On Thursday, El Salvador's crypto-forward President Nayib Bukele tweeted the Chill Guy meme, triggering a 1000% pump in a near-random one of related memecoins.
While bitcoiners saw it as a reaction to BTC's rally past $96K, memecoin traders took the tweet literally. Although Bukele's track record with public engagement solely with $BTC and $USDT suggests his pumping of a small memecoin looks rather unintentional.
Although dozens of Chill Guy-named memecoins exist, the largest and most liquid one—Just a Chill Guy (CHILLGUY)—is hosted on #Solana.
Artist Phillip Banks created Just a Chill Guy in 2023 as his mascot. Since then, the character has gone viral on social media, especially TikTok, as users have contrasted his laid-back demeanor with relatable life challenges.
After Chill Guy caught the attention of Elon Musk, who retweeted Grok AI's interpretation of the meme, and El Salvador's President, the meme took Crypto Twitter by storm as the Solana-based CHILLGUY token surged more than 1,000%, reaching a $500M market cap by Wednesday.
However, the sparks in crypto tokens do not seem to excite the author of the character:
“I don't endorse or consent to my art being used to any crypto related things. Please leave me alone.”
This week, Philip Banks warned he might issue takedown notices against assets or apps using the Just a Chill Guy character, so CHILLGUY's 120,000 token holders may be feeling not so chill anymore:
"Just putting it out there, chill guy has been copyrighted. like, legally. I'll be issuing takedowns on for-profit related things over the next few days."
Some community members, in response, advised the artist better to try to capitalize on the situation and retire early, noting that pursuing claims against anonymous blockchain-based tokens would be futile.
Despite pushback against crypto tokens monetizing on a Chill Guy, a number of tribute NFT collections and dozens of derivative memecoins have already launched. Banks' character universe expands through derivative tokens, including WORRIEDGUY, the other character created by Banks.
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