160 times return to zero in 8 hours: The Kardashian family’s “bloody” cryptocurrency game

If you pay a little attention to American variety shows, you should know the well-known Kardashian family.

Whether it is the daily routine of the three sisters slapping each other to show off their wealth and plastic surgery, or the speechless drama of the stepfather's transgender and the mother's cheating, the variety show "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" has become a very melodramatic and appetizing existence. And the people covered by the Kardashian family have also become well-known Internet celebrities known to everyone.

And just recently, a member of the Kardashian family came to the crypto circle. In the two-day coin issuance experience, the coin circle also deeply felt the crazy drama show in the sense of "Kardashian".

At 4 a.m. on May 27, Caitlyn Jenner, the stepfather of the Kardashian sisters, suddenly posted a photo of shaking hands with Trump on the X account, with the caption "make america great again!!! and we love crypto!", and attached a link to the $Jenner token on the token generation platform pump.fun under the tweet. At the same time, Caitlyn Jenner also uncharacteristically mentioned Ansem, Paul, SolJakey and other senior meme players in the crypto community to promote the token.

This stepfather is not an ordinary person. His original name is Bruce Jenner. He was a former American track and field Olympic athlete and won the Olympic decathlon championship. Later, he met Kim Kardashian's mother Kris Jenner in his second marriage and raised five children with her. Finally, at the age of 65, he completed the sex change operation and officially became Caitlyn Jenner. It can be said that Caitlyn is one of the most representative transgender people in American history. On the X platform, she has 3.36 million followers.

It is precisely because of the huge influence that the crypto community instantly attracted attention after the news was released. After only half an hour of going online, the Jenner token soared 15 times. After an hour, the token had risen 70 times, becoming the absolute star token on pump.fun.

On the other hand, although it is not uncommon for celebrities to issue tokens, due to the GCR hacking incident, Caitlyn had never been in contact with the crypto community before, let alone using pump.fun to generate tokens. Therefore, some cautious people in the community believed that this was just another account hacking incident and called for rational purchase.

The facts seemed to confirm this frightening speculation. An hour later, the token developer suddenly sold 160 SOL tokens in the liquidity pool. Under the selling pressure, Jenner quickly cut the stake in half. The community felt bad, and abuse and curses flew in an instant. Just when Jenner was running wildly on the road to zero, Caitlyn Jenner once again stood up and gave the token a shot in the arm.

Caitlyn updated her Instagram account again and posted a quick shot, saying "US$7 million per hour, the team is Caitlyn Jenner and Sophia Hutchins (Jenner's agent)". Sophia also forwarded the quick shot later. Later, Caitlyn began to interact with everyone on the X platform, emphasizing that her account had not been hacked.

The crypto community was also quite puzzled by this inexplicable operation, but adhering to the trust in Caitlyn, under the temptation of token income, Jenner tokens stopped falling and rose again, soaring more than 6 times. Perhaps to express satisfaction with the upward trend, 30 minutes later, Caitlyn appeared on the X platform again and posted a video showing her face, admitting that the token was issued by herself, but she was playing golf and enjoying her vacation, and would not participate in the team's upcoming Space today.

The real person's appearance obviously increased the persuasiveness, and the token price continued to soar, rising by 70% again in a few minutes. But then, cautious community members raised a new possibility of fraud. Could this video be a deep fake? Otherwise, why would the developer sell the tokens?

Deep fakes are not new to everyone. Its essence is an AI technology that uses neural network technology to conduct large-sample learning and machine learning models to splice a person's voice, facial expressions and body movements into false content. In short, AI can be used to change people's faces and voices, and it can be used in videos, and the effect is the same as that of real people. In recent months, cases of deep fakes have occurred frequently. In the recent Indian general election, a video of "Indian Prime Minister Modi dancing to Bengali pop music" appeared.

Suspicions came again, and the token price began to plunge again, and it was cut in half again in a short period of time. Seeing that the situation was gradually getting out of control, Caitlyn held a Space on her X account, and her agent Sophia once again spoke on her behalf to refute the rumors. Under strong evidence, the previous claims of deep fake fraud began to be deleted one after another, and the token market value rose from 4 million US dollars to 20 million. Compared with the initial listing price of the token, in these two hours of multiple reversals, the Jenner token has risen 35 times.

Just when everyone thought that the dust had settled, the market took another 180-degree turn, and the agent announced that another token would be issued. The tokens were originally purchased for traffic and popularity. If they need to be issued again, the value of the first token will inevitably fall sharply. Under this expectation, Jenner ushered in another sell-off, with a drop of 70% in half an hour.

The situation was not good again, and Caitlyn came to the rescue again, emphasizing that the team would only focus on $Jenner and would not launch other tokens. As of the third reversal, the token had been online for more than 2 hours. At 8:20, Caitlyn once again released a new video on the official account. The "moving" Caitlyn celebrated that the token reached a market value of 10 million in 4 hours, and said that there was no forgery and the encrypted token was real.

At this point, retail investors finally put aside their concerns, and the token soared, with the highest increase exceeding 160 times at one point. Traders also began to share their orders and communicate, but the drama was staged again.

At 2 a.m. on May 38, Caitlyn once again released a new Pump token BBARK without any warning. After the news came out, JENNER plummeted from $0.027 to $0.011 in an instant, and then Caitlyn urgently deleted the tweet, and later updated it with an advertising logo, saying that this was a promotion of other tokens, which was also a response to not issuing other tokens before.

BBARK also experienced a bloodbath like jenner after the market value soared and then plunged all the way. However, jenner stopped falling and rebounded, and has now recovered its lost ground, now at $0.01872, with a stable market value of $20 million. At present, Caitlyn is continuously releasing news about cryptocurrencies and tokens on Twitter. Regarding this operation, some comments joked, "You played the entire cryptocurrency circle in 48 hours."

Big ups and downs are commonplace in the cryptocurrency circle, but the Kardashian family is unique in having multiple reversals in a short period of time. As for the entry of celebrities into the crypto circle, the community is also full of discussions. Supporters believe that this move can promote the large-scale use of cryptocurrencies and introduce more household names to promote cryptocurrencies, such as the more controversial Kim Kardashian. Opponents believe that being publicly teased and having every move involving the price of the currency is not a good thing. What's more, some people also joked that it violated securities laws.

This is true. In recent years, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), as a regulator, has continued to crack down on KOL marketing of cryptocurrency projects. In October 22, Kim Kardashian was charged with a negative typical case of paying $1.3 million to end the regulator's charges against her because she promoted and promoted the currency without disclosing her relationship with the currency. Since then, many celebrities such as Floyd Mayweather and Lindsay Lohan have been fined by the SEC for this reason.

Although Caitlyn openly admitted that she was the issuer and advertiser of the token, judging from the market's repeated reversals based on her behavior, this move is suspected of violating securities laws. After all, many MEME tokens themselves cannot escape the suspicion of securities. In fact, ask yourself, just a few words can bring a market value of tens of millions, and the real money of retail investors is easily coerced. Is this really legal?

Back to the celebrity side, in fact, in addition to more direct currency holdings, most of the earliest celebrities who entered the crypto market started with NFT. When NFT was at its hottest, in addition to popular overseas stars, well-known Chinese idols such as Edison Chen, JJ Lin, Jay Chou, Annie Yi, and Wilber Pan have all launched their own NFT projects, and some of them have been sold at sky-high prices due to the celebrity effect. But now, almost all celebrity NFTs have been broken.

Not long ago, some netizens questioned on Edison Chen's social platform whether the 2426CNFT project he launched was no longer in operation. From a recent perspective, the NFT "Nobody" launched by Stephen Chow in January this year not only broke through 3,500 ETH in trading volume overnight when it was released, but the floor price also soared 500% from 0.15 ETH to nearly 0.98 ETH, and the current floor price has fallen to 0.108 ETH.

It can be seen that the celebrity effect is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. It can quickly accumulate first-hand traffic, but it can also easily become a weapon for cutting leeks. Especially for current celebrities, before launching a token or NFT, most of them do not understand the operation of the crypto market, and the long-term operation route is not very clear. A typical example is that Caitlyn's agent even began to reveal the existence of the second token when the first token was still rising, and the initial incomprehensible token sell-off also proved this, although Caitlyn later suspected that she was deceived by the token developer Sahil Arora. But in the final analysis, for them, issuing coins may just be a way to make money and prove their influence.

It is very sad that as celebrities, they can easily monetize their traffic. But retail investors in the currency circle are chasing hot spots with real feelings, hoping to get on the train quickly before the train brakes to get a bucket of gold. Of course, there are also people who can successfully land. For example, there are lucky traders who claim that they have earned more than $100,000 in profits from 3 SOLs, but everyone knows where the casino's profits come from. While retail investors are constantly bumping on this winding rail train, celebrities are still enjoying their golf vacations.

On the other hand, the prevalence of MEME culture has once again made the community doubt the core of encryption. The so-called freedom and decentralization have once again become a false proposition. After all, real disruptive applications are hard to find, but casino MEME can be seen everywhere. Previously, the community has erupted more than once in the MEME influence debate. A16z once publicly criticized MEME for destroying the innovation of encryption. But opponents also bluntly stated that without MEME, there would be no liquidity, and without liquidity, the currency circle would not have the key driving force for development.

With the approval of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs, traditional finance has taken the two most valuable tokens in the encryption field. For ordinary retail investors, although the bull market is repeated, the opportunities for ordinary people will never disappear, but it is obvious that the dividends are being weakened and the possibility of getting rich quickly continues to decrease. Ten years ago, mining machines could make huge profits, and holding on to the currency could increase by a hundred times; four years ago, Defi attempts and airdrops could earn good income; three years ago, an NFT could bring freedom; and now, Bitcoin is close to $68,000, and Ethereum has reached $3,800. The airdrops are very popular, and the admission ticket is already very expensive.

In comparison, MEME may be one of the stories with the highest odds. The retail investors who are caught up in it can only continue to rise and fall in the rapid iteration of rise and fall.