Rapper Cardi B appears to have released a meme coin called Wet Ass Pussy (WAP), in reference to her smash hit 2020 song with Megan Thee Stallion. On-chain analytics company Bubblemaps says that 60% of the total supply was bought at launch by insiders that have already dumped $500,000—all within 12 hours of the launch.
WAP sky rocketed to a market cap of $34 million in the four hours that followed its launch and a post on Cardi B’s Twitter account that has 35.6 million followers. It has since fallen to a market cap of $21 million.
Iggy Azalea, an Australian rapper that has her own meme coin, criticized the project by calling it a “scam” and laughing at people who think Cardi B is really behind the project. In response, the WAP Twitter account responded with a video of what appears to be Cardi B endorsing the product.
“WAP is live on Solana right now,” she says, wearing the same wig and outfit seen in a Twitter post a few days ago, “we’re doing this shit right this time.”
This is likely a reference to the countless celebrity meme coins that have launched and been abandoned within days or weeks. Azalea’s MOTHER token, on the contrary, is what many believe is a celeb coin done right. She’s continued to support the project providing utility and fun to holders.
On-chain analytics company Bubblemaps found that 60% of the supply was “bundled” at launch. Bundling refers to the use of a tool that creates multiple wallets that purchase the same token. This gives the impression that a large number of wallets are holding a small amount of the token, when in reality it has one central authority with a large portion of supply.
With control of over half of the total supply, these insiders have already sold $500,000. By doing so, Bubblemaps claims the insiders have profited at least $250,000. But this only accounts for 3% of the total tokens bundled at launch.
“But note this doesn’t mean [they] can get $16.6 million profit out of [the rest of the supply],” Chak Tse, Bubblemaps on-chain analyst, told Decrypt, “[because] there’s only $310,000 Solana liquidity in the pool.”
This means that while the insiders’ effective remaining balance is $16.6 million, due to the lack of funds in the liquidity pool that cannot cash out for that value. Instead, if they want to sell everything, they’ll have to wait and slowly sell as more investors join for exit liquidity.
“Most of the celeb coin teams sell at a slow rate, to not make it obvious that the team is dumping,” Tse said, explaining that the total amount bundled is “fairly typical” for celebrity meme coins albeit “outrageous.”
Celebrity meme coins are nothing new. This year in particular we’ve seen countless celebrities release Solana meme coins, Caitlyn Jenner sparked the trend when she released JENNER with the controversial crypto coin promoter Sahil Arora. Jenner later claimed the promoter had “scammed her.”
Arora went on to release tokens with Rich the Kid, Jason Derulo, and attempted to front run Azalea’s project—sparking controversy every time he launched. While he claims to have profited $200,000 from Cardi B’s new meme coin, Arora also says that he is not “directly involved” in this project despite publicly accepting clout on social media.
Many have said the celebrity meta had died out after a number of high-profile hacks led to embarrassing results.
Last month football star Neymar Jr, Pink Floyd bassist Roger Waters, and a number of other notable Twitter accounts were hacked and promoted a meme coin. But it failed to break a market cap of $20,000 and had just 26 holders. Less than a week later, a number of big brands including computer manufacturer Lenovo’s India division and Yahoo News UK were hacked. But here’s the kicker: The attackers likely lost money, according to pseudonymous on-chain sleuth ZachXBT.
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
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