- The surge in celebrity meme coins has raised legal concerns about securities law violations and possible SEC crackdowns.
- Despite scrutiny, memecoins like MOTHER and DADDY are showing significant price resilience and popularity.
The surge in celebrity memecoins has gained significant popularity, especially on the Solana (SOL) blockchain.
Are celebrity meme coins getting noticed?
But this increase has recently sparked speculation among legal experts that celebrities involved in creating and promoting these memecoins on Solana may have violated securities laws.
Lawyers predicted that these celebrity-backed memecoins would attract the attention of U.S. securities regulators.
Commenting on this, David Chung, Founding Director of Creo Legal, told the publication:
“Nothing will get the SEC to act faster than distributing Mimecoin.”
He said of Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER token:
“The SEC could potentially go after her for selling unregistered securities without proper licensing.”
The SEC has already targeted several major players in the cryptocurrency space, including Consensys, Coinbase, and Ripple. So the concerns raised by lawyers about celebrity coins may be somewhat valid.
Celebrity-Mimecoin Market Trends
Looking at some of the celebrity mimecoins, including Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER and Andrew Tate’s DADDY, their current prices have surged 636.91% and 115.09% respectively from their all-time lows.
Likewise, Caitlyn Jenner’s JENNER is up 210.78% from its all-time low.
However, at the time of writing this article, all three Mimecoins were showing red candlesticks on the daily chart.
According to CoinGecko, MOTHER led the declines, down 4.1%, DADDY down 13.7%, and JENNER down 17.4%.
Many people might assume that this decline is in line with the lawyers’ predictions. But that’s not the case. Their weekly charts have also turned red, and this isn’t the first time celebrity meme coins have come under fire.
Buterin has joined the fray too!
Previously in June, Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin also expressed his displeasure with the surge of celebrity-inspired mimecoins, specifically highlighting the rise of MOTHER. He said:
“I’m pretty annoyed by the ‘celebrity experiment of this cycle’ so far. ‘Financialization as a means to an end’ is respectable if the end is valuable (healthcare, open source software, art, etc.).”
He even suggested strategies to improve the celebrity meme coin, saying:
Source: Vitalik Buterin/X
In the meantime, Mother Iggy’s price has risen 1,200% to around $0.20, giving it a market cap of over $190 million.
This suggests that these celebrity tokens are largely unaffected by criticism and continue to follow established patterns.
According to CoinGecko, Solana’s market cap remained flat, rising 12% over the past 24 hours to $6.51 billion.