The phenomenon of "meme coins" multiplying in value tens to hundreds of times in a single day has always been one of the most captivating wealth stories in the cryptocurrency world. Such stories have been rare on Solana lately, but this time, a "big black bull" has once again achieved it.

$ANSEM, a meme coin named after the crypto KOL Ansem, saw a lightning-fast $1 billion market cap in 24 hours, marking an astonishing 600x surge in a day.

The Return of Ansem

On June 9, the crypto KOL Ansem claimed to have made his first return in over a year to purchase a Solana meme coin. Recently, he has repeatedly mentioned the pump.fun airdrop, interacted with pump.fun tweets suggesting an airdrop distribution at present, and publicly discussed this on the Market Bubble podcast:

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

Since June 21, he has been consistently referring to the concept of "RTM (Return to meme),”

However, since his return, he has not directly mentioned many meme coins. He mentioned the play-to-earn game Kintara, with $KINS peaking at around $23 million in market cap. He also mentioned $SOLANGELES, known for meme animations, reaching a peak market cap of around $9 million.

The assets featured in the "RTM" meme-related images, such as Troll, Jotchua, TripleT, Asteriod, have shown mixed performances, with some overall gains but nothing too substantial.

The reason for the high enthusiasm around Ansem's return this time is not mainly because of the remarkable performance of the assets he directly or indirectly mentioned. It is primarily because he played the role of a "meme crusader," taking the lead in suggesting an airdrop to pump.fun in a market where meme coins have long been lackluster, believing that this could reactivate market liquidity.

$ANSEM surged, driven by a soft claim based on the "help pump.fun distribute airdrops" scheme. While Ansem has not publicly claimed to be the CTO of this token, all creator rewards for $ANSEM flow to his latest pump.fun public address. Currently, over $560,000 in creator rewards have flowed to this address.

Ansem stated on X that by retweeting his tweets, following him on pump.fun, and leaving a link to their pump.fun profile in the comments, users would have a chance to be randomly selected each week to receive a portion of the creator rewards through an airdrop.

Players believe that he is using this opportunity to prove to pump.fun that a successful airdrop can ignite market sentiment and revive memes. Ansem stated that if pump.fun were to airdrop now, it would be as successful as Jito in 2023, reigniting a meme bull market on Solana.

This situation is somewhat reminiscent of the past when OpenSea delayed its token release, and then OpenDAO ($SOS) airdropped tokens to NFT players. Both instances were led by KOLs and capitalized on long-standing player discontent.

Controversy

Despite the sharp increase in $ANSEM's value, players still have many concerns about this coin.

Firstly, the surging $ANSEM is not an "OG" coin; it is actually based on a meme, specifically on this "Big Black Bull" below:

The new $ANSEM was deployed three days after the OG but 65% was sent to Ansem himself, a practice that players despise as "dev premine." The reality is that Ansem did initially show interest in this meme. However, the OG coin's creator rewards were initially directed to what was believed to be a "fake" Ansem address, which Ansem himself claimed was not his. Soon after, someone took advantage of this situation, created a new one, and gave Ansem 65% of the chips.

Recently, because Ansem mentioned his opposition to forking, many people believe that his actions on $ANSEM are inconsistent:

Ansem stated that he could airdrop a large amount of $ANSEM to OG holders, but whether he will actually do so to prove himself remains unknown.

Furthermore, he mentioned supporting a community for the long term rather than a "rug pull" coin. However, he chose to heavily support a $ANSEM that has only been around for about 10 days instead of a token that has been on Solana for the past year, triggering criticism from players.

pump.fun clearly knew about Ansem's remarks urging them to airdrop. Although pump.fun has not responded to this matter yet, the interaction between their Chief Content Officer json and Ansem indicates that they are aware of the situation:

To combat pump.fun's failure to airdrop, but for now has turned into a "celebrity coin." Despite the promise of no forking, OG $Ansem has not received support. Dissatisfied players believe that Ansem's return so far has not made Solana meme better. If the current trajectory continues, some would rather Ansem not return, so that those who have been building the community long term and players still have some hope for a purely meme-building environment.

The success of $ANSEM has caused some old memes to lose traction, while the headache-inducing "celebrity coin" gameplay has resurged. For example, James Wynn, a trader who once had massive positions on Hyperliquid, has also joined the trend to launch his own coin:

In addition to these hands-on approaches, a bunch of crypto celebrity copycats have also emerged. Figures such as Faze Banks, Andrew Tate, Murad, Cupsey, Cobie, and others have been brought into the trenches. Some existing old celebrity coins, like alon and mitch, have also experienced some turbulence due to this trend.

Ansem himself is no longer just a meme coin legendary player or a crypto KOL. One of his current identities is a co-founder of the trading terminal Bullpen. It is difficult 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 funding to the Solana meme, or needs to lower its expectations for Pump.fun to finally airdrop that long-promised allocation, the outlook does not seem very optimistic at the moment.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia