The crypto world has a short memory, but the chaos around Kanye West’s YZY token is going to stick around for a while. It wasn’t just another celebrity coin launch. It was a full-blown event that sent shockwaves through the market, particularly on Solana. And the effects were, perhaps, most obvious if you were watching the trading volumes.
A Sudden Shift in the Solana Landscape
According to data from DeFiLlama, the sheer frenzy around YZY poured an unbelievable amount of liquidity into Solana’s decentralized exchanges. The biggest beneficiary? A platform called Meteora. On August 21st, it recorded over $1.182 billion in trading volume. That single day of madness was enough for it to briefly knock Raydium off its perch as the top DEX on the network.
The volume wasn’t just a vanity metric. Meteora reportedly pulled in $16.05 million in fees in that same 24-hour window. For a moment, it was second only to Tether in the entire crypto industry for fee generation. That’s a stunning figure. It shows how a single celebrity-driven token can act as a massive, if temporary, catalyst. It drives activity and revenue in a way that even established protocols struggle to match.
But of course, there’s always another side to the story.
The Inevitable Crash and the Questions That Followed
The hype was real, no doubt. Analytics firm Santiment noted the token’s market cap rocketed to nearly $3 billion almost instantly. Then, just as fast, it collapsed. It crashed more than 60%, with rumors swirling about insiders dumping their holdings. The whole thing felt contradictory. Earlier this year, West had publicly rejected the idea of launching a meme coin, calling it a way to prey on fans. His reversal is what fueled the mania, drawing in both loyal fans and speculative traders. Many of the latter were left with significant losses.
Whispers of Something Worse
Then the on-chain analysts got to work. A deeper look, from folks like Dethective, suggested this wasn’t just a case of a volatile market. It started to look a bit rigged. The analysis pointed to certain wallets that managed to buy huge allocations of YZY at around $0.20, a price point most traders never saw.
One wallet in particular turned a $250,000 purchase into nearly $1 million in profit in just eight minutes. The funds were then moved to a treasury wallet. What really raised eyebrows was that this same wallet was linked to a suspiciously similar profit-taking strategy during another token launch, LIBRA. It hints at a level of coordination.
In total, these linked wallets are suspected of pulling out close to $23 million from the YZY and LIBRA launches combined. They had a clear advantage, and they used it. It leaves everyone else wondering if the game is even worth playing.
