Insiders made $24m on Kanye West’s memcoin YZY and crashed it 77%

Launched on 21 August 2025, the YZY memcoin linked to Kanye West’s name has seen dramatic fluctuations in the market. According to Nansen, a limited group of participants managed to make tens of millions of dollars, while most retail investors faced losses.

Analysts note that 13 wallets made more than $24 million in profit by selling the token at the peak. Each of these addresses earned more than $1 million. YZY started on the Solana network, and in the first hour its value jumped 1400% to reach the $3 mark.

However, a day later the price collapsed by 77.3% and fell below $0.70. At the time of writing, the token is trading at $0.68 with a market capitalisation of $87.4 million.

Bubblemaps stated that the trading dynamics indicates coordinated actions of insiders: “several addresses were the first to buy the token and quickly dropped it to retail investors at maximum levels”.

BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes commented on the situation:

“Oops… guys, next time please don’t let me trade stuff like YZY. I should have just continued with the two-step strategy.”

According to Dune Analytics, more than 56,000 wallets have interacted with YZY, with funds over $1 still held at 27,000 addresses. Only nine of the first 99 buyers hold the token.

The losses of retail investors were significant: one trader lost $1.8 million, another trader lost $1.2 million, and another trader recorded an unrealised loss of more than $800,000. Experts believe that the number of those affected is in the thousands.

An analyst under the nickname Dethtective noted:

“Celebrity coins are usually described as a way to get people on your side. To me, it looks more like a wealth transfer that makes the wealthy even richer.”

Bubblemaps recalled that similar scenarios have been seen before. In December 2025, TikTok blogger Haley Welch launched the HAWK token: its price first rose sharply, then dropped 90 per cent. Then insiders earned about $3 million, while retail investors lost millions. Similar stories were recorded with the memcoins of Kim Kardashian, Iggy Azalea, Caitlyn Jenner and Lindsay Lohan.