Celebrity meme coins have once again been played in a VC-style manner

Yesterday, we covered the latest hot meme coin on Solana, $ANSEM, "600x in 24 Hours, How Long Will This Solana Meme Last?"

Just this morning, another token surged over 20x, further heating up the meme frenzy on Solana. Let's first take a look at these new hot tokens, then analyze the overall reasons behind this sudden market surge.

"Celebrity Coins" Produce a Runner-Up

TJR (@_TJRTrades) is also a well-known KOL, primarily posting trading analysis content, so on-chain meme players may not be very familiar with him. He has only 250,000 followers on X but boasts over 1.5 million followers each on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

Starting yesterday, TJR posted multiple tweets publicly stating his intention to help Ansem create content on TikTok, expanding influence beyond X and bringing in new users unfamiliar with crypto. He also purchased $100,000 worth of $ANSEM and continued to promote it heavily.

Initially, he stated he would not participate in wallet retention, dev token minting, or replicating the success path of $ANSEM:

But at 6 AM this morning, things changed. He posted, "Should I get in?" signaling a shift in stance:

A few hours later, he replied to a tweet asking if he would airdrop his $TJR holdings, saying, "Of course." This was interpreted by the market as a claim signal, and $TJR began to FOMO, surging from a market cap of approximately $1.6 million to a peak of $28 million. Just yesterday, $TJR's market cap was only $400,000.

Additionally, the dev who deployed $TJR is also the dev of $ANSEM. This time, he sent 79% of $TJR to TJR's address.

According to GMGN monitoring, this dev sold off the token after its creation 13 days ago, realizing a net profit of $5,500. Subsequently, over the past 7 days, he has been mass-producing tokens, frequently replicating various "celebrity coins," buying positions himself, and actively engaging on X social media to build hype.

Within 7 days, this address has created a total of 101 different Meme coins (mostly celebrity coins with some fan base), with 12 reaching a peak market cap exceeding $1 million and 3 breaking through a $10 million market cap.

As of now, this deployer's book profit over the past 7 days has reached 82,000 SOL, approximately $6.08 million, with deployer fees from just a few high-market-cap Meme coins contributing $193,000. His 30-day profit stands at $8.77 million.

Besides pure "celebrity coins" like $TJR, where KOLs personally promote them, some variants have also performed well.

$TESTIBULL, a variant derived from the testicle-themed meme $TESTICLE, mimicking $ANSEM's "The Black Bull" brand. The main force behind $TESTICLE has been KOL Dip Wheeler (@DipWheeler), known for his massive gains on Fartcoin. He came forward to announce an airdrop of $TESTIBULL, propelling the coin from a low of $40,000 market cap yesterday to a high of nearly $5 million today.

$dog: The idea is that Ansem once pushed $WIF to a multi-billion dollar market cap. Now that the market is returning, sending tokens to Ansem could create a new dog coin like $WIF.

However, this dev made a slip and sent the tokens to a burn address. This unintentionally combined the celebrity coin token-sending mechanism with the dramatic effect reminiscent of the $SLERF incident, causing the coin's market cap to briefly exceed $8 million.

Market Analysis

The intraday surge came suddenly. While $ANSEM did not drop significantly today, it also failed to continue its upward momentum from the previous two days.

"Celebrity coins" are not a novel concept. Players who dislike this style even view the emergence of $TJR as a top signal for this market heat, calling it a "MELANIA moment."

Although celebrity coin mania appears repeatedly, it's overly simplistic to dismiss it as just "the same old story." Each instance occurs at different times and under different circumstances, warranting specific analysis. For this wave:

- On-chain players have been starved for a long time. The meme market has been sluggish, and Solana hasn't seen a meme coin hit a billion-dollar market cap for quite a while (even though a large portion of $ANSEM's supply remains controlled by Ansem).

- Severe fear of missing out (FOMO), making the market highly volatile. Due to the prolonged market slump, most players didn't anticipate $ANSEM reaching a billion-dollar market cap, leading many to sell early or miss out entirely. This FOMO sentiment has now transferred to $TJR.

- The "VC-ification" of Meme coins. On-chain players have been persistent, but the reality is that with exchanges nearly closing new listing channels for meme coins and market makers refraining from pumping, achieving a meme coin market cap in the tens of millions is extremely difficult. For players, fairness in meme coins is no longer about who holds more or less, but about "whether I can get a chance to bet on high odds at a low market cap." In this scenario, even if a large portion of the supply is held by KOLs like Ansem or TJR, players feel reassured by the celebrity endorsement, thinking "they will have to find a way to pump it to a certain level to exit."

The VC-ification of Meme coins became evident during the Trump coin launch. As long as there is a narrative and profit potential, few complain about large token holdings; instead, they see a small circulating supply and significant upside potential. Influencers essentially play the role previously held by VCs in the VC coin era—where traffic, endorsement, and consensus equate to liquidity.

Based on current observations, this celebrity coin rally has attracted back many formerly active "meme degens" from the primary market. Following the success of $ANSEM and $TJR, they are now positioning themselves in potential tokens linked to KOLs who might step up to claim them, such as bonkguy, him, and other crypto influencers. However, the sustainability of this trend hinges on whether $ANSEM can hit new highs; otherwise, the sentiment could dissipate quickly.