How do top meme KOLs make money? A data review of Ansem's "delivery behavior."
The behavior of raising prices and selling off has caused dissatisfaction. Did Ansem cut you off?Author: Ismay, BlockBeats
On October 5, Andrew Kang, co-founder and partner of the crypto venture capital firm Mechanism Capital, posted on social media, "It seems that @MustStopMurad's speech at Token2049 catalyzed the next wave of capital reallocation into meme coins." The comments section of this tweet sparked a lot of discussions, leading to a debate between on-chain detective ZachXBT and trading KOL Ansem due to this statement.
The focus of the debate was their views on each other's roles and actions. ZachXBT accused Ansem of frequently promoting small-cap coins through his large fan base, causing many to suffer losses due to blind following, even labeling it as "cutting leeks." Ansem countered that he was merely selecting the best trades in the market, stating that as a trader, he cannot ensure every trade is successful, but he has helped more people than he has harmed.
ZachXBT claimed to have made substantial contributions to the crypto community by solving hacking issues, helping to arrest criminals, and recovering victims' funds, helping people avoid KOL "traps" like Ansem. Ansem, however, believed that ZachXBT's accusations were exaggerated, asserting that the claim of promoting hundreds of coins was untrue. "We could discuss meme coins all day, but you know that I have helped far more people on this platform than I have harmed. Let's leave this topic here."
The debate concluded with Ansem's statement, "If I could hit 100% accuracy, I would already be the god of the earth. Criticizing me with some of the down coins I mentioned, especially when the entire altcoin market is down, is meaningless."
The following content comes from crypto KOL @dethective's analysis of Ansem's tweets, combined with the price trends of the meme coins he has called, to prove whether Ansem is indeed dumping meme coins on his followers. BlockBeats has previously analyzed and summarized Ansem's trading addresses.
Many witnessed the exciting debate between @zachxbt and @blknoiz06. This raised a key question: Is Ansem really dumping small-cap tokens on his followers? I analyzed over 40,000 tweets to reveal the truth.
Ansem's Average Returns
If you bought each token at its first mention, your average return would be about 150%. The best-performing tokens are:
$WIF: +5,300%
$BONK: +1,243%
$MOTHER: +867%
Sounds amazing, right? Not really.
When we look at the median return, it drops to -55%.
The reason for this discrepancy is that 33 out of 45 tokens have negative returns, with more than half of the tokens experiencing declines of 50% or more.
Every token that Ansem truly supported showed a 100% positive return, which aligns with @MustStopMurad's popular view: When Ansem has confidence in a project and supports it long-term, it often has a net positive impact on the industry. The correlation between the number of tweets and project performance is also very evident.
This is not just boasting: it's about belief. On the other hand, tokens that Ansem mentioned only 1-2 times all showed 100% negative returns. A typical pump-and-dump behavior.
Methodology
- Scraped over 40,000 tweets.
- Wrote code to identify token promotions by detecting relevant characters after the symbol '$'.
- Recorded the date each token was first mentioned.
- Captured their price trends.
My Personal Opinion
I initially conducted this analysis to support Zach in the debate. However, I strive to remain objective, so I also hope to fairly assess Ansem's viewpoint.
The key question is: "Is it unethical to promote a low-market-cap project to a large number of followers?"
My conclusion is: The key is not the size of the market cap, but the long-term commitment. Abandoning a project after just one tweet is unethical. But if you genuinely support it long-term, that is understandable.
