YZY Money, a Solana-based memecoin linked to Ye (formerly Kanye West), debuted earlier on Thursday with blistering gains and an equally sharp controversy.
Ye’s X account posted about the token in early Asian hours on Thursday, raising immediate concerns about it being a compromised account. It later posted a video showing Ye talking about and confirming the issuance (it is unclear if it is the real Ye or an AI generation).
The token briefly touched $3.16 in early trading — a surge of nearly 6,800% from its issue price — with some trackers claiming it briefly commanded a $3 billion market cap.
Behind the frenzy supposedly sits the broader YZY ecosystem, which Ye’s team has pitched as including a YZY token, a Ye Pay processor for transactions, and a YZY Card for global spending of YZY and USDC.
YZY’s structure was first revealed by CoinDesk in February, which reported that 70% of supply would go directly to Ye personally, with 10% for liquidity and 20% for public sale.
At the time, insiders said Ye had initially demanded an 80% stake — the same allocation structure tied to Donald Trump’s TRUMP token — before being negotiated down. The project has also carried heavy baggage from the start. Ye had previously declared that “coins prey on the fans with hype” before backtracking and approving YZY.
Sources told CoinDesk the token was meant to mimic TRUMP’s success, even as Argentina was roiled by a similar scandal when President Javier Milei’s endorsed LIBRA coin collapsed as a pump-and-dump.
Critics flagged then — and now — that such insider-heavy distributions tilt risk squarely toward retail buyers, especially when paired with a single-sided liquidity pool.
The token distribution shows 20% allocated to the public, 10% to liquidity, and 70% to Yeezy Investments LLC, locked for 24 months under a structured vesting arrangement via Jupiter Lock.
To prevent bot-driven manipulation, 25 contract addresses were initially deployed, with only one randomly selected as the official token. That 1-in-25 anti-sniping setup was billed as a fairer launch — but on-chain data suggests insiders still had advance access.
Analytics account Lookonchain identified wallet 6MNWV8 as knowing the contract address in advance. The wallet even attempted to buy YZY before launch. Once live, it spent 450,611 USDC to acquire 1.29 million tokens at roughly $0.35 each. It later sold 1.04 million YZY for 1.39 million USDC, leaving 249,907 tokens worth about $600,000 — booking a profit of more than $1.5 million.
“Insider wallet 6MNWV8 knew the contract address in advance and even tried buying yesterday,” Lookonchain wrote on X.
OnChain Lens flagged an even larger whale who invested 12,170 SOL (about $2.28 million) for 2.67 million YZY. Current holdings are valued at $8.29 million — an unrealized gain of about $6 million.
Only YZY tokens were seeded into the liquidity pool, without pairing against USDC. That single-sided setup allows developers or large holders to add and remove liquidity in ways that effectively let them cash out, a structure similar to the controversial LIBRA token.
“Only $YZY was added to the liquidity pool with no $USDC. Dev may sell $YZY by adding/removing liquidity, similar to $LIBRA,” Lookonchain noted.
The hype and quick gains show how much speculation still drives Solana’s memecoins.
Meanwhile, YZY has already slipped to nearly $1, with some early buyers taking heavy hits.
On-chain data shows wallet 6ZFnRH spent 1.55 million USDC to buy 996,453 YZY at $1.56, only to sell at $1.06 for 1.05 million USDC — booking a loss of nearly $500,000 in under two hours.
Read more: Ye, Self-Proclaimed ‘Nazi’ Who Said ‘Coins Prey on Fans,’ Plans YZY Token