GuShiio.com The community has expressed strong disgust at the practice of celebrities issuing Meme coins and using Web3 to harvest fans.
Author: Luke, Mars Finance
1. The collapse of human design: the magical reversal from “justice refused 2 million yuan” to “retaining 70% of tokens”
Two weeks ago, Kanye West posted a high-profile chat screenshot on social media, claiming that someone tried to lure him into issuing “Rug Pull-style” Meme coins with a reward of $2 million to harvest fans. He said righteously: “I am too rich to issue tokens. Tokens are just a scam to use fans!” This statement not only attracted widespread attention in the encryption community, but was also once regarded as a “benchmark of celebrity sobriety.”
However, a jaw-dropping reversal suddenly struck. Below today, CoinDesk revealed that Kanye is quietly preparing to issue a personal token, YZY, and its allocation plan is simply staggering: 70% of the tokens will be owned by him personally, only 10% will be used for liquidity, and the remaining 20% will be distributed to investors. In sharp contrast to the previous “Declaration of Justice”, netizens ridiculed: “It’s not that we won’t issue coins, but that 2 million is too small. Anyway, I want to keep 70% for myself!” What is even more regrettable is that Kanye’s team claimed that the move was to “avoid the risk of being blocked by e-commerce platforms due to controversial remarks” and tried to package the token as a “brand savior”, but it could not conceal its naked intention to accumulate wealth.
However, Kanye’s current reputation on web2 is also surprisingly poor. His business practices and remarks have caused controversy many times, and some of them have been criticized as “harvesting” fans:
- Limited sales and hype of the Yeezy series: The Yeezy series launched by Kanye and Adidas is known for its limited sales and high price strategy. This marketing method has led to a surge in the price of shoes in the secondary market, and the price of some shoes has even risen to dozens of times the original price. This kind of hype has caused consumers to question its business ethics.
- Brand harvest with ex-wife Kim Kardashian: KKW Beauty brand co-launched by Kanye and ex-wife Kim Kardashian has aroused consumers ‘doubts about its quality and pricing in the market. Some people believe that this high pricing strategy may be regarded as an act of “harvesting” fans.
2. Analysts bottom line: YZY token is suspected to have been “secretly launched”?
Although Kanye’s team has not officially announced the issuance of tokens, detectives in the encryption field have detected signs of abnormalities in the data on the chain. Well-known analyst @xohryanx released his own analysis on the X platform, pointing out that the token $YzY may be a “secret launch” conducted by Kanye’s team. However, after carefully comparing the token allocation plan with Kanye’s previous public statements, analysts believe that the token may not have been issued by Kanye himself, at least not fully in accordance with his previous anti-harvest stance.
Abnormal market value fluctuations: Two days after the launch of the $YzY token, the market value has remained between US$600,000 and US$1 million, which is very unusual in the current crypto market. Under normal circumstances, Meme coins usually experience ups and downs, but the token has steadily maintained a relatively stable market value range. Analysts believe that this may be the result of artificial control. It is worth noting that this token was actually deployed on February 18 and had twice hit a market value of US$4 million before Kanye’s coin release news. To this day, the market value has reached 10.26M at its highest, and the current market value has dropped back to 2.44M.
Kanye’s “cold start” strategy: @xohryanx mentioned that Kanye has never liked high-profile publicity, especially he will not hype his projects by working with insiders or influencers. Kanye’s “self-centered” style of doing things makes it possible that only a few people knew about the issuance of this coin. If information is leaked, Kanye is likely to immediately cut off contact with these people to avoid the influence of outside hype. However, compared with Kanye’s previous anti-harvest stance,$YzY’s token allocation plan does not seem to be in line with his “Declaration of Justice.” According to information disclosure, 70% of the tokens will be owned by the issuer, and the rest will only be held by a small number of investors and liquidity providers. This allocation is obviously inconsistent with Kanye’s previous stance of “avoiding harvesting.” If analyzed according to this distribution plan, the person behind the token may not be Kanye himself, but his team or other third parties.
Hidden position structure: Analysis shows that the top ten holders of $YzY tokens only account for 16% of the total issuance, while the largest position ratio is 1%. The assets of these holders show that they have made considerable gains from the rise of the tokens, and at this time they have not chosen to sell. This situation further proves the control characteristics of the token, and there is no obvious sign of machine swiping.
Timing and practicality: Kanye’s Yeezy brand is scheduled to be re-launched on February 24, just a week after the token went online. This coincidental timing leads people to speculate that Kanye may be providing a “payment scenario” for the token to increase the actual application value of the token, which undoubtedly injects potential practicality into the token.
The influence of Super Bowl ads and social media: @xohryanx believes that Kanye seems to have failed to attract enough attention through Super Bowl ads and tweets on social media, which may have prompted him to choose to issue Meme coins instead to attract more attention and achieve self-promotion. If Kanye really releases tokens, it will inevitably attract widespread attention.
Overall,@xohryanx believes that Kanye will adopt an unconventional way to issue $YzY tokens, that is, accumulate chips through “cold start” to maintain a certain degree of market stability, and use “mystery” to stimulate market hype enthusiasm. Although this strategy has great potential, judging from the allocation of tokens, the allocation of tokens in the outgoing message does not match, so the real issuer of the tokens may not be Kanye himself. Investors should make careful decisions and invest only with the losses they can bear.
3. Community rage: “hypocritical businessmen” are besieged by the entire Internet, celebrity coins are more hateful than VC coins?
After the news was exposed, the encryption community was in an uproar. Netizens were furious at Kanye’s behavior and denounced him as “extreme hypocrisy.” Previously, Kanye rightly rejected the US$2 million coin-issuing cooperation, claiming that he disdained using fans to issue coins to harvest, which won a lot of applause. But not long after, he announced the launch of his own exclusive Meme coin, YZY, and 70% of the tokens would belong to him. This reversal shocked many people. As netizens said: “Kanye figured out, instead of letting others harvest his fans, why not just harvest his family himself? The last time I refused was not because I was upright, but because I thought I had earned too little!” Such a change has led many people to believe that everything Kanye does is not based on ideals or principles at all, but is based on naked economic motives.
In this incident, the discussion focused on the essential differences between celebrity coins and VC coins. Although both are highly controlled and low-circulation tokens, the community’s response to them is completely different. Compared with VC coins (venture capital coins) that harvest the market through high valuation and low liquidity, celebrity coins ‘method is more direct and vicious-it uses the trust of fans and realizes its own economic benefits by “cutting leeks”. According to the voting results, 72.8% of netizens said that they hate celebrity coins more, which also exposes the deep dislike of celebrity coins in the crypto community.
In this comparison between celebrity coins and VC coins, many people believe that although VC coins carry risks of manipulation and high valuation, at least investors can still “trim their hair”(make short-term profits). However, celebrity coins are completely different. Fans end up just being “harvested” without any real reward. Some netizens bluntly commented: “Idiot, this person cut from web 2 to web3? The obvious trend now is that VC coins will be launched and celebrity coins will be silent for some time. If you don’t buy VC coins, you can still rub off your hair. Only he can rub off on you in celebrity coins.”
This explosion of sentiment reflects the crypto market’s deep aversion to star effect and speculation. When celebrities view fan support as a business opportunity rather than trust, this commercialization has clearly violated the public’s bottom line.
summary
Regardless of whether CoinDesk’s reports are accurate or not, the community has expressed strong disgust at the practice of celebrities issuing Meme coins and using Web3 to harvest fans. Investors need to be vigilant and avoid blindly following suit. For the Web3 world, rational thinking and in-depth understanding of the nature of the project are still the best strategies to avoid being “cut off”.
