Odaily News Speaking at Messari’s Mainnet conference in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday, prominent trader Ansem said he would have approached the recent celebrity coin trend differently following controversy surrounding the apparent rugpull phenomenon, which has enriched celebrities but hurt retail investors. “One thing I’ve had to get used to is that anything remotely related or associated with me is taken as an endorsement because I have a lot of followers online,” Ansem, whose real name is Zion Thomas, said during a fireside chat with YAP Global Assistant Director Debra Nita. “You have to be more careful about assuming the best of everybody. Finances are important.” “The original argument was that there was a lack of consumer applications — I don’t want to say PMF (product-market fit) — in crypto. They lacked a path to the Web2 space,” Ansem said, adding that celebrities with “millions of followers” could use their “social capital” to re-engage people’s interest. However, he admitted that this doesn’t always work. For example, rapper Sexyy Red’s team reportedly owned 90% of the PRESI token supply at launch, while the token Caitlin Jenner pledged to promote is down 99% from its all-time high. “One reason this cycle (Meme coins) are doing well is because Solana enables retail investors to trade with very little money. And the user experience for people trading online is much better than in the last cycle,” said Ansem, who was also an early backer of Solana. He noted that high fees on the Ethereum mainnet limited trading cycles in previous cycles. Although the Meme coin industry has begun to cool recently, Ansem still believes that this trend will continue for a long time. He also said he is particularly interested in emerging chains, including Monad, Berachain and Movement, as well as “alt-VMs” such as Move-VM and Solana’s SVM. (The Block)