tokens. In the past, creating a MEME coin on Ethereum would require at least several hundred dollars. If the profits from issuing tokens cannot even cover the costs, then there wouldn't be many tokens based on such keywords. Now, the cost of issuing tokens on Solana has dropped to around $2, a cost that is almost negligible for users hoping to make a quick profit through token issuance. Thus, we see that almost all MEME coins related to Roaring Kitty are released on Solana.

Another reason is that Roaring Kitty's video release frequency is very high, with many keywords in each video. If one were to issue tokens based on all the keywords in the videos, hundreds of new tokens could appear almost daily. These keywords also generally lack opportunities for subsequent marketing. In this regard, they are completely different from the MEME coins like TROLL and GROK that Musk previously promoted, as the keywords Musk triggered are usually mentioned repeatedly and represent either an event or a product, possessing randomness and potential for development. As time progresses, whenever these keywords are mentioned again by Musk or see some developments, they can impact the market performance of such MEME coins. Roaring Kitty's video material does not possess these characteristics; it is merely the retail investors' one-sided pursuit.

Dispersed Attention Makes It Hard to Find the Next Big Thing

Although Solana and the Base chain have created a hot state for MEME coins in the past six months, according to Cointelegraph, over 1 million new cryptocurrencies have been launched since April, with 640,000 on Solana and about 320,000 on Base. Meanwhile, Solana's DEX trading volume has exceeded $1 billion for several consecutive days. However, this excitement does not mean more opportunities for MEME coin players; rather, it leads to more dispersed attention, making it harder to find the next "golden dog."

Taking Roaring Kitty as an example, this round of hype chasing is not concentrated on a single chain; GME and KITTY have been issued on Solana, Base, and Ethereum chains, with no correlation between them. This results in the hype being spread across multiple tokens, making it difficult for funds to concentrate and drive a single project to significant popularity.

For players, this also increases the probability of falling into traps. According to PeckShieldAlert, a GME token with the same name was instantly driven to zero by the project team, resulting in a loss of $270,000 in ETH. Even the tokens most directly related to Roaring Kitty have generally experienced a sharp decline after a brief surge, with an average drop of around 70%.

Overall, making money from popular MEME coins does not seem to be an easy task. In addition to the hype, there are also considerations regarding contract security, whether there are direct promoters behind the tokens, and the timing of buying and selling. Otherwise, blindly chasing the hype will not avoid the outcome of being harvested.