Behind Fox News republican Caitlyn Jenner’s crypto cash grab
Caitlyn Jenner launched a crypto meme coin on Memorial Day, but it was hard to tell if it was legitimate or a hack. The Fox News contributor, ex-reality TV star, and former Olympian posted multiple endorsements to two social media accounts, Instagram and X, but her fan base quickly flagged the videos as possibly fake.
First, fans questioned the irregular quality of her video endorsement, which she soon remedied with a more authentic-looking video.
Second, they questioned the website linked in her endorsement, Pump.fun. The website is a gambling-oriented kickstarter for meme coins. It gamifies the initial coin offering (ICO) of a token on Solana using a bonding curve for initial distribution.
Up-only bonding curves (and they are always up-only in crypto) force buyers, in the absence of a real bid/ask market, to pay ever-higher prices for each subsequent purchase. BitClout was the first mainstream crypto project to popularize bonding curves, forcing fans to pay ever-higher prices for fan tokens even though no market existed to resell those tokens.
On Pump.fun, the bonding curve persists until the meme coin’s market capitalization reaches a memetic $69,000, at which point the token graduates from the kickstarter and launches on a third-party exchange, Raydium. Pump.fun uses $12,000 of the Solana purchases as initial liquidity on Raydium. From there, fans of the meme coin can continue marketing the coin and hope for further exchange listings, such as Jupiter or even a centralized exchange.
When Jenner first announced her meme coin, she posted a link to the token JENNER on the Pump.fun website. This action raised eyebrows as users wondered whether a hacker had overtaken control of her account for a quick money grab.
After all, X (formerly Twitter) has a long history of hacks. Hackers have published fake tweets from Apple, Uber, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Bill Gates, and even the Securities and Exchange Commission. Plus, anyone can create a meme coin on Pump.fun, which doesn’t authenticate credentials or identification documents.
Did Caitlyn Jenner really create a crypto token?
Given these valid reasons for skepticism, fact-checkers continued asking whether the suspicious launch was legitimate. Soon, their doubts entrenched further.
A few hours after supposedly launching JENNER, the celebrity posted an advertisement of a second meme coin, BBARK. Posting a photo of her two dogs, Bertha and Baxter, she claimed to support a completely separate Pump.fun bonding curve.
Worse, she soon deleted her endorsement of BBARK, apologizing for losing her focus on JENNER. “As I have said from the beginning the only focus I have is $Jenner,” she lied. Her about-face promptly caused the price of BBARK to collapse 80% within minutes.
Worse, Monday seemed to be a day for X hacks. On the same day, hackers compromised the account of crypto influencer GCR. That hack primed X users with fresh skepticism.
Read more: Late Friends star Matthew Perry’s X account hacked by crypto scammers
So, wait, did she really create JENNER?
After so much drama, fans still couldn’t quite tell if Caitlyn Jenner really launched the JENNER Solana meme coin. Was it a deepfaked hack? The final answer was a mix of yes and no.
In truth, a man named Sahil Arora ran the show. Caitlyn Jenner’s crypto posts and their associated detail, including somewhat sophisticated blockchain actions, made it clear that Jenner was probably not running the campaign personally.
Instead, Jenner delegates some of her social media to managers. In this case, ‘Sahil’ suggested the content of her posts about JENNER. She also sourced the content for her paid ad about BBARK from a third party.
This doesn’t abdicate her responsibility for the content of those posts, but it explains the blockchain evidence.
That evidence is, to be more specific, a single wallet controlled by Sahil that has deployed five celebrity-promoted meme coins on Pump.fun: JENNER, ZUMI, RICH, DOLL, and SOULJA. Predictably, Sahil’s wallet has sold most of its holdings in all of these tokens.
Nevertheless, as of press time, Caitlyn Jenner’s Instagram and X accounts are still actively promoting JENNER. Whether Jenner, Sahil, Sahil’s assistants, or other people are writing the content of those posts is anyone’s guess.
For his part, Sahil admits responsibility for launching JENNER.
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