Kanye's token YZY signals the end of the celebrity coin myth?
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Kanye's token YZY signals the end of the celebrity coin myth?
Top 1000 token holder addresses have no "ordinary" winners; large holders fled quickly but ended up holding at the peak.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Frank, PANews
The celebrity coin market is stirring again. Kanye West, a globally influential yet controversial artist, suddenly announced the launch of his personal MEME token YZY on August 21, which quickly surged to a market capitalization exceeding $300 million. Within just a few hours, some early movers made millions in profits, while many others rushed in only to be left holding bags at the peak.
PANews conducted an analysis of the initial buy and sell activities of the top 1000 YZY holders. This time, the launch of YZY seems to have completely exposed the illusion connecting celebrity tokens with wealth creation stories. Insiders and bots walked away with profits—there were no ordinary winners left in this game.
Big players rushed in but still got rekt
Overall data shows that the average initial purchase price for the top 1000 YZY holders was around $1.45. A large number of big holders bought in the range of $1.8–2.0, accounting for approximately 44% of all major holders. Perhaps due to being trapped immediately after buying, most big holders had not initiated any selling by August 25. Out of 893 addresses that bought in, only about 275 sold part of their holdings, representing a mere 30% sell rate.
From a timing perspective, these big players didn’t enter particularly late. Most activity was concentrated on August 21—the day of the token’s public release—and specifically within one hour after Kanye’s announcement. Over half of the addresses purchased within two hours of the market opening.
In terms of capital size, the average initial investment per big holder was approximately $285,000. This figure is significantly higher than Libra’s top 1000 addresses (average ~$9,696), though far below the $590,000 average entry cost seen among TRUMP token's top 1000 holders at launch. Overall, these big holders held roughly $46.76 million (excluding team holdings), representing about 8.5% of total market cap and approximately 65.3% of circulating supply.
Regarding selling outcomes, although only some big holders exited, those who did were mostly selling at a loss. The average initial selling price was $1.19, compared to the $1.45 average entry price—indicating an average loss of about 18%. Additionally, the average amount sold was much smaller than initial purchases, standing at only $11,800.
From this perspective, the main participants in YZY were no longer retail investors, but rather wealthy individuals chasing celebrity tokens. Compared to previous cases like TRUMP and LIBRA, these big holders entered faster and were heavily concentrated during the initial trading phase. However, subsequent market adoption appeared weak. Starting August 22, even as YZY’s price dropped below half of early big holders’ entry points, only a handful chose to enter at that stage.
An insider and bot-driven收割game
The largest single purchase was made by the address ANGuXwT18StoX2Ghp3387x6vajPk3sEsxC89LngV5F5r, which spent $200,000 to buy 695,000 tokens at an average price of $0.287 within one minute of Kanye’s announcement. To complete this trade, the address set a 40% slippage and paid an additional 3.8 SOL to Jito as priority fees.
Half an hour later, this address sold for $1.82 million, netting over $1.6 million in profit.
Notably, this address is believed by the community to belong to an insider group. Behaviorally, this seems plausible—the address was created on August 19 (the same day the YZY token was deployed) and withdrew approximately $200,000 worth of USDT and 49 SOL from Binance. Until YZY’s launch, it had not traded any other MEME coins. Clearly, this address was set up specifically to front-run the YZY launch.
Among our sample, four addresses bought YZY within the first minute of launch. Some were high-skilled bots, such as 6xuMV6W6QVxrVmsZxEdLfV6kfhuBsg3ah1X8rydLfQvy, which invested 300 SOL in quick succession within two minutes of market open and eventually earned around $80,000. Transaction patterns show this address frequently trades MEME tokens, with over 10,000 trades executed so far.
In addition, according to an investigation published by Bubblemaps, Hayden Davis—who previously orchestrated attacks on celebrity tokens like MELANIA and LIBRA—struck again. He fragmented funds through multiple centralized exchange addresses and launched an immediate attack on YZY, ultimately profiting approximately $12 million.
The myth of celebrity coins collapses
Over the past year, since Trump launched TRUMP, the celebrity token space briefly entered a period of intense issuance. Yet in hindsight, nearly all these tokens have lost over 90% of their value, causing significant harm to investors.
To date, TRUMP’s circulating market cap stands at about $1.65 billion, down roughly 90% from its peak. Melania’s token MELANIA has a current market cap of $148 million, down approximately 99% from its high. Argentina’s presidential token LIBRA is now valued at only $5.4 million, a staggering 99.9% drop from its peak of $4.7 billion. All these tokens followed the same L-shaped trajectory—spiking initially then collapsing without recovery.
As for YZY, the number of unique holders—around 27,000—is far lower than previous celebrity tokens. Moreover, the high entry costs (over $1.8 for many big holders), combined with lack of follow-up momentum, dramatically increased the difficulty of exiting profitably. On the chart, virtually every big holder who failed to exit within the first 10 minutes was left stranded at the top. Prices dropped rapidly—down 70% within just two hours from the peak. This speed and severity of decline are even more extreme than many background-free MEME coins.
YZY early price chart
Looking back at celebrity tokens from TRUMP to YZY, a clear and consistent pattern emerges:
Blitzkrieg and the head start effect: Celebrity tokens rely on the massive influence of the figurehead to instantly attract global attention and capital. This causes an immediate price spike, creating enormous profit opportunities for a tiny group of "insiders" or "front-runners." Leveraging information asymmetry and technical advantages, they cash out before retail investors even get involved.
Big players absorb the dump, retail remains confused: Unlike regular MEME coins, the second wave of buyers in celebrity tokens tends to be well-capitalized whales. They may have missed the golden first minute, but driven by faith in celebrity appeal and gambler’s mentality, they buy at elevated prices. Once hype fades and new money dries up, both these whales and late-coming retail investors are trapped.
Value vacuum and L-shaped collapse: Strip away the celebrity aura, and these tokens lack any real utility or fundamental value. When speculation ends, sentiment cools fast, leading to free-falling prices and the classic "L-shaped" chart. The myth of rapid riches lasts only minutes or hours, followed by a long descent toward zero. From TRUMP to LIBRA to YZY, this iron law holds true without exception.
The YZY episode once again proves that the celebrity token space is not a blue ocean of value, but a dangerous casino manipulated by information asymmetry and emotional hype.
In this game, the real winners are always those who can position themselves early and execute precise exits—insiders and capital predators. For the vast majority of ordinary investors, seeing news on social media usually means they’ve already arrived at the peak of risk. The rapid rise and sudden collapse of YZY serves as another warning to the overheated MEME market: beneath the glitter of celebrity fame lies an investment abyss too deep for ordinary people to bear.
When the next "Kanye" appears, investors should first ask themselves: do they want to be fuel for someone else’s wealth story, or choose to walk away from this carnival where only a few profit?
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
PANews
