Solana and BSC meme coin frenzy fueled by Ansem and CZ

Last week may have been the most bustling week on-chain yet, and it all began with $ANSEM, which achieved a $100 million market cap in 24 hours and surged an astonishing 600x within a single day.

On June 9, crypto KOL Ansem claimed he had returned to purchasing Solana meme coins for the first time in over a year. Recently, he has repeatedly mentioned the pump.fun airdrop, interacting multiple times with pump.fun’s tweets to suggest that the airdrop be distributed now, and publicly raised this point on the Market Bubble podcast:

If you were to run pump.fun today, what would you do first? Ansem: Airdrop

Since June 21, he has consistently mentioned the concept of "RTM (Return to Meme)."

At that time, no one anticipated the market’s opening, let alone imagined it would begin in the form of a “celebrity coin” like $ANSEM. Initially, Ansem’s popularity stemmed primarily from his role as a “meme justice advocate,” who took the lead in suggesting an airdrop on pump.fun amid a prolonged slump in meme coin activity, arguing that it could reignite market liquidity.

Until Ansem stated on X that he would randomly select lucky followers each week to airdrop a portion of his creator earnings, provided they retweet his post, follow him on pump.fun, and leave a link to their pump.fun profile in the comments. This “soft claim” ignited enthusiasm among on-chain participants.

At the time, many on-chain users felt it was similar to when OpenSea delayed launching its token, followed by OpenDAO ($SOS) distributing tokens via airdrop to NFT enthusiasts. Both situations were led by KOLs and capitalized on long-standing frustrations among users.

However, we expect that it’s unlikely Ansem truly intends to return to the trenches as a purely meme-inspired hero, as Ansem is no longer just a meme coin legend or crypto KOL—among his current roles is co-founder of the trading terminal Bullpen.

The accuracy of this prediction is evident from Ansem’s later creation of an $ANSEM airdrop claim page on Bullpen. When he stepped forward to claim it, he likely already planned for this token to serve as the best possible advertisement for his trading platform.

After $ANSEM broke through a $100 million market cap, the narrative quickly shifted from opposing pump.fun and distributing airdrops to the concept of "celebrity coins."

Here, "Celebrity Coin" refers to a tactic where 60% or more of the tokens, with crypto KOLs as tickers, are sent to public addresses of celebrities, waiting for them to claim them via a tweet. Shortly after $ANSEM surpassed a $100 million market cap, $TJR—once nearing a $30 million market cap—emerged and was widely regarded as the "second dragon."

However, TJR directly ended all possibilities for Ryūni during that night’s livestream, stating that splitting was a very bad idea and urging everyone to refocus their attention on $ANSEM, working together to push $ANSEM’s market cap to $1 billion.

This caused $TJR to never recover, but it also prevented a more severe分流, redirecting attention and funds back to $ANSEM.

Following this event, the initial offering of "Celebrity Coin" temporarily cooled down, and attention shifted to specific projects favored by Ansem. Projects such as Nest, a stablecoin initiative on U.S. equities, and Kintara, a Solana-based game, saw price increases during this period.

Next, the community turned its attention to Ansem’s public wallet address. $manlet appeared in Ansem’s wallet showcase tweet, and its market cap surged rapidly from $3 million to over $13 million following the post, briefly exceeding $25 million that evening.

Overall, $TJR’s movement on Solana has lacked a clear narrative, and $ANSEM has not seen any significant liquidity spillover into other narratives. Logically, this kind of strategy—copying Ansem’s holdings—should have been picked up by the market long ago, but Ansem’s earlier tweets did not spark any hype:

Since the momentum for new listings on Solana has weakened, it’s now BSC’s turn to pick up the baton.

At 5 a.m. yesterday, a tweet from CZ in 2021 was dug up. The tweet resembles the “Big Black Bull” image associated with $ANSEM, in which CZ said five years ago, “Everyone knows I’m a bull, but you’ve never seen my ultimate form.”

As a result, $CZ suddenly surged, rising nearly 200-fold in one hour. Although everyone believed that CZ would not personally engage like Ansem, constantly posting tweets and distributing airdrops, the token still rallied. Moreover, the token withstood dilution from similarly named projects and a rapid post-surge correction—its market cap plummeted from around $40 million to under $6 million in just one hour—before eventually nearing a $90 million market cap.

$TCC is more like $ANSEM on BSC, as it has been airdropped to @TCryptochicks, and the project is frequently promoted by him on X. It has gained attention due to multiple interactions between CZ and him on X, creating a perception that this is “CZ’s endorsed BSC version of Ansem”:

The "celebrity ambush" scenario is also playing out on BSC. This morning, $dingaling, without any claimed backing, was FOMO-driven to a $5 million market cap, before quickly plummeting to under $300,000.

Currently, sentiment on BSC is stronger than on Solana, especially for new players participating in initial offerings, as BSC offers a faster pace and more opportunities at present. However, it remains uncertain how the market conditions on both chains will evolve going forward; we hope a new narrative capable of supporting "celebrity coins" will emerge.