One of the most captivating wealth stories in cryptocurrency has always been the "golden dog" that multiplies tens or even hundreds of times in a day. Solana hasn't seen such a story in a long time, and this time, a "big black cow" has done it again.

$ANSEM, a meme coin sharing the name with crypto KOL Ansem, reached a market cap of $100 million in 24 hours, achieving an astonishing 600x increase in that period.

Ansem's Return

On June 9th, crypto KOL Ansem claimed to be returning to buying Solana meme coins for the first time in over a year. Recently, he has repeatedly mentioned the pump.fun airdrop, frequently interacting with pump.fun tweets suggesting they distribute the airdrop now, and publicly mentioned it on the Market Bubble podcast:

If you were running pump.fun today, what would you do first? Ansem: Airdrop

Since June 21st, he has been constantly mentioning the concept of "RTM (Return to meme)."

But in reality, since his return, he hasn't directly mentioned many meme coins. He mentioned the blockchain game Kintara, $KINS which once reached a market cap of approximately $23 million. He also mentioned $SOLANGELES, which makes short meme animations and once reached a market cap of about $9 million.

The targets appearing in "RTM" related memes, such as Troll, Jotchua, TripleT, Asteroid, etc., have performed differently, but overall, they saw some gains, though not massive.

The reason Ansem's return has generated so much hype is not primarily because of the astonishing performance of the tokens he directly or indirectly mentioned, but mainly because he played the role of a "meme righteous person," taking the lead in suggesting airdrops to pump.fun while the meme market has been in a prolonged slump, believing this could reactivate market liquidity.

The surge of $ANSEM is based on this soft endorsement of "helping pump.fun distribute airdrops." Ansem did not publicly claim that he CTO'd this token, but the creator revenue from $ANSEM flows to his latest public pump.fun address. Currently, the creator revenue flowing to this address has exceeded $560k.

Ansem stated on X that retweeting his post, following him on pump.fun, and leaving a link to your pump.fun profile in the comments would enter you into a weekly random drawing where he would airdrop a portion of this creator revenue.

Players believe he is using this opportunity to prove to pump.fun that a successful airdrop can ignite market sentiment and make memes great again. Ansem said that if pump.fun could airdrop now, it would be as successful as Jito was in 2023, reigniting the meme bull run on Solana.

This is somewhat reminiscent of when OpenSea delayed issuing a token and then OpenDAO ($SOS) airdropped tokens to NFT players. Both cases involved KOLs leading the charge and capitalizing on players' long-standing discontent.

Controversy

Although $ANSEM has surged dramatically, players still have many controversies surrounding this coin.

First, the surging $ANSEM coin is not the "OG." It is actually based on a meme image, the "big black cow" shown below:

The new $ANSEM was deployed three days after the OG, but 65% of the supply was sent to Ansem himself. This is the "sniping" that players hate the most. The reality is that Ansem initially showed interest in this meme, but the OG coin's creator revenue initially pointed to a "fake" Ansem address; everyone thought it was real, but Ansem said it wasn't. Then someone quickly seized the opportunity, created a new one, and gave 65% of the supply to Ansem.

Because Ansem recently mentioned being against sniping, many believe he is inconsistent in his words and actions regarding $ANSEM :

Ansem stated that he could airdrop the high-market-cap $ANSEM to OG holders. Whether he will do this to prove himself remains unknown.

Furthermore, he mentioned wanting to support communities that build for the long term, not "bundle coins." However, his choice to intensely support a $ANSEM that was only created about ten days ago, rather than tokens that have persisted on Solana over the past year, has also drawn criticism from players.

pump.fun is clearly aware of Ansem's comments urging them to distribute an airdrop. Although pump.fun has not yet responded to this matter, their Chief Content Officer's interactions with Ansem show they are aware of it:

The goal was to oppose pump.fun's lack of an airdrop, but currently, it has turned into a "celebrity coin." The promise not to sniping was broken, as OG $Ansem was not supported. Dissatisfied players believe that Ansem's return has not yet made Solana memes better. If it ultimately ends this way, they would rather Ansem had not returned, so that communities and players who have been building for the long term could at least still hold some hope for a pure meme-building environment.

The success of $ANSEM has caused some old memes to lose liquidity, and the "celebrity coin" strategy that these players find troublesome has made a comeback. For example, James Wynn, a trader who once opened massive positions on Hyperliquid, has also issued a coin on the back of this trend:

In addition to those personally jumping in, a bunch of crypto celebrity copycats have also emerged. For instance, Faze Banks, Andrew Tate, Murad, Cupsey, Cobie, and others have been deployed by trenches. Some older celebrity coins that already existed, such as alon and mitch, have also seen some unusual movements due to this trend.

Ansem himself is no longer just a meme coin legend or a crypto KOL. One of his current roles is co-founder of the trading terminal Bullpen. It's hard to say whether Ansem truly intends to return to the trenches as a pure "meme hero."

Whether the "big black cow" can actually attract new incremental capital to Solana memes, or at least, on a lower bar, get pump.fun to distribute that long-promised airdrop, currently seems far from optimistic.

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