Ansem: The Memecoin King

Adherents of the Soviet school of boxing embrace a hyper-standardized training regime. No frills, no personalization; just mash through the same playbook like everyone else.

That’s how an Uzbek boxing trainer put it on a chilly Wednesday morning in a gym in deep Brooklyn. He’d been hired weeks earlier to prepare the crypto trader Ansem (real name Zion Thomas) for a <a href=”https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1ypJdpvkEOqJW” target=”_blank”>fight for the influencer</a> ages: Ansem, one of crypto Twitter’s current main characters, against Bitboy (Ben Armstrong), the gregariously controversial Youtuber and token shill machine.

Lanky Ansem might have longer arms to land punches on Bitboy’s divorced dad bod, but betting markets still had the 28-year-old as underdog. Let them think he’s the lesser, coach Timor Ibragimov grunted. He told me not to take videos of Ansem training, lest Bitboy’s entourage (and his UFC trainer… for a boxing match? The fool!) learn what’s waiting.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.

Meanwhile, Ansem danced around the ring trading punches with his sparring partner. He was plenty strong, Ibragimov said. And his technique had improved immensely since beginning the two-a-day Soviet training sessions. Gone was the mess of a fighter trounced in his April amateur debut. This new man was disciplined, fast and smart.

It was not enough to beat <a href=”https://x.com/Ansem_Bitboy” target=”_blank”>Bitboy at Crypto Fight Week in Dubai</a> Dec. 6. But it wasn’t enough to lose to him, either. The two fighters sparred to an unsatisfactory draw over four messy rounds, both completely gassing the other. The crowd booed as the announcer read the results.

Winning and losing is one thing. Being in the main event is possibly more important. At the least, it’s the moneymaker for the current wave of social media-savvy wannabe boxers. Jake Paul made $40 million from Netflix just for showing up against Mike Tyson, Ansem told me. Why couldn’t he?

All traders are driven by the relentless search for profit, in crypto, stocks or otherwise. Ansem’s no different. This cycle he’s ridden Solana and a series of memecoins up for major paydays (how much he wouldn’t say.)

Somewhere along the way he became The Memecoin King: the personification of traders’ desire to get rich quick on ridiculous crypto tokens. His tweets on tokens to watch garner hundreds of thousands of views on X. And his bullposting on Solana have earned him titles like “Solana guy.”

All of this is supremely funny to Ansem because, he told me, he doesn’t really think of himself as either. Sure, he’s long Solana, but not because he believes it’s the One True Coin. He just thinks it’s among the best bets right now. And his biggest bets don’t ride on memecoins at all. Instead, they’re on swing trading: longing and shorting BTC, ETH and other assets.

Ansem’s trading has earned him the kind of money that emboldens you to hire a car service to whip you around Brooklyn like an A-lister (I joined him one recent day). But not so much that you can personally afford to water and house a former olympian boxing coach eight days a week. For that, Ansem’s got sponsors.

Plenty of cheddar, sure. Still, it’s not enough. Not yet.

Ansem has become one of the most widely-known trader-influencers squawking into the cesspool of a culture center everyone still calls “crypto Twitter.” He showers his 600,000 followers with trading advice, memecoin calls and associated markets commentary, bullpoasting Solana and whatever else he favors that day.

Ansem blasts the content out from two iPhones he seemingly never puts down. He’s terminally online, checking charts, tracking mentions. The only sustained period during our day together where Ansem wasn’t dual-weilding smartphones was when his Uzbek trainer was bullying him in the boxing ring.

How it started

His social media obsession is an outgrowth of the trade “journaling” that made Ansem Twitter-famous. In 2020, Ansem began tweeting whenever he bought a coin. It was a way of publicly tracking his own prolific trading activity, even if it was only for 100 followers.

When some of his calls started hitting, the followers began to come. He developed into a small-time celebrity known for being early on Solana, Avalanche and other assets. Nowadays, he’s perhaps most closely associated with the memecoin Dogwifhat, which he began promoting at a market cap of $100,000 (it’s now over $3 billion).

Ansem’s loud proclamations on WIF and other small-cap cryptocurrencies feed allegations that he’s preying on his followers for profit. He has the power to pump a little-known token with a single tweet. On-chain sleuth <a href=”https://x.com/zachxbt?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor” target=”_blank”>ZackXBT</a> has accused him of promoting tokens and then selling into the buying frenzy he sparks. Ansem denies this.

But the allegations do point to the clout that comes with being one of crypto Twitter’s most influential personalities of 2024. It’s an image that Ansem is acutely aware of. He used to pass through Manhattan more or less anonymously. Now, he’s asked for pictures at the nightclub.

Content next

His next big bet is even moreso on himself. The crypto trader is leaning into content creation. He wants to put more “educational” content about crypto trading out for followers who want to learn to trade the way he does.

Maintaining the right image as a creator is important. I learned as much when Ansem’s car service dropped us at the barber shop for a quick trim up. Nothing crazy; just squaring off the sides, ditching the shadow of a beard. As the barber clipped, the trader scrolled, tweeting, liking, retweeting.

It wasn’t until we arrived at Ansem’s apartment that I realized just how much noise one must mush through on the road to social media stardom. Sitting at his curved desktop screen – powered by a glistening, multicolor, custom-made computer tower – he turned off his notifications filter. Suddenly he was awash in pings. Every second, someone new was liking, replying, retweeting, and directly messaging Solana’s memecoin king.

He slipped into his element as the screen switched to charts. This is where his money’s made. He pulled up Ethereum’s chart. It was looking weak. Ansem had just opened a short and tweeted as much to the market, prompting social media “bullying” from <a href=”https://x.com/cobie?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor” target=”_blank”>Cobie</a>, another influential trader even better capitalized than he.

Cobie’s big bags could bury his trade in an instant, Ansem explained to me. He doesn’t have the kind of money to move charts like a billionaire, only the influence to tell the world what he’s feeling. From there, it’s anyone’s guess.

But Ansem did let me in on a few of the tricks he uses when making calls. At a baseline there’s reading charts. Determining trading zones. Timing entries. And, of course, knowing when to sell.

This profile is part of CoinDesk’s Most Influential 2024 package. For all of this year’s nominees, click here.