From PEPE to YEPE: James Wynn’s Risky Meme Coin Moves Raise Eyebrows
Blockchain analytics agency Bubblemap highlighted recent issues round James Wynn’s actions within the meme coin market. Wynn’s historical past of turning small meme coin bets into huge income might repeat with the newest YEPE meme coin.
But insider dominance is clear.
Bubblemap Reveals Pattern
According to the evaluation by Bubblemap, insiders at present maintain roughly 60% of YEPE, and a good portion of those holdings are coming from addresses funded by means of the identical centralized exchanges, LBank, KuCoin, and MEXC. These addresses reportedly exhibit comparable funding behaviors and shopping for patterns, which level to coordinated or extremely structured accumulation methods.
Bubblemap argued that the recurring sample behind Wynn’s meme coin promotions is one in every of manufactured hype, and sometimes amplified by coordinated influencer campaigns that assist gas demand at launch. On-chain information reveals that these surges usually profit a small group of insiders, who constantly accumulate and maintain a big share of the token provide.
Despite the rising criticism of such strikes and the issues it raises round potential market manipulation, Wynn has continued to construct visibility throughout the business and has additionally acquired public endorsements from high-profile figures, together with Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
For many observers, such backing dangers normalizing practices that resemble insider-driven buying and selling exercise, blurring the road between aggressive promotion and outright manipulation within the meme coin sector.
The Wynn Effect
Wynn, a pseudonymous crypto dealer who rose to prominence between 2022 and 2023 by means of early investments in meme cash, has a historical past of utilizing high leverage and aggressive buying and selling methods. His breakout second got here when he reworked a modest $7,000 funding in PEPE right into a multimillion-dollar acquire. That commerce established hallmarks of his strategy, that are high-leverage positions, daring risk-taking, and a narrative-driven technique, typically promoted publicly on social media.
Since then, Wynn has repeatedly entered the market with equally structured trades, selling bundled meme cash like WIFE, ZEUS, and USDM, typically leveraging decentralized derivatives platforms resembling Hyperliquid to amplify returns. In early 2025, Wynn’s exercise on Hyperliquid drew consideration, as he executed positions with leverage up to 40x on notional quantities reaching billions of {dollars}.
BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes, nonetheless, solid doubt on Wynn’s high-profile trades and even questioned whether or not the pseudonymous investor’s actual intention is revenue or just consideration. In a dialogue shared by Unchained host Laura Shin, Hayes mentioned that Wynn’s actions seemed extra like “airdrop farming” than billion-dollar Bitcoin bets.
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