Memecoin, recently launched by Australian musician Iggy Azalea, soared to a market capitalization of more than $28 million on May 29, surpassing the token named after Sahil Arora, who has been accused of fraud.
Azalea distanced herself from Arora for two consecutive days after he posted a screenshot on Telegram. Screenshots show text messages from the artist discussing her social media campaign for her new token.
Azalea claims she “never had a conversation” with the man, who only had “one phone call” with her manager.
Azalea said of
This week, at least two celebrities accused Arora’s celebrity memecoin project of being a scam. Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner and American rapper Rich the Kid (Dimitri Leslie Rodger) publicly made these accusations.
The Azalea token, named MOTHER, is built on the Solana blockchain and debuted just hours after Arora launched $IGGY.
Related: Fraudulent Cryptocurrency Projects Using Stolen Funds for Liquidity Gone.
IGGY had a strong debut, quickly reaching a market capitalization of around $3 million, but then plummeted to around $158,000 by 11 AM UTC on May 29, according to data from DEX Screener.
At the same time, Azalea’s MOTHER market value reached $18.2 million.
However, strong market performance may not be Arora’s goal for $IGGY. That’s because Arora has been accused of several pump-and-dump schemes, often involving alleged pre-sale fraud.
The launch of Arora’s IGGY was also preceded by a pre-sale, a fundraising strategy where investors send funds to a specific address.
This method is not a requirement for launching coins on Pump.fun, the memecoin launchpad used for IGGY. The suspicious methods raised suspicions of public fraud.
Solscan records show that the Solana address in Arora used for the pre-sale held more than $370,000 in SOL as of 10 a.m. UTC.
Arora denied the fraud allegations and said “people got burned because they did not get in on time.”
“A lot of people made a lot of money because of my launch,” Arora told Cointelegraph in a previous exchange of messages. “The few who are not haters.”
Related: Caitlyn Jenner Claims She Was ‘Scammed’ By Joining Rich the Kid
Azalea’s token launch was not without controversy.
She posted an Instagram Story featuring two men working on a computer, one of whom bore a striking resemblance to Arora.
This sparked speculation about a possible collaboration between Azalea and the alleged scammer.
However, a follow-up post showing the man’s face from a different angle revealed that the individual in question was actually Azalea’s brother, Matthias Kelly.
magazine: 5 pitfalls to watch out for when mimicking the Solana memecoin