Well-known trader Ansem: Although the popularity of Meme coins has declined recently, I still believe that this trend will continue

Ansem, a prominent trader, said at Messari’s Mainnet conference in downtown Manhattan on Tuesday that he would have approached the recent celebrity coin trend differently, following controversy surrounding the apparent rugpull phenomenon, which has enriched celebrities but hurt retail investors. Ansem, whose real name is Zion Thomas, said during a fireside chat with YAP Global Assistant Director Debra Nita: “One thing I’ve had to get used to is that anything remotely related or associated with me is taken as an endorsement because I have a lot of followers online. You have to be more careful about assuming the best of everyone. Finances are important.” “The original argument was that crypto lacked consumer applications — I don’t want to say PMF (product-market fit). They lacked a path to Web2,” Ansem said, adding that celebrities with “millions of followers” ​​could use their “social capital” to re-engage people’s interest. However, he admitted that this doesn’t always work. For example, rapper Sexyy Red’s team reportedly owned 90% of the PRESI token supply at launch, while the token Caitlin Jenner pledged to promote is down 99% from its all-time high. “One reason this cycle (Meme coins) is doing well is that Solana enables retail users to trade with very little money. And the user experience for people to trade online is much better than in the last cycle,” said Ansem, who was also an early backer of Solana. He noted that high fees on the Ethereum mainnet limited trading in previous cycles. Although the meme coin industry has begun to cool recently, Ansem still believes this trend will continue for a long time. He also said he is particularly interested in emerging chains, including Monad, Berachain and Movement, as well as “alt-VMs” such as Move-VM and Solana’s SVM. (The Block)