‘Crypto Is Sexy’: Is Iggy Azalea for Real?

This week’s celebrity meme coin craze took a fresh twist late Tuesday when Australian rapper Iggy Azalea—best known for the hit song “Fancy” a decade ago—launched her own Solana meme coin, MOTHER. And the crypto community broadly appears convinced that Azalea might be a “real one” and not just in it for a quick cash grab.

MOTHER has charted massive gains since Azalea tweeted it out on Tuesday, jumping more than 22,000% to a current price above $0.015 and a market cap topping $15 million. More than $150 million worth of the Solana-based token has been traded in less than a day amid a flurry of tweets, retweets, and Twitter Space appearances by the musician.

“Crypto is sexy,” she wrote in a tweet that’s logged more than 800,000 views since Tuesday night. She hosted a Twitter Spaces with the same name that attracted some 382,000 unique listeners during the initial feeding frenzy.

Azalea’s MOTHER token arrived amid confusion and controversy. Azalea had been linked to crypto promoter Sahil Arora, who helped media personality and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner launch her own Solana meme coin earlier this week before Jenner distanced herself from Arora, claiming that he owes her “lots of money.”

Don’t disappoint your mother…

3S8qX1MsMqRbiwKg2cQyx7nis1oHMgaCuc9c4VfvVdPN pic.twitter.com/G8x2mms47P

— IGGY AZALEA (@IGGYAZALEA) May 29, 2024

Ahead of the MOTHER launch Tuesday, Azalea did much the same, tweeting that she “was in contact” with Arora “enough to smell he’s a bitch.” Later, she tweeted that nobody was “working with” her on the token launch, and added, “Sahil baby, take your L and go already.”

Arora allegedly took in approximately $380,000 worth of pre-sale funds to launch a token called IGGY that he claimed was for Azalea, but it has yet to be airdropped to people who sent in money.

Amid the Tuesday night trading frenzy around MOTHER, Azalea hosted the Spaces and spent hours interacting with Crypto Twitter denizens, presenting herself as someone who was new to building in the crypto space but wanted to make a lasting impact—to not pump and dump, in other words, or quickly cash in on her fame before disappearing.

“Learning as I go, but just want shit to actually be a moment in popular culture [and] a map of how to do something the right way,” she tweeted early Wednesday.

Even so, there are lingering questions around the MOTHER drop. Azalea has said that she holds 3% of the token supply, but blockchain data startup Bubblemaps discovered via on-chain data that about 20% of the supply was bought by “insiders” before she announced the token—and then sold, netting the holders millions of dollars’ worth of profits.

“Meanwhile, because this is my concept/coin—I’m somehow supposed to [bear] responsibility for what random [people] do with their wallets,” she wrote in a quote-tweet response. “When in reality, them dumping only makes it harder for me to achieve my goal of having a coin that is actually part of pop culture.”

Some of crypto’s biggest personalities appeared to co-sign Azalea’s entry into the space, either sharing fawning tweets about her approach or giving her the benefit of the doubt amid skepticism—both generally about celebrity meme coins, and specifically in relation to the drama around Arora and her apparent efforts to separate herself from the controversial promoter.

• said she pays people in crypto

• is aware she isnt as knowledgeable about the space but wants to learn

• thinks crypto is interesting & not going away, more to crypto than just trading

• memes are like internet culture & community, would be down to come to a conference https://t.co/GUnaxfw6S0

— Ansem 🐂🀄️ (@blknoiz06) May 29, 2024

“Iggy Azalea the most educated celebrity coming into this space,” tweeted influencer Mika, a Rug Radio creator. “She is lowkey spitting.”

“She lowkey so valid bro,” wrote DeGods project creator Rohun “Frank” Vora.

Granted, not everyone assumed the best from the entertainer. Some doubted her explanation of the “insider” frontrunning, while others pointed to the kind of regulatory crackdown seen against other crypto-promoting celebs (like Kim Kardashian) in the past.

did you see this? pic.twitter.com/okGcjNApRL

— Neeraj K. Agrawal (@NeerajKA) May 29, 2024

MOTHER is down 20% since hitting an all-time high price overnight, but meme coins are famously volatile—and it’s still sitting on enormous gains since the launch. And Azalea has still been tweeting all the while, suggesting just this afternoon she’ll “wake up and burn” more tokens after finally getting some sleep.

Given the constant twists and turns around this week’s new celebrity coins and the vibe shifts that followed, we’ll see if the crypto world is still embracing Azalea by the time she wakes up and torches a bit more MOTHER for the meme coin cause.

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