tl;dr
Kanye West’s YZY meme coin launch on Solana in August 2025 quickly turned into a cautionary tale of insider trading and pump-and-dump schemes. The token surged to a $3 billion market cap within 40 minutes before crashing. Data revealed insider connections between YZY, LIBRA, and TRUMP meme coins, wi...
Kanye West’s (Ye) launch of the YZY meme coin on Solana was anticipated as a major cultural event, but it quickly devolved into a cautionary tale about celebrity tokens and insider trading. On-chain data revealed suspicious links between YZY insiders and early traders of other meme coins like LIBRA and TRUMP, with evidence pointing to a pump-and-dump scheme orchestrated by a figure known as Mikey Shelton.
The token debuted on August 21, 2025, rocketing to a $3 billion market cap within 40 minutes before plunging to about a third of that value. More than 62,000 wallets exchanged YZY on launch day, producing stark outcomes: top traders scored $50.4 million in profits, while others lost $21.4 million, illustrating a stark divide between a few big winners and many retail investors ending up in the red. Additionally, the liquidity pool earned $10 million in trading fees.
Mikey Shelton’s role emerged as particularly controversial. Having been publicly connected to Ye earlier in the year, he bragged of making $160,000 in the first ten minutes post-launch. His private social media presence and educational background at Baylor and Stanford deepened intrigue about whether an insider orchestrated the scheme. On-chain analytics identified "sniper" wallets linked to Shelton that profited $23 million across YZY and LIBRA tokens, suggesting pre-launch preparation and privileged access rather than sheer luck.
Further analysis uncovered wallet overlaps between TRUMP, LIBRA, and YZY coins, including a trader named Naseem who previously earned over $100 million on TRUMP. This trader bought into YZY first, quickly turning a $250,000 investment into $800,000 profit. These findings spark pressing questions about how certain wallets consistently gain early entry to celebrity-driven meme coins and whether this signals organized insider activities.
The YZY saga exposes patterns common across 2025’s celebrity coin launches: insiders gaining early, sizable advantages, public boasts by close affiliates, repeat insider wallets operating across multiple tokens, and a long tail of retail investors suffering losses. Though YZY’s launch volume was smaller than TRUMP’s monumental $29.5 billion, the fundamental dynamic remained—the insiders profit handsomely while many retail participants incur losses, shrouded in a lack of transparency.
Ultimately, YZY’s debut day highlighted the risks embedded in celebrity-endorsed crypto projects. While Ye’s personal involvement in the insider activities is uncertain, the evidence strongly indicates that a few well-positioned actors dominated the gains. This episode adds yet another warning to the ongoing narrative of celebrity crypto ventures, underscoring how retail investors often bear the brunt of hidden insider mechanics in these speculative markets.