The past week might have been the liveliest week on-chain. And it all started with $ANSEM, which skyrocketed to a $100 million market cap in just 24 hours, achieving a staggering 600x increase within a single day.
Ansem’s Return: The Catalyst for the On-Chain Frenzy
On June 9th, crypto KOL Ansem claimed he was returning to buy Solana meme coins for the first time in over a year. Recently, he has repeatedly mentioned the pump.fun airdrop, interacting frequently with pump.fun tweets suggesting they issue airdrops now, and even publicly discussed this on the Market Bubble podcast:
If you were running pump.fun today, what would you do first? Ansem: Airdrop
Starting June 21st, he began frequently promoting the concept of “RTM (Return to meme).”
At that time, however, no one anticipated the ensuing rally, let alone that it would kick off in the form of a “celebrity coin” like $ANSEM. Initially, Ansem’s popularity stemmed mainly from his role as a “meme justice warrior,” leading the charge to suggest a pump.fun airdrop while the meme market was languishing, believing it could reactivate market liquidity.
It wasn’t until Ansem stated on X that he would randomly select lucky winners weekly and airdrop his creator revenue to those who retweeted his post, followed him on pump.fun, and left their pump.fun profile page link in the comments. This “soft claim” ignited the emotions of on-chain players.
At the time, many on-chain players felt it was somewhat reminiscent of when OpenSea delayed its token launch, leading to the emergence of OpenDAO ($SOS) which airdropped tokens to NFT players. In both cases, a KOL led the charge and capitalized on players’ long-standing discontent.
However, our assessment was, “It’s hard to say if Ansem genuinely intended to return to the trenches as a pure meme hero. Because Ansem is no longer just a legendary meme coin player or crypto KOL. One of his current identities is co-founder of the trading terminal, Bullpen.”
This assessment proved correct, judging by Ansem later setting up a $ANSEM airdrop claim page on Bullpen. When he stepped forward to claim the coin, he likely already had a plan for it to become the best advertisement for his trading platform.
Rapid Narrative Shift Within a Week
After $ANSEM broke the $100 million market cap, the narrative quickly shifted from “fighting pump.fun and issuing airdrops” to “celebrity coins.”
Here, “celebrity coins” refer to the practice of sending tokens—using crypto KOLs as tickers and comprising 60% or more of the supply—to the KOLs’ public addresses, waiting for them to tweet a claim. Shortly after $ANSEM surpassed $100 million market cap, $TJR emerged, briefly approaching a $30 million market cap, and was widely considered the second-place contender.
However, during a livestream that evening, TJR effectively ended any possibility for this second-place contender. He stated that the split in attention was terrible, urging everyone to refocus on $ANSEM and push its market cap to $1 billion.
This caused $TJR to never recover, but it also prevented further dilution, directing attention and capital back to $ANSEM.
Following this incident, the hype for new “celebrity coins” cooled temporarily, with attention turning to specific projects Ansem was bullish on. Projects like the US stock-backed stablecoin Nest and Solana game Kintara saw price increases during this phase.
Subsequently, everyone began focusing on Ansem’s public wallet address. $manlet appeared in a tweet where Ansem showed his wallet. Following this tweet, its market cap quickly surged from $3 million to over $13 million, and even exceeded $25 million that evening.
Overall, after $TJR, there was no clear narrative trend on Solana. $ANSEM didn’t generate significant liquidity spillover to other narratives. Logically, copying Ansem’s holdings, as with $manlet, should have been quickly identified by the market, but earlier tweets from Ansem didn’t trigger such speculative activity:
Since the momentum for new tokens on Solana wasn’t strong, it was BSC’s turn to take over.
Market Shift to BSC
At 5 AM yesterday, a tweet by CZ from 2021 was unearthed. This tweet, similar to the “Big Black Bull” image associated with $ANSEM, featured CZ saying five years prior, “Everyone knows I’m a bull, but you’ve never seen my final form.”
Consequently, $CZ suddenly experienced a massive pump, achieving nearly 200x within an hour. Although everyone believed CZ wouldn’t personally engage like Ansem, tweeting constantly and issuing airdrops, the coin still rallied. Moreover, the coin ultimately withstood competition from identically named tokens and a rapid correction after its surge (collapsing from ~$40 million market cap to below $6 million within an hour), eventually approaching a $90 million market cap.
The coin most resembling $ANSEM on BSC is $TCC, due to tokens being sent to @TCryptochicks, who also actively promoted it on X. It garnered attention because of CZ’s frequent interactions with him on X, creating a perception that “this is CZ’s endorsed BSC Ansem”:
The “betting on celebrities” phenomenon is also unfolding on BSC. This morning, $dingaling, without being claimed, was FOMOed to a $5 million market cap before rapidly declining to its current value of less than $300,000.
Currently, sentiment on BSC is stronger than on Solana, especially for primary market players. BSC offers faster pace and, for now, more opportunities than Solana. It remains uncertain how the market on both chains will develop, but hopefully, new narratives will emerge to carry the torch from “celebrity coins.”
Source: Original Article
