Kanye West (now known as Ye), a famous American rapper and entrepreneur, has officially launched his own cryptocurrency. As announced earlier today, Ye launched his meme coin – namely the YZY coin – on the Solana blockchain. This move follows in the footsteps of previous celebrity coins, including TRUMP and MELANIA, among others.
Several hours following YZY’s launch, the coin attracted massive investor interest pushing its capitalization to as high as $3B briefly. However, market experts have warned against the token, speculating of insider trading and market manipulation. These signs have previously preceded a market crash for most celebrity meme coins.
YZY Meme Coin Launch; Details
Ye took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to announce the official launch of his YZY cryptocurrency. Kanye also confirmed that the token has an active website and an official X account, which Ye follows.
“YEEZY MONEY IS HERE. A NEW ECONOMY, BUILT ON CHAIN…http://money.yeezy.com,” Ye’s post read.
The celebrity also accompanied a video of himself confirming the meme coin’s launch, a move that potentially gave it credibility.
Through the project, outlined as the YZY Money project, Kanye West aims to give users a new coin that helps reduce centralized control. As confirmed in the website, the project features the YZY token, Ye Pay – a crypto payments processor, and YZY Card that will help users spend their funds as either YZY or USDC.
“YZY is the currency that powers all transactions within YZY Money…Ye Pay is a crypto payments processor that removes the high fees merchants are used to, accepting credit card and crypto… YZY Card is a tool for spending YZY and USDC globally,” the website noted.
Kanye West’s meme coin has also taken some security measures. For instance, the YZY token has an anti-snipping mechanism. This strategy prevents investors from making quick profit from price fluctuations immediately the coin is available on crypto exchanges.
YZY Market Dynamics
The YZY development team has deployed a total of 25 contract addresses associated with the YZY token. Out of these 25, only one contract is selected randomly as the official token. This strategy to pick just 1 in 25 randomly aims to keep off speculative traders thus ensuring power redistribution amongst legitimate traders only.
In terms of tokenomics, which the project refers to as “YZYNOMICS,” the allocation is done as follows: 20% of the total supply is allocated to the public, 10% is earmarked for liquidity and 70% of the total supply is allocated to Yeezy Investments LLC. However, Yeezy Investments LLC’s allocation is vested into schedules and cliff periods ranging from 3 to 12 months.
According to data by CoinMarketCap, YZY’s current total supply stands at 999.99 million tokens. However, only 299.99 million tokens are in circulation. As of now, Solscan data shows that there is a total of 36,793 YZY holders.
YZY Faces Substantial Volatility, Market Experts Speculate Insider Trader
Following its launch, YZY faced a thrust of capital inflow which saw the meme coin’s market skyrocket. According to data by Nansen, the meme coin topped $3 billion in market capitalization before dropping.
This rally, coupled with significant investor interest saw YZY rise to be the top trending coin as per CoinMarketCap data. However, its market capitalization now sits at $337 million as of this writing.
Furthermore, the token’s price has also been falling in the same period. Particularly, as reported by Lookonchain, the crypto dropped below $1 briefly as insiders dumped as the market surged. The on-chain analytics platform further reported insider trading resulting in the plunge.
“Multiple insider wallets prepared funds in advance and immediately bought $YZY. Insider wallet 6MNWV8 knew the contract address in advance and even tried buying yesterday. 6MNWV8 spent 450,611 $USDC to buy 1.29M $YZY at $0.35 today and sold 1.04M $YZY for $1.39M, leaving 249,907 $YZY($600K), with a profit of over $1.5M,” Lookonchain’s post noted.
Based on this activity, Lookonchain identified similar incidents to the LIBRA meme coin which crashed just hours after launch. Same as YZY, the Libra token had credibility from Argentina’s president Javier Milei. Lookonchain wrote;
“ye(@kanyewest) launched the $YZY token. Note: Only $YZY was added to the liquidity pool with no $USDC. Dev may sell $YZY by adding/removing liquidity, similar to $LIBRA.”
Furthermore, other market experts have also identified incidents of insider trading. Crypto millionaire Altcoin Gordon, recently shared a video of an insider trader celebrating rugging millions from the YZY token on IG.
So the guy who is behind $YZY token is publicly bragging about insider trading and rugging for MILLIONS of dollars on his IG 🤯 pic.twitter.com/iba5ndGsoP
— Gordon (@GordonGekko) August 21, 2025
While YZY has gained widespread attention, the meme coin could end up as a rug-pull just like other previous celebrity-backed tokens. Furthermore, the token’s long-term viability remains uncertain.
