Ansem’s return helped ignite the Solana leg of the trade
Over the past week, one of the hottest on-chain narratives has centered on so-called “celebrity tokens,” assets named after crypto KOLs or well-known figures that rely heavily on attention, public recognition, and social momentum. The move initially took shape on Solana, where $ANSEM became the defining example. According to the source article, the token reached a $100 million market capitalization within 24 hours and delivered an extraordinary roughly 600x rise in a single day.
The backdrop was Ansem’s public return to the meme coin market. On June 9, the crypto KOL said he was buying Solana meme coins again for the first time in more than a year. Around the same period, he repeatedly raised the topic of a possible pump.fun airdrop, interacted with pump.fun posts on X, and argued that issuing an airdrop now could help reactivate market liquidity. He also made the same point publicly during the Market Bubble podcast.
Beginning on June 21, Ansem also started pushing the idea of “RTM,” or “Return to meme.” At that stage, however, the market had not yet fully priced in a broader meme revival, let alone one that would begin through a token explicitly tied to a KOL’s identity. Early enthusiasm around Ansem was less about a celebrity-themed token itself and more about his role as a figure seen by traders as defending meme market participants after a long period of weak sentiment.
The narrative moved from airdrop expectations to public-wallet “claim” speculation
Sentiment accelerated further after Ansem posted on X that users who reposted his content, followed him on pump.fun, and left their pump.fun profile link in the comments could be randomly selected each week to receive a share of creator revenue. That soft-claim structure quickly energized on-chain traders. Some market participants compared the setup to the period when OpenSea never launched a token and OpenDAO’s $SOS emerged as a community airdrop aimed at NFT users, with both episodes tapping into pent-up frustration and expectation.
Still, the source article argues that Ansem’s role was unlikely to be purely that of a meme-market crusader. Beyond being a KOL, he is also a co-founder of the trading terminal Bullpen. That became more relevant when a dedicated $ANSEM claim page later appeared on Bullpen, reinforcing the view that the token may also have been planned as a high-visibility marketing vehicle for the platform.
Once $ANSEM crossed the $100 million valuation mark, the market’s focus shifted quickly. The story was no longer mainly about pump.fun, liquidity, or an airdrop. Instead, traders moved toward a broader “celebrity token” playbook: launching tokens with a KOL’s ticker, allocating 60% or more to a public wallet associated with that figure, and waiting for a tweet or other form of acknowledgment to drive the next leg higher.
Solana saw copycat activity, but liquidity stayed concentrated
After the breakout in $ANSEM, $TJR briefly emerged as what traders called the likely “second leader,” at one point approaching a $30 million market capitalization. That momentum faded quickly after TJR said on a livestream that fragmentation was harmful and called on traders to refocus on $ANSEM instead, even urging the market to try pushing it toward a $1 billion valuation. The statement effectively killed off $TJR’s chances as a rival, but it also limited broader diversion of attention and capital on Solana.
Following that phase, the celebrity-token minting frenzy cooled temporarily and traders looked instead at projects that Ansem appeared to favor. The source article cites Nest, described there as a U.S. equity stablecoin project, and the Solana gaming project Kintara as examples of names that benefited during this interval. In the next step of the trade, market participants started watching Ansem’s public wallet in search of directional clues.
That led to fresh speculation around $manlet, which appeared in a wallet screenshot shared by Ansem. After the post, the token reportedly moved from around a $3 million market capitalization to above $13 million in short order, and later briefly exceeded $25 million the same night. Even so, the article’s broader assessment is that, after $TJR, Solana never developed a durable secondary mainline. Liquidity created by $ANSEM did not meaningfully spill over into a larger or more stable parallel narrative.
BSC picked up the baton as attention rotated away from Solana
With Solana new-launch momentum starting to fade, attention rotated toward BSC. According to the source, at around 5 a.m. the previous morning, an old tweet posted by CZ in 2021 was rediscovered. In that post, he said that everyone knew he was a bull, but that they had not seen his ultimate form. The resurfacing of that line quickly became the trigger for speculation in $CZ.
Fueled by community enthusiasm, $CZ reportedly climbed nearly 200x within an hour. Traders broadly recognized that CZ was unlikely to participate in the same way Ansem had, through repeated public engagement or airdrop-style interaction, but that did not stop the token from gaining traction. The source article says $CZ withstood same-name fragmentation and a violent correction, at one point falling from roughly a $40 million market cap to below $6 million within an hour before later rebounding to nearly $90 million.
The token seen by many as a closer BSC counterpart to $ANSEM was $TCC. It drew attention after funds were sent to @TCryptochicks, who then promoted the token frequently on X. Because CZ had multiple interactions with that account on the platform, traders interpreted the setup as something akin to “the BSC version of Ansem with CZ’s recognition,” giving $TCC a stronger social narrative than a typical short-lived meme launch.
Celebrity-token trading remains highly sentiment-driven on both chains
The strategy of “pre-positioning” around public figures also showed up on BSC in other forms. The source article points to $dingaling, which briefly climbed to a $5 million market capitalization without ever receiving a formal acknowledgment from the person it referenced. It then sold off rapidly and was later described as having fallen to below $300,000. The move underscored how heavily this entire theme depends on short-term attention and fear of missing out rather than on durable fundamentals.
In the source article’s assessment, overall sentiment on BSC has now become stronger than on Solana, especially for traders focused on first-round launches and fast-moving speculative setups. BSC is described as having a quicker rhythm and, for now, more opportunities than Solana. Even so, the next step for both chains remains uncertain. What is clearer is that Solana and BSC are currently engaged in a rapid relay of market attention, and “celebrity tokens” have become one of the most visible labels driving that rotation.