Author: Luke, Mars Finance
1. Personality collapse: the magical reversal from "justly refusing 2 million" to "keeping 70% of the tokens"
Two weeks ago, Kanye West posted a screenshot of a chat on social media, claiming that someone tried to lure him into issuing a "Rug Pull-style" meme coin to gain fans with a $2 million reward. He said righteously: "I am too rich to issue tokens. Tokens are just a scam to take advantage of fans!" This statement not only attracted widespread attention in the crypto community, but was also once regarded as a "celebrity sobriety benchmark."
However, a jaw-dropping reversal suddenly struck. Today, CoinDesk broke the news that Kanye West is quietly preparing to issue his personal token YZY, and its distribution plan is simply astonishing: 70% of the tokens will belong to 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 have ridiculed: "It turns out that it's not that he doesn't want to issue tokens, but that 2 million is too little, anyway, he wants to take 70% for himself!" What's even more regrettable is that Kanye West's team actually claimed that this move was to "avoid the risk of being banned by e-commerce platforms due to controversial remarks", trying to package the token as a "brand savior", but it can't cover up the naked intention of making money.
However, Kanye's current reputation on web2 is surprisingly bad, and his business behavior and remarks have repeatedly caused controversy, and some have been criticized for "harvesting" fans:
- Limited-edition and hype of the Yeezy series: Kanye West and Adidas jointly launched the Yeezy series, which is known for its limited-edition and high-price strategy. This marketing method has caused the price of shoes to soar in the secondary market, and the price of some shoes has even risen to dozens of times the original price. This hype has caused consumers to question its business ethics.
- Brand harvesting with ex-wife Kim Kardashian: Kanye West and his ex-wife Kim Kardashian jointly launched the KKW Beauty brand. Some products have caused consumers to question their 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 reveal: YZY token is suspected to have been "secretly launched"?
Although Kanye West’s team has not officially announced the token issuance, crypto detectives have detected signs of anomalies in the on-chain data. Well-known analyst @xohryanx published his analysis on the X platform, pointing out that the token $YzY may be a "stealth launch" by Kanye West’s team. However, after carefully comparing the token distribution plan with Kanye West’s previous public statements, analysts believe that the token may not be issued by Kanye West himself, at least not in full 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 $600,000 and $1 million, which is very abnormal in the current crypto market. Under normal circumstances, Meme coins usually experience sharp rises and falls, but this token has steadily maintained a relatively stable market value range, which analysts believe may be the result of human control. It is worth noting that this token was actually deployed on February 18, and it had hit a market value of $4 million twice before Kanye West’s coin release news. Until today, the market value has reached a maximum of 10.26M, and the current market value has fallen back to 2.44M.
Kanye's "cold start" strategy: @xohryanx mentioned that Kanye has always disliked high-profile publicity, especially not by cooperating with insiders or influencers to hype his own projects. Kanye's "self-centered" style of doing things makes it likely that only a few people will know about the issuance of this token. If the information is leaked, Kanye is likely to cut off these people's contact immediately to avoid the influence of outside hype. However, compared with Kanye's previous anti-harvest stance, $YzY's token distribution plan does not seem to be in line with his "Declaration of Justice". According to the news disclosure, 70% of the tokens will belong to the issuer, and the rest will be held by only a few investors and liquidity providers. Such a distribution is obviously inconsistent with Kanye's previous position of "avoiding harvesting". If analyzed according to this distribution plan, the operator behind the token may not be Kanye himself, but his team or other third parties.
Hidden holding structure: Analysis shows that the top ten holders of $YzY tokens only account for 16% of the total issuance, and the largest holding ratio is 1%. The assets of these holders show that they have gained considerable benefits from the rise of the token, and they did not choose to sell at this time. This situation also further proves the control characteristics of the token, and there is no obvious sign of machine brushing.
Timing and Practicality: Kanye West’s Yeezy brand is scheduled to relaunch on February 24, exactly one week after the token is launched. This coincidental timing makes people speculate that Kanye West 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 impact of Super Bowl ads and social media: @xohryanx believes that Kanye West 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 to attract more eyeballs and achieve self-promotion. If Kanye West really releases tokens, it will definitely attract widespread attention.
In summary, @xohryanx believes that Kanye will use an unconventional method to issue $YzY tokens, that is, to accumulate chips through "cold start", maintain a certain market stability, and use "mystery" to stimulate market hype. Although this strategy has great potential, the token distribution in the outgoing message does not match the token distribution, so the real issuer of the token may not be Kanye himself. Investors should make decisions carefully and only invest with losses they can afford.
3. Community outrage: "Hypocritical businessmen" are attacked by the entire network. Are celebrity coins more hateful than VC coins?
After the news was exposed, the crypto community was in an uproar. Netizens were furious at Kanye's behavior and denounced him as "extremely hypocritical." Previously, Kanye righteously rejected a $2 million coin issuance cooperation, claiming that he disdained to use fans to issue coins for profit, 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 will belong to him. This reversal shocked many people. As netizens said: "Kanye has figured it out. Instead of letting others harvest his fans, why not harvest his family directly? The last time he refused was not because of righteousness, but purely because he thought he made too little money!" This change made many people think that everything Kanye did was not out of ideals or principles at all, but naked economic motives.
In this incident, the focus of discussion was on the essential difference between celebrity coins and VC coins. Although both are highly controlled and low-circulation tokens, the community reacts to them very differently. Compared with VC coins (venture capital coins) that harvest the market through high valuations and low liquidity, celebrity coins are more direct and bad - they take advantage of fans' trust and realize their own economic interests by "cutting leeks". According to the voting results, 72.8% of netizens said that they hate celebrity coins more, which also exposes the deep disgust of celebrity coins in the crypto community.
In this comparison between Celebrity Coin and VC Coin, many people believe that although VC Coin has the risk of manipulation and overvaluation, at least investors can still "make money" (earn short-term profits). However, Celebrity Coin is completely different. Fans are ultimately "harvested" without any real return. One netizen commented bluntly: "Stupid, this person cut from web2 to web3? Now the obvious trend is that VC Coin is about to start, and Celebrity Coin will be quiet for a while. If you don't buy VC Coin, you can still make money. Celebrity Coin can only make money for you."
This outburst of emotion reflects the crypto market’s deep aversion to celebrity effects and speculation. When celebrities view fans’ support as a business opportunity rather than trust, this commercial operation has clearly violated the public’s bottom line.
summary
Regardless of whether CoinDesk's report is accurate or not, the community has shown strong aversion to celebrities issuing Meme coins and using Web3 to gain fans. Investors need to be vigilant and avoid blindly following the trend. For the Web3 world, rational thinking and in-depth understanding of the essence of the project are still the best strategies to avoid being "cut leeks".
