YZY Hype Machine Leaves Traders Nursing Millions in Losses on Kanye West-Linked Token

Buying the YZY token apparently linked to Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, ended in tears for more than 70,000 wallets, Bubblemaps, a blockchain data visualization tool, said in a post on X.

The Solana-based memecoin’s debut last week was part of a “YZY Money” ecosystem plan, which included payment rails and a branded card.

On-chain data, however, suggests that insider and early wallets, combined with thin liquidity and rapid speculation, resulted in a launch where whales extracted millions, while the crowd shouldered nearly all of the losses.

More than 51,800 addresses appear to have lost between $1 and $1,000, another 5,269 are down $1,000 to $10,000, and 1,025 wallets shed $10,000 to $100,000, according to Bubblemaps’ data.

At the top of the loss curve, 108 wallets are sitting on six-figure drawdowns, while three traders lost more than $1 million each.

On the other side of the calculation, 11 addresses booked profit of $1 million or more, just 0.015% of the total. An estimated 99 wallets generated over $100,000, while 2,541 wallets cleared at least $1,000.

The crowd as a whole is down some $8.2 million, despite some insiders pocketing substantial wins. So while 18,000 wallets technically profited, the concentration was brutal. The real money sat with the top 11, while the rest barely moved the needle.

The lopsided distribution reflects the structural flaws flagged from day one, as CoinDesk noted in its earlier story.

A full 70% of the supply was earmarked for Yeezy Investments LLC, locked under Jupiter’s vesting system, with only 20% sold to the public and 10% used for liquidity.

The pool itself was seeded with YZY tokens alone without a stablecoin pair — a design that leaves the door open to sudden liquidity pulls, not unlike the short-lived LIBRA token promoted in Argentina in February.

On-chain analysts identified wallets with early access. At the time of the issuance, address 6MNWV8 spent 450,611 USDC for 1.29 million YZY at $0.35, flipped 1.04 million tokens for 1.39 million USDC, and still holds roughly 249,907 YZY worth about $600,000 to make a quick $1.5 million profit.

As of Thursday, YZY’s market cap has deflated to $544.9 million with $42.7 million in liquidity and 26,590 holders, down sharply from the initial frenzy that briefly saw valuations touted as high as $3 billion.

Daily volume has slumped to $1.8 million, DEXTools data shows, a fraction of early activity.

YZY’s performance closely mirrors that of many celebrity-based memecoins, where the chance of hitting life-changing gains is effectively zero unless you were already in on the inside.

CoinDesk has contacted Ye by email for comment.