The Craze for Meme Coins: The Collusion of Power, Money, and Market Manipulation

A Scandal Starting from a “Crypto Ball”

In January 2025, a high-end cryptocurrency celebration in Washington, D.C., witnessed a shocking “legal plunder” that shook the entire crypto community. The entry ticket cost $2,500, and attendees included congressional leaders, political advisors, and even notorious political figures accused of fraud. At a dance party with a well-known musician as DJ, breaking news spread — the new president announced on social media the launch of a personal meme coin.

Within hours, the token’s price skyrocketed from nearly zero to $74. Just days later, the First Lady also launched her own meme coin, which briefly reached $13. But the celebration was short-lived — within two weeks, both tokens fell over 90% from their peaks. Hundreds of thousands of retail investors suffered huge losses, while the behind-the-scenes orchestrators profited over $350 million from this feast.

Meme Coins: A “Consensual Scam”

The history of meme coins is brief. In 2013, two software engineers adopted a Shiba Inu meme as the symbol for a new token, creating the earliest “joke coin.” Initially intended to mock the Bitcoin craze, the outcome was unexpected — the coin’s market cap soared to $12 million within weeks, even securing sponsorship from a racing team.

Unlike traditional financial products, meme coins lack real-world applications, cash flow, or fundamental support. By any rational financial standard, their value should be zero. But that’s the “magic” of meme coins — they rely entirely on market participants’ belief and speculative psychology. “In theory, this shouldn’t work, but in reality, it makes money,” admitted a co-founder of a major meme coin platform.

By 2024, meme coins had evolved into a massive market. A major trading platform claimed to have listed about 1,400 meme coins, earning roughly $1 billion in trading fees alone. Creating a meme coin is extremely simple — just a few clicks, no programming knowledge needed, and any trending topic or even tragedy can be packaged into a token.

This market follows a set of invisible “rules of survival”: whoever gets in early, who has insider information, is the winner. Traders leverage informational advantages to buy large amounts of new coins within seconds, then sell for profit as retail investors follow the trend — a form of insider trading in traditional markets, but ignored in crypto. A seasoned trader confessed, “Basically, this is market manipulation.”

The Mysterious “Black Hand”: From Argentina to the White House

The first clues surfaced a month after the launch of the presidential meme coin. Argentina’s young president hurriedly launched his own meme coin, “Libra,” on February 14. Hours later, its price plummeted, and he had to delete promotional posts.

Blockchain analysts traced transaction paths and found anomalies. One address invested $1.1 million to buy coins seconds before the coin’s launch, then made $100 million profit within three days — a typical case of insider trading. Another address had purchased before the coin was publicly announced, earning $2.4 million. All these addresses pointed back to the same individual or team.

More intriguingly, the “black hand” manipulating the Argentine meme coin was linked to those manipulating the U.S. First Lady’s meme coin. Blockchain data showed that the wallets behind both coins belonged to the same network.

This led to a 29-year-old American named Hayden Davis. The young man claims to be a “startup expert” and co-founded an investment consulting firm with his father, Tom. Their routine is clear: providing “full services” — from technical support to marketing hype and covert fund transfers — for politicians and celebrities wanting to launch meme coins.

On-chain analysis shows Davis’s team profited over $150 million from meme coin operations, mostly from the Argentine project. When the scandal broke, Davis admitted in a video that he helped launch the meme coin but insisted he was “just managing others’ funds” and “did not personally profit” — a claim that clearly doesn’t hold water.

The True Face of the Behind-the-Scenes Puppeteer

But Davis is not the real mastermind. An insider who worked with him decided to “blow the whistle” — revealing a larger manipulation network.

This clue ultimately pointed to a Singaporean crypto entrepreneur known as “Mew Mew,” who uses an astronaut cat as his avatar and is the actual power behind a well-known trading platform. This platform became the “stage” for launching the presidential meme coin and the Argentine president’s coin.

The entrepreneur’s name is Ming Yeow Ng, in his forties. He previously developed social tools in San Francisco, then entered the crypto space. In 2021, he founded a crypto platform that later rebranded due to ties with bankrupt companies. Today, 90% of his platform’s revenue comes from meme coin trading — because meme coin trading fees are higher.

“Should We Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater?”

When directly asked about the president’s meme coin and Davis’s role, Ng hesitated. He admitted that the presidential team had indeed contacted his platform for “technical support,” but insisted he only provided infrastructure and was “completely unaware” of the token issuers’ intentions.

“Would you believe the story is more mundane than you think?” he said with a frown. He argued that his platform is a neutral tool like the internet, not responsible for users’ actions. “There are many things we cannot and should not control,” he said, playfully stroking a gray-white cat climbing onto the table.

When asked why he doesn’t ban manipulators like Davis who frequently launch “instant crash” meme coins, Ng used a metaphor: “There might be dog feces, baby feces, even E. coli in the bathwater, but maybe there’s a baby too.” The implication was that even if the market is full of fraud, it shouldn’t be dismissed entirely — because real innovation also exists here.

But when pressed on who this “baby” actually is, Ng refused to answer.

The “Multiple Conflicts” Game of Power

Meanwhile, the presidential family began building a large crypto asset portfolio. The president’s son owns a Bitcoin mining company; the government announced plans to acquire strategic Bitcoin reserves; and several crypto projects gained political backing.

Most notably, an “elite dinner” took place. The wealthiest investors involved in the presidential meme coin investments were invited to a dinner at the president’s golf club. The event was openly promoted as “the biggest investors dining with the president,” brazenly linking money and power. Massachusetts senator publicly called it a “corruption feast.”

Outside the dinner, dozens of protesters gathered in the rain, loudly questioning: “What’s on the menu, gentlemen?” The menu was steak. An older businessman in a blue suit and red tie, acting as host, attended — he is a long-time business partner of the president.

The “Ultimate Value Extraction Machine” in the Regulatory Vacuum

A senior lawyer described the meme coin market as “the ultimate value extraction machine, designed by talented people.” He has sued platform operators and manipulators on behalf of heavily harmed investors, but these cases are slow, with no direct charges against the president or the Argentine president.

All defendants deny the allegations. Their lawyers claim meme coins “are not scams,” and no promises of value growth were made; platform lawyers argue that the platform only “develops software” and cannot be responsible for user behavior.

The root problem lies in the lack of regulation. The U.S. securities regulators ultimately announced they would “not regulate” meme coins, merely stating that general anti-fraud laws still apply. But in practice, this law is virtually useless — no prosecutors are willing to pursue, and no regulatory agency intervenes.

“This is a consensual scam,” said a market observer. “The scammers know they’re scamming, investors are aware too, but everyone bets they can cash out before the crash. As long as no one blows the whistle, the game continues.”

Epilogue: Madness Fades, the Truth Remains Elusive

By the end of the year, the meme coin market was a thing of the past. Trading volume plummeted 92% from the January peak. Participants turned to other speculative fields — the latest craze being “prediction markets” (once deemed illegal gambling by the Biden administration, now relaxed under the new government).

The presidential meme coin has fallen to $5.9, down 92%; the First Lady’s coin is now worthless, priced at only $0.11. The former orchestrator Davis has become a “pariah” in the industry, his social accounts silent, but on-chain data shows he is still secretly manipulating meme coin trading.

As for Ng, his platform launched its own native token in October, with a market cap exceeding $300 million — the wealth accumulated from the meme coin craze doubling again.

As long as those with information advantages remain silent, as long as platforms claim to be “neutral and innocent,” and as long as politicians hide behind the excuse of “being unaware,” this market manipulation can never be fully uncovered. The meme coin market has proven: under regulatory vacuum and driven by interests, Wall Street’s “wolves” have evolved — no longer needing to call retirees daily, but instead letting investors come to them voluntarily.

Perhaps this is the deepest financial allegory of 2025.