Author: Curry, Shenchao TechFlow
Image source: Layergg@layerggofficial
The crypto bear market doesn't mean there are no opportunities.
Over the past week, the meme coin market on Solana has seen another wave of narrative-driven price action.
The token $ANSEM (The Black Bull), associated with well-known trader Ansem (@blknoiz06), recorded gains of nearly 19,878% within just 7 days, rising rapidly from very low levels to an all-time high of $0.121.
Around June 29th, the token price experienced several rapid surges, showing clear speculative fervor in the overall market.
This level of gain is uncommon in the current meme coin environment. According to public market data, $ANSEM's performance over 7 days far exceeded that of most other Solana meme coins during the same period, attracting significant short-term capital inflows. In terms of trading volume, the token's 24-hour turnover reached tens of millions of dollars during multiple periods, with liquidity improving rapidly.
Here, Ansem's public statements were a key catalyst for this price action.
Around June 27th, he stated on his social media account that he would conduct an airdrop of $Ansem tokens to the community. After the announcement, market sentiment heated up quickly, with related discussions spreading rapidly on crypto social platforms, driving up both the token price and trading activity simultaneously.
The familiar taste, the long-lost playbook, seems particularly effective in the current parched environment of the crypto market.
Is the Airdrop Another Party for the Few?
The core logic of Ansem's airdrop is: redistributing the creator fees he accumulated on the Pump.fun platform instead of keeping them for himself or using them for other purposes. He explicitly stated in the announcement that he would randomly select participants for airdrops every week.
The participation rules for the airdrop are relatively simple and lean towards social engagement. Users need to retweet the relevant announcement post, follow Ansem's personal Pump.fun homepage (ansemconzimp), and include their Pump.fun address in a comment.
He then randomly selects winners for distribution each week. This mechanism differs from traditional project airdrop models based on holdings or on-chain activity, placing more emphasis on community participation and randomness, but also being more of a black box.
According to on-chain data tracking, as of June 29th, Ansem has distributed a total of approximately 67.38 million $ANSEM tokens through multiple airdrop rounds, involving 704 wallets, with a total value estimated between $7 million and $9 million (depending on the price at the time of each distribution).
Among these, the largest single airdrop was 10 million tokens, accounting for about 1% of the total supply, with a value once exceeding $1 million (based on valuations at the time).
Data from Dune Analytics and LayerGG shows that the current public airdrop distribution exhibits some concentration characteristics:
7 wallets received over $100,000 in value, 58 wallets are in the $10,000 to $100,000 range, 318 wallets received $1,000 to $10,000, and the remaining wallets mostly received smaller amounts.
Some large recipient addresses have shown varying degrees of selling activity after receiving the airdrops, while the overall market has maintained high trading activity stimulated by the airdrop news.
Calculating based on the total airdrop amount and number of wallets, 7 wallets received about 75% of the total $ANSEM airdrop. Some community members have posted, suggesting this looks more like money laundering, and any sales from these top 7 wallets are likely either directly related to Ansem or involve accomplices.
Nevertheless, Ansem himself stated in a follow-up post that he would continue the airdrops as the market cap increases, with the goal of increasing the number of $ANSEM holders from the current ~25,000 to 1 million.
This further strengthened market expectations for continued airdrops, stimulating trading volume for the token.
A Mini-Season of Celebrity Endorsements
The case of $ANSEM is essentially a meme coin price movement directly driven by a high-influence individual. Ansem quickly converted attention into liquidity through public association + airdrop promises.
It's all old tricks, but be that as it may, the crypto market in June indeed had a small-scale season of celebrity endorsements.
For example, last week, Maelstrom, the family office of BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, also published an in-depth research report on Collector Crypt ($CARDS), giving it a target price of $4 for this summer.
After the news was released, $CARDS saw a significant rise.
And yesterday, Arthur Hayes himself provided another more representative example.
Hayes clearly expressed his bullish view on the Hyperliquid ecosystem, but he believed the main token HYPE no longer offered sufficient asymmetric opportunities. The market had been focusing on HYPE for a long time, so he needed to turn to other tokens within its ecosystem.
And $SYN within the Hyperliquid ecosystem, a project that is an options DEX supporting Hypercall, has the potential to challenge the centralized giant Deribit. This endorsement was interpreted by some KOLs as Hayes possibly having already bought approximately $2.2 million worth of $SYN via OTC.
Based on on-chain data and market reaction, around the time of Hayes' post, $SYN gained nearly 40% within 24 hours, with trading volume also expanding simultaneously. Prior to this, $SYN had already recorded gains of over 10x in June.
Ultimately, the market is truly sluggish right now. No new narratives, no incremental capital, the major indexes are stagnant with no clear direction. But the more this is the case, the more you have to pay attention to these localized celebrity-driven rallies... If you don't, there's genuinely nothing else to watch.
And don't underestimate these localized opportunities. $SYN had already quietly risen 10x before Hayes opened his mouth; there's certainly conspiracy involved, but if you pay no attention at all, you'll obviously miss one of the few opportunities.
In the past, we would always check on-chain to see if the endorser's wallet moved, look at how concentrated the top holdings were, scroll through social media to see if the sentiment was just starting or already peaking...
These old tools are still useful, and there might even be fewer competitors now. Opportunities and traps are always close neighbors in the crypto market. No matter what, you have to stay in the game.
