The past week was likely the busiest on-chain week ever. And it all started with $ANSEM, which astonishingly surged to a $100 million market cap in just 24 hours, achieving a staggering 600x increase in a single day.
The Return of Ansem, The On-Chain Kickoff
On June 9th, crypto KOL Ansem claimed it was his first time returning to buy Solana meme coins in over a year. Recently, he repeatedly mentioned the pump.fun airdrop, frequently interacting with pump.fun's tweets suggesting they issue an airdrop now, and publicly stated this on the Market Bubble podcast:
If you were running pump.fun today, what's the first thing you'd do? Ansem: An airdrop.
Since June 21st, he has continuously mentioned the concept of "RTM (Return to meme, let meme coins return)".
However, at that time, no one anticipated the start of this trend, nor did they imagine it would be initiated in the form of a "celebrity coin" like $ANSEM. Initially, Ansem's high popularity was largely because he played the role of a "meme justice warrior," leading the charge by suggesting to pump.fun, during a prolonged slump in the meme market, that an airdrop could re-activate market liquidity.
It wasn't until Ansem stated on X that he would randomly select lucky followers each week from those who retweeted his posts, followed him on pump.fun, and left their pump.fun profile links in the comments, and airdrop out this portion of creator revenue. This "soft endorsement" ignited the emotions of on-chain players.
At the time, the feeling among many on-chain players was somewhat reminiscent of when OpenSea delayed its token, leading to the emergence of OpenDAO ($SOS) airdropping tokens to NFT players. Both had KOLs leading the charge, both capitalized on long-standing user dissatisfaction.
However, our estimation was, "It's hard to say if Ansem truly wants to return to the trenches as a pure meme hero. Because Ansem is no longer just a meme coin legend or crypto KOL. One of his identities now is co-founder of the trading terminal Bullpen."
Judging from Ansem later setting up an $ANSEM airdrop claim page on Bullpen, this estimation was correct. When he stepped forward to endorse the token, he likely already planned for it to become the best advertisement for his trading platform.
Rapid Narrative Shifts Within a Week
After $ANSEM broke the $100 million market cap, the narrative quickly shifted from confronting pump.fun and demanding airdrops to "celebrity coins."
Here, "celebrity coin" refers to the play of sending a token, with a ticker named after a crypto KOL and 60% or more of its supply, to the celebrity's public address, waiting for them to post on X to claim it. Soon after $ANSEM surpassed $100 million in market cap, $TJR, once nearing a $30 million market cap, emerged and was seen as the runner-up.
However, TJR ended all possibilities for this runner-up during his livestream that night. He stated that dilution is terrible and urged everyone to refocus their attention on $ANSEM, striving to push its market cap to $1 billion.
This caused $TJR to falter from then on, but it also prevented more severe dilution, redirecting attention and funds back to $ANSEM.
After this incident, the frenzy for launching new "celebrity coins" temporarily cooled, and everyone turned their attention to specific projects Ansem favored. Projects like the US stock stablecoin project Nest, Solana-based game Kintara, saw gains during this phase.
Next, people focused on Ansem's public address. $manlet appeared in a tweet where Ansem showed his wallet. Following this tweet, its market cap rapidly surged from $3 million to over $13 million, and even broke through $25 million that night.
Overall, after $TJR, there was no clear main narrative on Solana, and there wasn't much liquidity overflow from $ANSEM to other narratives. In theory, the play of copying Ansem's portfolio like $manlet should have been captured by the market earlier, but earlier tweets from Ansem didn't spark speculation:
Since the relay for new launches on Solana wasn't performing well, it was BSC's turn to take the baton.
The Trend Moves to BSC
At 5 AM yesterday, a tweet from CZ in 2021 was dug up. Similar to the "big black bull" image associated with $ANSEM, CZ said 5 years ago, "Everyone knows I'm a bull, but you haven't seen my final form."
Thus, $CZ suddenly experienced a buying frenzy, surging nearly 200x within an hour. Although everyone thought CZ wouldn't personally jump in like Ansem, posting tweets daily and giving airdrops, the coin still rose. Moreover, it ultimately withstood copycat tokens (with the same ticker) and a rapid correction after the sharp increase (its market cap once dropped from around $40 million to under $6 million, also within an hour), eventually approaching a $90 million market cap.
What more closely resembled BSC's $ANSEM was $TCC, because tokens were sent to @TCryptochicks, and he frequently promoted this coin on X. It gained attention due to CZ's multiple interactions with him on X, creating a sense that "this is the BSC Ansem endorsed by CZ":
"Ambushing celebrities" is also happening on BSC. This morning, $dingaling, without being claimed, was once FOMO'd to a $5 million market cap. It then quickly fell, currently holding less than $300,000 in market cap.
For now, the sentiment on BSC is already better than on Solana, especially for primary market launch players. The pace on BSC is faster, and currently offers more opportunities than Solana. How the trends on these two chains will develop afterwards is still uncertain. Hopefully, new narratives that can succeed "celebrity coins" will emerge.
