Solana Attracts Attention From Mainstream Celebrities Caitlyn Jenner, Davido, Iggy Azalea, Rich The Kid, and Trippie Redd

In the last few days, deploying a token is one of things mainstream celebrities have done upon entering or reentering into the crypto space. But this handful of celebrities has launched tokens only to see the prices of their respective coins plummet shortly after.

Mainstream celebrities have been deploying their own tokens left and right, and many traders have been piling into these celebrity-associated coins. However, a majority of these tokens have seen their prices plummet shortly after launch.

Over the last few days, several celebrities launched their own tokens, and a common theme among these coins is that they tend to quickly漲surge in price and then rapidly decline. For instance, Azalea’s MOTHER token slid 41% in 24 hours, Rich The Kid’s RICH token dropped 52%, and Jenner’s Solana token decreased 67%, all in 24 hours.

Trippie Redd’s BANDO token, which notched 22.73 million in 24-hour trading volume, slid to $0.00020, down significantly from its initial launch price of $0.00047. Jenner’s token on Ethereum exchanged hands at a price higher than its starting point, and yet, in the hours after its rally, which peaked at 12:30 a.m. Thursday, the token’s value dropped nearly 70%.

While some people might have profited from successfully trading these celebrity tokens, “many traders lost money by trading the celebrity token $JENNER on #Solana, even the trader who previously made $3.7 million in 5 days on [memecoin] $BOME,” crypto analytics sleuth Lookonchain wrote on X. The BOME memecoin trader reportedly lost over $133,000 in a day trading JENNER.

Davido-Linked Wallet Offloading During Spaces With Ansem

Even though DAVIDO has been climbing in the last 24 hours, the token has shed most of its gains. The token was trading near a penny around 6 p.m. EST on Wednesday and is currently at $0.0029, a 72% decrease.

Lookonchain also noted Wednesday night that the wallet address that created DAVIDO on Pump.fun had spent seven SOL, or roughly $1,190, to obtain nearly 203 million DAVIDO tokens, which is more than 20% of the entire supply, before offloading them in several transactions. According to Lookonchain, the DAVIDO deployer address sold 121.88 million tokens for approximately $474,400.

Screenshot from Solscan showing several transactions from DAVIDO creator address exchanging DAVIDO for SOL. (Solscan)

Moreover, while Davido was in a Twitter Spaces with well-known memecoin trader Ansem, which began shortly before 9 p.sq.m. EST on Wednesday, the DAVIDO wallet address was swapping DAVIDO for SOL via DEX aggregator Jupiter, according to blockchain explorer Solscan.

“Insiders” Accused of Activity Around Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER

Davido’s token was not the only one to allegedly engage in suspicious activity, as the team behind Bubblemaps, an onchain tooling platform, identified “insiders” on Azalea’s MOTHER token. “Insiders bought 20% of the supply at launch, before Iggy Azalea (@IGGYAZALEA) made the announcement, and already dumped $2M,” the team wrote on X Wednesday.

Specifically, one wallet address acquired 12% of the total supply, nearly 119 million MOTHER tokens, before Azalea announced the token’s contract address on X. The wallet address has since offloaded all of its MOTHER tokens.

Davido, Azalea, Rich The Kid, Trippie Redd, and Caitlyn Jenner launching their own tokens this past week was not the first time mainstream celebrities have promoted a token, nor the first time crypto traders have seen prices on celebrity-associated tokens plunge.

Wale.Moca, an advisor to Immutable, a gaming platform, and Mocaverse, an identity project, examined the performance of similar projects and said, “Unsurprisingly, they are all dead, with the majority of them having rugged.”

The U.S. Securities Exchange Commission has taken legal action against celebrities promoting crypto tokens. For example, in Oct. 2022, the SEC charged Kim Kardashian “for touting on social media a crypto asset security offered and sold by EthereumMax without disclosing the payment she received for the promotion.”

The Bubblemaps team warned that “more celebrity tokens will come,” and urged people to remember “that most of them end up worthless and are often plagued by insider trading.”