Degens Deplorably Create 150 Liam Payne Memecoins Following Former One Direction Star's Death

Just when we thought the crypto industry was maturing, degens have resurfaced to restore their unscrupulous reputation by creating over 150 memecoins to capitalise on the death of former One Direction singer Liam Payne.

Payne, who died on Wednesday after falling from his hotel balcony in Argentina, shocked the music industry with his untimely passing. The crypto industry, however, saw this as an opportunity.

Within just 24 hours of Payne's death, degens flooded the market with more than 150 tokens in the guise of "tributes" to the singer. Many were created on the Solana-based platform Pump.fun. The first memecoin themed around Payne’s death was created just minutes after his death occurred around 5 PM in Argentina (UTC−3).

One coin called "RIP Liam Payne (PAYNE)," claimed to honour his legacy. The project promised 10% of all proceeds would be given to his family, and another 10% would be donated to a charity he supported during his lifetime. The remainder would obviously go to the token's developers, who aimed to profit from his death.

Others signalled tributes to his dog while more egregious projects paid homage to the balcony he fell from and the room he seemingly trashed before his fall. Most coins had small market caps of just $4,000.

DexScreener data suggests that several of these tokens lost up to 99% of their value shortly after launch, reflecting on the volatile, pump-and-dump nature of memecoins.

While capitalising on trends through memecoins is nothing new and certainly creating tokens to ride the wave of the passing of celebrities is far from novel, it's nonetheless a shamelessly disgraceful side of crypto that serves as a reminder of the industry's frivolous nature.