Scammer, big shot, e-commerce king... A review of the Meme 2024 annual figures

Author: Arain, ChainCatcher

In 2024, the Memecoin sector emerged as a surprising force, growing through a super cycle marked by mixed reviews, leaving many Old Money investors astonished.

On the trading battlefield of Memecoins, there are genius scammers who set "wealth traps" with cunning tactics, big players who engage in the market with precise judgments and operations, influencers who drive traffic to tokens through their clout, and signal callers who sway market trends with their calls… These annual figures took the stage together, creating a grand feast for Memecoins.

A lon

Without the Meme launch platform Pump.fun, this Meme feast might have been half as grand. Therefore, in this sense, Alon is a key figure in igniting the Memecoin craze of 2024.

Alon created and launched the Pump.fun platform in January 2024, providing a space for users on the Solana blockchain to create and trade cryptocurrencies, allowing users to create Solana tokens for free in just one minute.

As of December 26, 2024, the platform had created over 5 million Memecoins, including larger ones like Billy, Michi, and Shark Cat. The platform also laid the groundwork for the mass production of celebrity Memecoins, such as Lggy Azalea's MOTHER token, Andrew Tate's DADDY, and Jason Derulo's JASON.

Although the mass production of Memecoins may lead to market saturation, it is undeniable that Pump.fun has provided a platform and opportunities for the development and innovation of Memecoins, having a profound impact on the entire Memecoin ecosystem.

Murad

One of the top Memecoin KOLs in 2024, known as the "Meme Theologian."

Murad has two main achievements: one is successfully investing in $SPX, and the other is gaining fame by proposing the Memecoin Supercycle theory.

According to Murad, the Memecoin Supercycle theory posits that Memecoins are acquiring attributes and speculative premiums from value coins, entering a "Meme Supercycle," where Memecoins will not only surpass traditional cryptocurrencies but also change investor behavior and market trends. Memecoins will evolve from mere internet jokes into legitimate investment assets with passionate followers.

When Murad first held $SPX, its market cap was only $10 million, but it has since soared to over $700 million, yielding a paper profit of $8.3 million. While holding this coin, he actively spread investment ideas on Twitter. His holdings and calls have influenced the price trends of these coins, attracting the attention and following of many investors. In addition to $SPX, Murad also holds coins like giga, pepe, sigma, apu, and popcat, favoring mid-to-high market cap "cult-like" Memecoins.

According to Murad's own summary, he primarily adopts the "Price and Faith Index" investment strategy, which suggests that investors should look for projects with high faith but low prices—those that are undervalued but meet most screening criteria for Memecoins. These projects typically have only one or two indicators that are below standard, making them easy to improve, and they enjoy extremely passionate community support.

After appearing and speaking at Token2049, Murad's status in the Memecoin circle rose to a new level. Due to his systematic approach to Memecoin investment and strategy, more investors began researching Memecoins—even including some VCs.

Ansem

Another top Memecoin KOL in 2024, comparable to Murad.

However, compared to Murad, Ansem places more emphasis on trading and believes that technical analysis is more important than fundamental analysis. Ansem gained market attention primarily for investing in BONK and WIF. On October 30, 2023, Ansem posted on social media, "bonk great coin," initially recommending BONK when its price was just $0.0000005618. Subsequently, BONK skyrocketed, and by March 2024, its price had once surpassed $0.000045, an increase of over 80 times.

As for WIF, it can be said that Ansem gradually called it to a market cap of $3 billion. On December 12, 2023, Ansem stated on social media that only WIF had the potential of SHIB, and on December 16, he tweeted "WIF = SHIB." In the following four months, WIF's price surged from $0.09 to a historical high of $4.85, an increase of over 520 times.

Due to frequently recommending small-cap Memecoins that led to losses for followers, Ansem currently faces some backlash, with other KOLs accusing him of openly "cutting leeks." In response to the accusations, Ansem claims he is merely selecting the best trades in the market and cannot ensure every trade will be successful, but he has helped more people than harmed them. Some analysts have backtested investment returns based on Ansem's past recommendations, finding that most coins would result in negative returns if bought after Ansem's recommendations.

Sahil Arora

This Indian scammer caused a stir in the market when he was targeted by multiple celebrities, resulting in significant losses for many investors.

Sahil Arora is a serial entrepreneur who launched several crypto projects from 2020 to 2023. Although these ventures ended in failure, he still made a considerable profit.

In 2024, Sahil Arora found an opportunity in Memecoins, leveraging his influence and verified status on Instagram to contact numerous celebrities and collaborate on token launches. He typically holds 25%-40% of the token supply when helping these celebrities issue Memecoins, quickly selling the tokens after the celebrities' tweets, treating their fans' investments as his "exit liquidity."

For example:

• Spending $200,000 to have Jason Derulo tweet to promote a token;
• Signing a contract with Caitlyn Jenner to issue the token JENNER, agreeing to pay a $50,000 advance and 80% of the revenue share, but the collaboration turned into a farce, with Jenner accusing him of breach of contract and publicly cursing him, claiming he had scammed her and owed her "a lot of money";
• Issuing tokens for celebrities like Rich the Kid and Lil Pump, who also complained about similar experiences;

Data company Bubbleworks estimated that Sahil Arora earned about $30 million this year by acting as an agent for celebrities to issue Memecoins.

L ggy Azalea

Australian rapper Lggy Azalea is considered a leading figure in the celebrity Memecoin trend of 2024. In fact, Sahil Arora also had his eye on Lggy Azalea, attempting to help her launch the Memecoin $LGG, but it was not very successful.

Lggy Azalea decided to launch a Memecoin herself. The catalyst was her discovery that someone was impersonating her to issue a coin on Telegram, so she launched the token MOTHER on Pump.fun on May 28, 2024, and focused her 7.6 million follower X account on promoting MOTHER. She deleted all posts prior to May 29, published 2,245 posts about MOTHER, placed a link to MOTHER's Telegram channel on Instagram, and paused her OnlyFans to direct fans to the Telegram channel. Within a week of its launch, the price of MOTHER surged by 1,200%.

Subsequently, Lggy Azalea appeared in various community Spaces, interacting with community members, responding via voice messages, and making an appearance on the ThreadGuy podcast to share her insights on cryptocurrency and Web3.

As Memecoins gained popularity, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin expressed dissatisfaction with the celebrity Memecoin craze, arguing that these coins were merely designed to enrich celebrities and early users without any real utility. Lggy Azalea quickly clapped back at Vitalik, posting a meme of herself holding a baby version of him, stating, "he's both angry and hungry," which caused the price of the $MOTHER token to surge by 150% and also spurred the rise of "family tokens" like $DADDY and $SON.

Lggy Azalea is not just about clapping back; after her exchange with Vitalik, she opened an online store where products like T-shirts could only be purchased with MOTHER, and announced that phones and monthly phone plans could also be bought using MOTHER or SOL, avoiding the devaluation of $MOTHER.

Caitlyn Jenner

Caitlyn Jenner, a celebrity from the American reality TV show and former athlete, like Lggy Azalea, attracted more attention to Memecoins due to her media influence and public image. However, unlike Lggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner's Memecoin launch was unsuccessful, ultimately leading to a lawsuit from investors.

In May 2024, Caitlyn Jenner launched a token called $Jenner on Pump.fun, posting a photo of herself shaking hands with Trump on Twitter along with the $Jenner token link, tagging several famous crypto KOLs and referring to them as "crypto kings." She later posted a Story about the $Jenner token, which her agent Sophia also shared.

Since Caitlyn Jenner had not previously ventured into the crypto space, her fans suspected her account had been hacked. However, Caitlyn Jenner stated that her account had not been hacked and released a video of herself to dispel the rumors, confirming that $Jenner was indeed released by her team.

During a period of significant price fluctuations amid various doubts, Caitlyn Jenner's Twitter account held a Space, where her agent Sophia intended to clarify the situation. However, Sophia mentioned in the Space that the team might launch a new token, prompting the market to begin selling off $Jenner. Despite Caitlyn Jenner later claiming that the team would focus solely on $Jenner and would not launch any other tokens, it was too late.

According to Lookonchain's monitoring, Caitlyn Jenner earned 2,381 SOL (approximately $405,000) in the four days of May 2024 by launching 12 MEMEcoins on Solana.

On November 13, 2024, Naeem Azad and Mihai Caluseru filed a class-action lawsuit in California federal court as UK and Romanian citizens, respectively, accusing Caitlyn Jenner and her manager Sophia Hutchins of fraudulently soliciting investors to purchase unregistered securities, resulting in significant losses for them.

Having spent $400,000 to exploit her fans' value, leading to legal troubles, one wonders if Caitlyn Jenner feels it was worth it.

James Wynn

The new king of calls this year, who once made $25 million by heavily investing in PEPE, but also faced a downfall due to his poor tactics.

James Wynn quickly bought PEPE coins within a day of their launch and made numerous promotional posts on Twitter. On April 16, 2023, he published at least 24 promotional posts about PEPE in one day, boosting the coin's popularity on social media and attracting more investors and attention from the Meme community.

On May 1, the price of PEPE increased 100 times compared to James Wynn's cost. He was later discovered to have transferred his PEPE holdings to multiple new addresses and gradually consolidated his assets into his main wallet jwynn.eth, eventually transferring funds to an exchange address. Media reports estimated that James Wynn earned about $25 million during the PEPE token surge, with an initial investment of only $7,644.

Subsequently, James Wynn began promoting the ELON token. On April 24, 2024, he tweeted, "I think I have a 1000x for you, who wants it?" Just an hour before posting, he had completed his positions in the ELON token across two accounts, and then revealed information about the ELON token, causing its price to surge nearly 100 times in a short period.

On April 27, the price of ELON suddenly dropped by 70%. James Wynn then announced on Twitter that he had cleared his position and stated that the ELON token had issues, while in reality, he had already cleared his position using another seldom-used address at 3 AM on the 25th, which led to the collapse of the ELON token. Reports indicated that both of James Wynn's accounts were among the top ten in profit during this operation, with earnings of about $350,000.

Due to James Wynn's clearing actions directly causing the collapse of ELON's price, his reputation in the community suffered, with accusations of him cutting leeks.

Justin Sun

Such a character event must include Justin Sun.

In August 2024, TRON launched the beta version of SunPump, claiming to be the first Memecoin platform in the TRON ecosystem based on the principle of fair distribution. SunPump can be understood as a competitor to Pump.fun, although TRON claims that SunPump is not a project of Justin Sun, the public still associates him with SunPump.

After the launch of SunPump, Justin Sun spared no effort in promoting it, predicting that a Memecoin with a market cap exceeding $1 billion would soon emerge on the TRON chain, emphasizing the deep integration of TRON with Meme culture.

Additionally, Justin Sun has also made moves in other areas of Memecoins. For example, he invested $10 million in the forked token SHIB Ultra, making him the largest investor in that project.

In 2024, Justin Sun's most notable incident in the Memecoin space was the "expensive banana" event. He purchased the conceptual artwork "Comedian" (a banana taped to a wall) by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan for $6.24 million and ate it during a live stream, paying tribute to Meme culture. This sparked public discussion about Meme culture, successfully merging art with Meme culture and expanding the reach of Memes.

Elon Musk

Elon Musk has become a heavyweight figure in the cryptocurrency space. Although he does not deliberately push the historical progress of Memecoins, he certainly has a significant role in the history of Memecoin development. Elon Musk believes that memes are a form of modern art that can efficiently convey information and emotions. He once stated, "Whoever controls the meme, controls the world," reflecting his understanding of Meme culture.

Elon Musk's most well-known Memecoin investment is Doge (Dogecoin). In 2020, Musk began frequently posting about Dogecoin on Twitter, such as tweets like "dogetothemoon," bringing Dogecoin from a relatively niche cryptocurrency into the view of global investors. In early 2021, Tesla CEO's tweet "doge" accompanied by a rocket emoji caused Dogecoin's price to skyrocket, breaking the historic $1 barrier. Additionally, Musk had planned for Tesla to accept Dogecoin as payment, but that plan was later put on hold. In April 2023, Musk changed the X logo to a Shiba Inu, causing Dogecoin to surge by 30% that day. In 2024, Musk paid tribute to Kabosu, the original dog behind the Dogecoin meme, in a post on X, triggering a bullish trend for Dogecoin.

Besides Dogecoin, Musk has inadvertently promoted some Memecoins (note that this is different from making calls):

In December 2023, Musk announced the launch of the first AI model GROK, and a Memecoin of the same name was subsequently created, rising fivefold in two days (though it was later revealed that GROK was created by a scam artist, and the coin subsequently plummeted);

On January 9, 2024, Musk changed his Twitter bio to (CTO) Chief Troll Officer, causing the price of TROLL to soar;

On January 16, 2024, Musk posted a meme that included elements of memes and smiley faces, which led to a surge in the price of the previously deployed token SMILEY on Ethereum, with a daily increase of up to 895%;

Musk's words and actions are closely watched in the cryptocurrency space, often leading to a surge of Memecoins inspired by him or themed around him. For example, the "ClosedAI" token surged over 2800% within three hours after Musk criticized OpenAI.

Recently, Musk changed his Twitter avatar to a meme image resembling Pepe the Frog and directly changed his name to Kekius Maximus. PEPE responded with a surge, and several Memecoins based on the Kekius Maximus concept also began to soar temporarily.

Donald John Trump

The soon-to-be president of the United States and former president, Donald John Trump, is often compared to Musk and has brought some trading opportunities for Memecoins. At least so far, Donald John Trump has been the one caught in the crossfire.

In May 2024, during an NFT gala for Trump cards held at Mar-a-Lago, an attendee introduced him to the "boden" meme coin with a market cap of $240 million, to which Trump replied, "I don't like that investment." However, shortly after, the meme coin surged by 25% on Wednesday, reaching a high of $0.42.

On August 12, 2024, a $TRUMP Memecoin related to Trump reportedly saw a trader spend 0.052 ETH (about $96 at the time) to purchase 608,650 "TRUMP" tokens, and by June 2024, the coin's market cap had soared to $788 million.