Inside Ben.eth’s controversial Memecoin empire
The recent resurgence of memecoins has apparently inspired a significant shift in the NFT ecosystem. Why? Because the potential to profit from trading popular tokens like $PEPE, $TURBO and the like is simply too good to miss, even for the most staunch NFT traders.
While open editions and burn mechanics led the pack for the first half of 2023, memecoins undoubtedly stole the show in April, inspiring both praise and controversy. Still, even as trading began to slow and prices declined in the wake of a Coinbase fiasco, one NFT influencer emerged as potentially the biggest provider of the entire memecoin ecosystem so far.
By launching two of his own memecoins, a pseudonymous collector known as Ben.eth managed to generate nearly $7 million in ETH, garnering both fanfare and widespread opposition in the process. Here’s how it all went down.
First it was $BEN
Although Ben.eth was already a somewhat known collector in the space before the memecoin season, his involvement apparently started to pick up when he started tweeting in support of the growing $PEPE community. After a period of commenting on price action and the meteoric rise of the popular token, Ben.eth decided to try their hand at launching a similar offering.
Enter $BEN, a memecoin that carries the personal branding of its creator. With $BEN, Ben.eth released 420.69 trillion tokens into the wild, spurred by a pre-sale that started on May 4th. While a few of the tweets referencing the pre-sale have been deleted, of some accountsthe presale raised around 60 ETH from a few hundred wallets and closed just a day later on May 5th.
Then came the public sale, which saw the number of holders rise to thousands. However, shortly thereafter, prices began to trend downward, and it looked like the coin would drop out before it had a chance to begin. It’s up to crypto content creator BitBoy became involved in the project.
Known for his controversial past and heavy-handed grip on crypto and NFTs, BitBoy, whose real name is Ben Armstrong, found a connection to $BEN. After first taking to Twitter to talk about the coin on May 8, Armstrong openly announced his commitment in the project just a day later.
After only a few days of Ben.eth and Armstrong on the same team, the $BEN community was hit with a bit of a curveball. On the 11th of May it was announced that Armstrong would “take it over 100%” and Ben.eth would become an advisor.
A day later, Ben.eth unveiled its next memecoin.
$PSYOP memecoin warfare
On May 12th, Ben.eth announced that his new coin, $PSYOP, would be launched via presale. The coin got its name from a popular meme format which refers to, and at times makes light of, America’s history of psychological warfare.
The $PSYOP announcement was apparently where the controversy surrounding Ben.eth’s memecoin offering really came to a head. Because while the $BEN situation has inspired opposition mainly due to its Bitboy affiliation, $PSYOP was flagged by community members for its flimsy launch mechanics – or lack thereof.
In a since-deleted tweet, Ben.eth announced that in order to secure the presale of $PSYOP tokens, users should send ETH directly to him at his ENS address. This meant that potential investors would have to take Ben.eth at his word if they were to become part of the $PSYOP community, as no contract had been deployed on the presale.
Shortly after his announcement, ETH started pouring into the Ben.eth wallet and the influencer would eventually secure around 3,800 ETH, just under $7 million in just a few days. The magnitude of the sale prompted many influential names in the NFT space to comment, with sentiment shared between them praises the move and others go as far as to implying that it was illegal.
Now that a few days have passed since the $PSYOP pre-sale began, and a contract has yet to be established and distributed at the time of writing, skepticism continues to grow as the initial hype around the event appears to have died down. Still, Ben.eth seems unfazed. He continues to tweet memes about the coin, engage with the community and even share evidence from the purported coin developer to add clout to the project.
Surely only time will tell if $BEN and $PSYOP can prove to be a champion for memecoins or a cautionary tale with legal implications. Still, the controversy hasn’t stopped mention of the token from trending on Twitter, and Ben.eth continues to make fun on those who ask him to serve time in prison thanks to his amassed wealth.
