Blockchain sleuth Zachary Wolk — known online as ZachXBT — slammed crypto influencer Zion “Ansem” Thomas, accusing him of facilitating a string of memecoin “pump and dumps.”
In a heated Oct. 5 exchange on X, Wolk and Thomas went back and forth over what Wolk alleged was Thomas’ role in shilling a swathe of “low cap” Solana (SOL) memecoins.
Wolk first mentioned Thomas while discussing memecoin bull Murad Mahmudov’s “Memecoin Supercycle” speech at Token 2049 last month, accusing him of promoting coins to his followers in place of having a legitimate “edge” on the market.
Mahmudov was the chief information officer of Adaptive Capital, a crypto hedge fund that collapsed in March 2020 amid a broader market downturn. He has since generated a large following on X by advocating for the role of memecoins in crypto and posting lists of his top memecoin picks.
“If you resort to promoting new low cap memecoins every few days to followers as a large account it’s [because] you have no edge and have to use your followers instead,” said Wolk, claiming that Thomas was also complicit in this behavior.
Source: ZachXBT
Thomas asked Wolk why “talking about lowcaps” — referring to memecoins with a small market capitalization — was considered to be “grifting.”
Wolk said that Thomas — who has more than 507,000 X followers — has an outsized capacity to influence tokens with smaller valuations, which could lead followers to lose money by chasing memecoin pumps.
Thomas retorted by claiming that his calling out Dogwifhat (WIF) to his followers at a $100,000 market cap — which later ran to a peak value of $4.8 billion in March — was much “better” than promoting a utility-based token such as Chainlink (LINK), which is down 90% against Bitcoin (BTC) year-to-date.
Wolk lashed back, accusing Thomas of shilling “hundreds” of low-cap coins, including BODEN, HOBBES, ZEUS, and WYNN, as well as several celebrity memecoins, including those from pop stars Jason Derulo and Davido.
Source: ZachXBT
“The ‘low cap garbage’ you talk about has dominated 90% of retail mindshare in crypto over the past year,” Thomas retorted. “Whether you like it or not that’s what [people] want to trade.”
BODEN, a President Joe Biden-themed memecoin, is down almost 99% from its April all-time high, while the likes of HOBBES, ZEUS, and WYNN are also all down about 98% from their respective all-time highs.
BODEN is down 98.9% from its all-time high market cap of $1.04 billion in April. Source: CoinGecko
Related: ‘Every meme coin is a rug pull in the works’ — Mark Cuban
Memecoins have become one of crypto’s most hotly debated topics over the last year.
Memecoin advocates say structurally worthless tokens, such as Dogecoin (DOGE), Pepe (PEPE) and WIF, are a better class of investment than utility tokens due to their relatively outsized returns so far this cycle.
Critics say that memecoins are fundamentally “extractive,” allowing insiders and early investors to make vast sums of money off less sophisticated retail participants and then disappear with the profits.
Magazine: Memecoins: Betrayal of crypto’s ideals… or its true purpose?