Kanye West’s newly launched YZY meme coin on Solana
The price drop comes as West claims his Instagram account was compromised and used to follow and promote a fake version of the token.
On August 26, West posted on X that his Instagram had been hacked. He added a link to the official YZY token’s X account and shared its correct Solana contract address, which ends in “YEEZY”.
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At the time, his Instagram account, followed by nearly 20 million people, was only following two other accounts: one belonging to his partner Bianca Censori, and another named “yzytoken”.
The “yzytoken” profile was promoting a different version of the YZY token, which had launched on Solana’s Pump.fun platform that same day. Its bio included two contract addresses, one linked to the fake token and the other to West’s official token.
A QR code post with cryptic text (“Restart now? (y/n): ‘) == ‘y.’”) appeared on the page as well.
Just the act of Kanye’s account following the impostor page was enough to push the fake token’s market cap to around $7 million at its peak. However, that value later dropped to around $160,000.
Kanye’s Instagram account no longer followed the “yzytoken” page as of 2:18 PM ET.
Bubblemaps, a blockchain analytics company, recently reported that Hayden Davis was tied to wallets that generated around $12 million in YZY trades. How did that happen? Read the full story.
