On August 22, Iryna Zarutska was killed on a light rail train. On September 10, Charlie Kirk was shot and killed during a speech. In less than a month, two tragedies occurred in the United States, shocking the nation and capturing the world's attention.

The occurrence of these two cases is not directly causally related. However, as the "violent homicide cases" that triggered nationwide attention escalated into "politicized events," it is difficult to discuss these two cases separately.

In the crypto community, surrounding these two cases, the two meme coins $IRYNA and $CHARLIE were once hyped. From the perspective of Chinese-speaking players, there is a significant difference in understanding these two tokens compared to English-speaking players (especially those in the American crypto community), which can lead to confusion. For example:

Is the impact of the Charlie Kirk incident not as significant as that of Iryna Zarutska? Why is the peak market cap of $CHARLIE lower than that of $IRYNA?

Was the event where Musk and Trump spoke out unable to reach the heights of $PNUT because the on-chain performance was poor?

Through reviewing the fermentation process of the events and observing the significant controversies on Twitter, perhaps we can provide answers to these questions from a more comprehensive perspective.

The case of Iryna Zarutska being killed on the subway occurred on August 22, but the $IRYNA token was not deployed until September 6. Moreover, on September 6 and September 7, the peak market cap of $IRYNA did not even surpass $1 million.

If we search for discussions on Twitter after this incident, we will find that the case had already attracted significant attention immediately after the incident. On August 26, Musk replied to a related tweet, "Why wasn't the perpetrator kept in prison?"

The main tweet Musk interacted with has received over 37,000 retweets and 144,000 likes.

However, at that time, the surveillance footage of Iryna Zarutska's murder had not yet been disclosed, which was the reason for a period of "information vacuum" between the incident and the token deployment. The surveillance video of the crime scene was released on September 6 Beijing time, and we could subsequently see related discussions on Twitter.

The above tweet was posted on September 6 at 5 a.m. Beijing time, but at this time, it was still over 10 hours until the token deployment. During this additional short "vacuum period," the surveillance video from the crime scene was uploaded to Twitter and quickly went viral.

On September 7, when asked about the case, Trump called it "horrifying" and promised to fully grasp the situation. On September 8, while speaking at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., Trump connected this incident to his plans to deploy federal agents and the National Guard to Chicago and other Democratic-controlled cities. In addition to expressing condolences to the victim's family, he also stated, "The evildoers are out there, and if we don't handle them, our country will no longer exist."

Trump also posted on Truth Social, "The innocent blood of this woman drips from the killer's knife, and now her blood is on the hands of those Democrats who refuse to lock up the bad guys."

In this post, he also targeted Roy Cooper, calling him the "former disgraced governor" and the "wannabe senator." Of course, Trump's insults are never without a purpose, as the end of the post is a rallying cry for the Republican Michael Whatley.

At this point, the incident has shifted from an isolated violent homicide to a politicized event.

One counterintuitive aspect of the $IRYNA coin is that Trump's influence on its price performance may not be as significant as Musk's.

Looking at the candlestick chart, the highest trading volume on the 1-hour chart occurred at 3 p.m. on September 10, with a volume of nearly $17 million, and the token's market capitalization surged from $9.5 million to nearly $34 million at one point.

It was precisely at 3 p.m. on September 10 that Musk tweeted that he was willing to donate $1 million to support the creation of an Iryna Zarutska mural in major U.S. cities.

However, on the evening of September 10, when a White House official also tweeted Trump's statement that the perpetrator of the Iryna case should be sentenced to death, the $IRYNA market remained unresponsive.

Approximately 3 hours after this White House tweet, Charlie Kirk was shot. About 2 hours later, Trump announced Charlie Kirk's death.

The Iryna case transitioned from an independent violent homicide to a politicized process, while the case of Charlie Kirk's murder was destined to be a "political assassination" from the outset. This is because Charlie Kirk himself was a right-wing American political figure. Without delving too much into Charlie Kirk's political influence, just looking at the various reactions after the incident can indirectly provide insight—Utah Governor Spencer Fox classified the case as a "political assassination," Trump ordered the U.S. flag to be flown at half-staff for 4 days as a sign of mourning and posthumously awarded Charlie Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and other foreign dignitaries such as the British Prime Minister, Israeli Prime Minister, Argentine President, etc., expressed their condolences on social media...

After news of Charlie's case broke, $IRYNA quickly plummeted by 50% within half an hour, dropping from nearly a $18 million market cap to around $9 million. Since then, $IRYNA has never been able to regain its upward momentum, and its current market cap is approximately $900,000.

However, the funds chasing $CHARLIE have not been able to replicate $IRYNA's market cap height. $CHARLIE's highest market cap has never exceeded $20 million and currently stands at only around $260,000.

After clarifying the ins and outs, we will attempt to answer the question raised at the beginning of the article—why couldn't such a big "hot topic" take off?

An Incomparable Political Meme

Some players have compared $CHARLIE to $PNUT because both are related to politics and political discussions. However, such a comparison has several inappropriate aspects.

First is the "difference in the subject of death." While the tragedy of animal death evokes sympathy and even involves dissatisfaction with the political status quo, it ultimately does not involve the "sacredness" of human life. Even in terms of the method of death, there is an impact—$PUNT's squirrel is euthanized, while the image of Charlie Kirk being shot is gruesome and horrifying to everyone—the bullet hit Charlie's neck, and a large amount of blood gushed out instantly.

The debate about "human blood mantou" actually occurred previously in the Chinese-speaking world, where it revolved around the meme coin $AI171 following the crash of Indian Airlines Flight 171.

Furthermore, the timing of the Charlie incident coincided with the ongoing hype surrounding the Iryna incident, while the United States was experiencing heightened social division and conflict, representing a kind of "national trauma" that was challenging for Chinese-speaking players across the ocean to fully grasp.

How intense was the social division and conflict in American society? Here we can echo a point raised at the beginning of the article, that the Iryna incident and the Charlie incident were not a direct cause-and-effect relationship of "prior incident leading to subsequent incident," but it was difficult to discuss the two incidents separately.

Charlie Krik had a very distinct viewpoint on the Iryna incident, believing it was related to racial issues. He not only extensively and frequently tweeted about the Iryna incident on Twitter but also engaged in debates with CNN political commentator Van Jones.

Charlie Krik's argument in support of his viewpoint was based on a statement from the surveillance video of the Iryna incident where the perpetrator, after the crime, said, "I got that white girl." On Twitter, the oppositional sentiment towards Black people due to this statement was also very strong. Searching for the keyword "TND" reveals not only numerous related tweets but also some with high engagement.

"We might witness TND before the release of GTA 6."

The original meaning of "TND" is highly racist, that is, "Total N***** Death." After the Iryna incident, radical American Twitter users used "TND" or "Totally Nice Day" to express these racist remarks to avoid being suspended from Twitter.

In this environment, any defense of meme coins appears feeble. Even during the rise of $IRYNA, some voices mentioned, "$IRYNA is providing funds to the victim's family." However, by the time $CHARLIE emerged, the English-speaking community was mostly accusing "$CHARLIE of consuming human blood mantou," and the defense almost reduced to "This is the meme coin market, you don't have to speculate, but the market is like this," which barely qualifies as a defense.

"If you promote, create a coin, or attempt to profit from the Iryna and Charlie murder case through hype, then you are a very shameful and despicable person," this tweet received over 2200 likes, with many similar tweets.

Furthermore, some English-speaking KOLs faced backlash due to their insensitive remarks regarding these two cases. The most notable example is Rasmr, whose coin $rasmr plummeted by around 30% following the tweet below.

"There should be a live stream where the killer in the Iryna case takes out the killer in the Charlie case during the broadcast." Rasmr has since deleted this tweet.

Lexapro also faced criticism for tweeting, "I am a profiteer of racial conflict and violence transactions." Lexapro has also deleted this tweet. In the screenshot below, you can see that Lexapro previously displayed a badge for the meme coin trading app Padre, but Padre has since removed Lexapro from its affiliated accounts.

Therefore, in the English-speaking community, $IRYNA and $CHARLIE are generally being boycotted on moral grounds, far beyond the realm of mere hype.

Finally, the $CHARLIE coin was immediately deployed upon the news of Charlie Kirk's murder, unlike $PNUT, which had some time for the hype to settle, making meme coin-related hype seem acceptable. Just as the public criticized the businesses that hiked mask prices at the start of the pandemic, no one at that point would consider this as "reasonable speculation"; everyone would simply perceive it as "cruel and heartless."

As for the poor on-chain performance or the non-listing of Solana meme coins on exchanges like Binance and OKX, these may be secondary reasons. Especially when CEXs do not list Solana meme coins and receive such a response from the English-speaking community, involving such serious political events as with $IRYNA and $CHARLIE, major exchanges find it challenging to list them.

It can be said that $IRYNA has evolved from its initial "hype coin" status to a "political coin" status, and with the Charlie Kirk incident, it has been involved to some extent in a form of "political correctness" alongside $CHARLIE. The situations of these two tokens can be described as unprecedented since last year's meme coin bull market. Furthermore, there is a significant divergence in viewpoints on the event between the Chinese-speaking community across the ocean and the English-speaking community (especially American players), leading to a significant disparity in understanding and price performance.

Even though it was "political correctness" that led to this "humanitarian concern," I also hope that "humanitarian concern" can henceforth become a guiding principle in the meme coin market.

With too many things happening in the world every day, fortunate events and tragedies alike, the murders of Iryna and Charlie, aside from politics, also tell us that life and death are ruthless, and we never know when death will come.

When a tragedy occurs, we are first and foremost living human beings, and only secondly cryptocurrency players. There are too many things to participate in and hype about, so why dwell on life and death?

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