- One wallet executed two swaps totaling 500,000 USDC, pulling in roughly $1.68M in YZY.
- Coordinated wallets bypassed the anti-bot system, indicating insider-style access to gain profits.
- Smaller buyers saw heavy losses as elite traders moved first and sold for millions.
Kanye West’s memecoin YZY was launched on the Solana blockchain on August 21, 2025, attracting professional snipers despite claims of anti-bot protections. Within minutes, the token’s market cap hit $3 billion. However, it quickly collapsed by over 66% as early buyers offloaded tokens. Wallets connected to elite traders made millions.
Anti-Bot Tools Fail to Block Strategic Wallets
Ye’s “YZY Money” ecosystem included a payments platform and debit card. It promoted fairness through unique anti-sniping tactics, such as deploying 25 similar smart contracts. Only one was real. Despite this setup, skilled snipers bypassed these measures.
Solscan data revealed that wallet AwY1VTMdhsSRTe… executed two coordinated swaps of 250,000 USDC. This swap, via the Jupiter Aggregator and Meteora DLMM Program, returned 1,196,378 YZY, with a value of $841,427.19. Shortly after, the same wallet transferred 129 SOL to another wallet, Jitotp3. The move suggested pre-coordinated funding or liquidity involvement.
Lookonchain also identified wallet 6MNWV8 as an early actor. It attempted to buy YZY even before the token went live. Once trading opened, it spent 450,611 USDC to buy 1.29 million YZY. It sold 1.04 million tokens for 1.39 million USDC, a profit of over $1.5M. These wallets shared ties with earlier coordinated trades in Argentina’s LIBRA token, suggesting repeat patterns of sophisticated operations.
Celebrity Tokens Favor Whales, Not Retail
Data from the IQ.wiki site notes that Yeezy Investments LLC remained with 70% of the YZY token supply, leaving only 10% for liquidity and 20% for the public sale, while no USDC was paired in the first pool. The insiders could have freely added or removed any stablecoin in the pool, impacting the token value. Yet despite Ye’s insistence on fairness through Jupiter Lock vesting, the centralized power structure remained very strong.
Nansen data confirmed that 13 wallets earned over $24 million from the launch. Meanwhile, three separate holders each lost over $800,000. One investor saw a $1.8 million loss. Another wallet’s losses exceeded $1.2 million.
The first YZY buyer was the same trader known as “Naseem,” who previously turned $1 million in TRUMP tokens into $100 million. The consistency in elite dominance has led many to compare the YZY launch to earlier celebrity tokens such as TRUMP, Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER, and Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER. These tokens spiked quickly due to fame and attention. However, whales entered early and offloaded profits while retail traders bought late and faced the drop.
Related: Kanye’s $YZY Hits $3B, But Is It Another Celebrity Hype Trap?
Is Fair Access in Celebrity Memecoins an Illusion?
The YZY launch has sparked new questions. Can any anti-sniping defense genuinely stop insider access? Or are such tools more public relations than protection?
The data suggest that despite attempts to democratize entry, coordinated actors retain control. They navigate contract deployments, fund wallets in advance, and exploit retail entry points. So far, few projects have prevented this behavior. Without strict external audits and hard-coded caps, liquidity remains vulnerable to manipulation.
The picture is quite clear: celebrity coins predominantly attract a few whales early on who drain value before being acknowledged by most traders. As more tokens are being created, the observers are left wondering whether fairness is really possible or if it is just a marketing ruse.
