Kanye West Meme Coin Down 81% From Peak as Rapper Says Instagram Hacked for Scam

Kanye West’s official Solana meme coin, YZY, is down nearly 81% from its peak only a week after launch as the rapper contends with what he said is an Instagram hack that promoted a fake token of the same name. 

The real YZY token on Solana has risen nearly 1% today, while the impostor version sits 96% off its all-time high price, now trading just above a $160,000 market cap. 

“My Instagram has been hacked and it’s following a fake coin,” Kanye posted to X, adding the official token’s X account and Solana contract address which ends in “YEEZY.”

The pop culture icon’s Instagram account, which boasts nearly 20 million followers, followed only two accounts around 1:45 p.m. ET on Tuesday—his partner Bianca Censori and a profile named “yzytoken.”

That profile promotes what West calls a “fake coin,” a YZY token that was launched on popular Solana meme coin launchpad Pump.fun earlier Tuesday.

The profile’s bio lists the impostor token’s contract address alongside the real token address, and has a single post from around 2:00 a.m. ET with a QR code and the text “(‘Restart now? (y/n): ‘) == ‘y.’” 

West’s following of the fake token page alone was enough to send it to around a $7 million market cap at its peak before it came crashing down. 

Kanye’s real meme coin was launched last week after months of speculation that a token tied to the rapper was eventually going to debut. The launch sent a handful of unaffiliated Kanye-related tokens plummeting, dropping as much as 88%. 

But the real Kanye token hasn’t performed particularly well either since its launch. After storming out of the gate to a nearly $3 billion fully diluted value (FDV), YZY is down nearly 81% and sitting just above a $565 million FDV. The current market cap is barely $73.5 million, as of this writing.

Despite its lack of overwhelming success among traders, insiders and other early investors benefited heavily from the token launch, including around $12 million of profits tied to Hayden Davis—one of the individuals behind the controversial Libra meme coin launch that was promoted by Argentine president Javier Milei in February. 

As of 2:18p.m. ET, Kanye’s Instagram was no longer following the “yzytoken” page that had promoted the fake coin.