Traders are now gambling on ‘poorly drawn’ celebrity memecoins

Memecoin traders are flocking to a new fad in degen tomfoolery — a breed of Solana-based tokens based on “poorly drawn” celebrities and political figures. 

Newly-listed memecoins such as “Jeo Boden” and “Danold Tromp” — with intentionally janky art to match — have gained 174,900% and 59,900%, respectively, after their launch.

One trader even claims to have made some serious returns on these tokens despite the coins themselves having no public founder, no roadmap and offering nothing in the way of utility.

In a March 6 X post, a pseudonymous crypto investor called “Barkery” claims to have turned an initial sum of just $260 into $42,000 in two days by purchasing 11.73 million tokens of “Jeo Boden” sporting the ticker “BODEN” — themed a poorly drawn version of United States president Joe Biden.

The official X account of the Jeo Boden (BODEN) memecoin. Source: @bodenonsolana on X

In a follow-up X post on March 7, Barkery told their 17,000 followers that their BODEN holdings were now worth a total of $423,000 — a gain of around 165,285% — but said they’d sold around 3 million of the tokens at the time.

The Jeo Boden token launched on March 4 with a market capitalization of $20,000, but that has grown to $35 million at the time of publication, an increase of 174,900% in just three days, per Birdeye.

The price of BODEN has surged more than 170,000% since its launch three days ago. Source: Birdeye

The memecoin appears to draw its inspiration from a meme format popularized in 2012, known as the “Spooderman” meme.

Other similarly-themed tokens have been launched, many of which depicted notable figures, including former U.S. President Barak Obama as “Berik Obema,” MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor as “Mechael Seylor” and Andrew Tate as “Androo Tete.”

The Jeo Boden memecoin kicked off a trend of similarly derived memecoins. Source: @serbobross on X

Few of the other similar memecoins have performed as well as BODEN; however, several have notched reasonable gains.

A memecoin dubbed Danold Tromp (DANOLD) surged from a market capitalization of around $15,000 when it launched on March 6 to a peak of $15 million on March 7. Its price has since crumbled, falling more than 88% from its all-time high, per data from Birdeye.

One investor claims to have turned $260 into $46,000. Source: @barkery91 on X

While more serious investors see memecoins as a fundamentally “stupid” investment, crypto natives are more partial to them as a way of potentially outsized returns, as long as would-be investors don’t mind taking the risk and losing their principal. 

Evgen Verzun, director of Kaizen.Finance, told Cointelegraph that while the tokens themselves are devoid of underlying fundamentals, they can be a good way to make returns on initially small investments.