Kanye West claims he was offered $2M to launch a token, teases his own memecoin

According to a tweet Kanye West shared on X (formerly Twitter) late Friday, he claimed he was approached by an entity that offered to pay $2 million if he launched a scam token. He turned it down and said he stopped working with the person. 

The Grammy award-winning rapper has gone on a tweeting rampage over the last 24 hours that has the entire internet spellbound. However, a couple of posts by Ye have caught the attention of the crypto community. 

As crypto consolidates itself in the mainstream, celebrities and influencers like Hailey Welch (Hawk Tuah girl), Iggy Azalea, and even the president of the United States have leveraged their fame into creating memecoins. However, on many occasions, the launches have cost their fans money, with some being outright rug pulls. 

Hailey Welch’s $hawktuah token and Andrew Tate’s $Father all sucked liquidity from the ecosystem and ripped off their investors. Hailey Welch has since gone underground, while Andrew Tate continues to face legal troubles related to human trafficking, rape, and tax evasion in Romania and the United Kingdom. 

Kanye receives accolades for doing the right thing 

According to Ye’s tweet, someone offered him $750k upfront just to accept the memecoin launch offer. They promised him another $1.25M 16 hours after his first post on X about the token. 

The condition was that Kanye had to keep the tweet up for at least 8 hours after which he was urged to post “my account was hacked, the post was not me.” 

I was proposed 2 million dollars to scam my community Those left of it I said no and stopped working with their person who proposed it pic.twitter.com/WKHdP9FkOq

— ye (@kanyewest) February 7, 2025

In the last line of the screenshot of the conversation that Kanye shared, the person explicitly confessed that the scheme would cost people tens of millions of dollars. However, Ye refused. 

Hours later, Ye shared another post where he was talking to an unidentified person, asking for a “crypto connect” that wouldn’t require a middleman. 

The other person in the conversation recommended Brian Armstrong, the CEO and co-founder of Coinbase, to Kanye. That post now has crypto traders wondering if Kanye has plans to launch something and if he plans to do it on Base, the blockchain linked to Coinbase. 

Concerning crypto pic.twitter.com/ytfDfjiqXS

— ye (@kanyewest) February 7, 2025

Since Kanye shared shots of the conversations, the crypto space has praised him for upholding his integrity and refusing to scam his followers. Many are actually frustrated with stars launching scam tokens to defraud their followers and claiming to have been hacked afterward. 

Will Kanye West launch a memecoin? 

According to a popular Solana influencer named Nick, Kanye West may have teamed up with Meteora to work on upcoming token launches, and he’s reportedly not the only star gearing up for such an adventure. 

Nick says Dave Portnoy of Barstool is also working with Meteora on an upcoming token launch. This is the same team that worked on the relatively successful $Trump launch. 

However, degens who have caught wind of all the drama are urging Ye to launch a token, including Arthur Hayes, the co-founder of BitMEX. 

Mert Mumtaz (@0xMert_ on X), the CEO of Solana developer tools firm, Helius, also joined the Kanye West drama. He suggested that Ye, who has been ranting a lot about Hitler on X, launch a “Hitler” token on Ethereum. 

Mumtaz drew a chain reaction that tracked Trump getting re-elected and Elon giving Kanye West the platform to launch his memecoin on the Ethereum network. Hence, in his words, “Trump has Made Ethereum Great Again,” implying that the network was not doing so well. 

Others enthusiastic about a possible meme launch from Kanye have urged him to do it on Solana or Base, where gas fees are much more negligible. However, given the enigma that Kanye West is, only time will tell what he does and how he pulls it off.  

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