The recent memecoin resurgence has seemingly led to a significant shift within the NFT ecosystem. Why? Because the potential to profit from trading popular tokens like $PEPE, $TURBO and the like is just too good to pass up, even for the most avid NFT traders.
While open editions and fire mechanisms led the pack for the first half of 2023, memecoins undoubtedly stole the show in April, inspiring both praise and controversy. But even as trading began to slow down and prices fell in the wake of a Coinbase fiasco, one NFT influencer emerged as potentially the biggest breadwinner of the entire memecoin ecosystem to date.
By launching two of his own memecoins, a pseudonymous collector known as Ben.eth managed to generate nearly $7 million in ETH, drawing both fanfare and widespread opposition in the process. Here’s how it all went.
First there was $BEN
While Ben.eth was already somewhat of a well-known collector in the space prior to the memecoin season, his engagement seemingly took off when he started tweeting with support of the growing $PEPE community. After a period of commentary on price action and the meteoric rise of the popular token, Ben.eth decided to try and launch a similar offering.
Enter $BEN, a memecoin with the creator’s personal branding. With $BEN, Ben.eth launched 420.69 trillion tokens into the wild, spurred by a pre-sale that began on May 4. While a few of the tweets referring to the presale have since been deleted, by some accountsthe pre-sale brought in about 60 ETH from a few hundred wallets and closed just a day later on May 5.
Next came the public sale, with the number of holders running into the thousands. But soon after, prices began moving downwards, and it looked like the coin was going to die out before it even had a chance to start. That’s up to crypto content creator BitBoy became involved in the project.
Known for its controversial past and heavy-handed take on crypto and NFTs, BitBoy, whose real name is Ben Armstrong, found an affinity for $BEN. After going to Twitter first speaking of the currency on May 8, Armstrong openly announced his involvement in the project just one day later.
After just a few days of Ben.eth and Armstrong being on the same team, the $BEN community got a bit of a curveball. On May 11 it was announced that Armstrong would “take over 100%” and that Ben.eth would become an advisor.
A day later, Ben.eth unveiled his next memecoin.
$PSYOP memecoin warfare
On May 12, Ben.eth announced that its new coin $PSYOP would be launched through presale. The coin gets its name from a popular meme format that references, and sometimes makes light of, the American history of psychological warfare.
The $PSYOP announcement was seemingly where the controversy surrounding Ben.eth’s memecoin offerings really came to a head. Because while the $BEN situation has drawn opposition, largely due to its Bitboy affiliation, $PSYOP has been flagged by community members for its weak launch mechanisms – or lack thereof.
In a tweet that has since been deleted, Ben.eth announced that in order to secure presale $PSYOP tokens, users should send ETH directly to him at his ENS address. This meant that potential investors would have to take Ben.eth at his word if they wanted to be a part of the $PSYOP community, as no contract had been drawn up at the time of the pre-sale.
Shortly after his announcement, ETH started pouring into the Ben.eth wallet and the influencer would eventually secure around 3,800 ETH, just under $7 million in just a few days. The scale of the sale prompted many influential names in the NFT space to comment, with sentiment divided between them praised the move and others even go so far suggest it was illegal.
With a few days gone by since the $PSYOP presale began, and with no contract yet to be signed and implemented as of this writing, skepticism continues to grow as the initial hype surrounding the event appears to have died down. Still, Ben.eth seems unfazed. He continues to tweet memes about the coin, engage with his community and even share evidence from the purported coin’s developer to add clout to the project.
Only time will tell if $BEN and $PSYOP can prove to be a champion of memecoins or a cautionary tale with legal implications. Still, the controversy hasn’t kept mentions of the token trending on Twitter, and Ben.eth continues to fool against those who call on him to serve prison time thanks to his accumulated fortune.
