The Chill Guy meme coin dropped over 45% in just 30 minutes after it came out that the project does not have any intellectual property rights to the original Chill Guy meme. 

Philip Bankss, the creator of the Chill Guy meme, has not granted licensing and IP rights to the Chill Guy crypto team. This has led to Chill Guy’s (CHILLGUY) holders to dump over 45% of the token in 30 minutes, pushing prices to as low as $0.2637 from $0.4793. The market cap, for the last 24 hours, has lost 15% at a resting value of $307.89 million, according to CoinMarketCap. On the other hand, the trading volume increased by 207.12%, which also reflects a wave of sell-offs by the investors.

Bankss publicly rejected the project, saying that he never permitted the use of his drawing in the crypto ecosystem. Instead, he disclosed that some hackers had taken over his social media accounts and tried to impersonate him to make easy money off the meme coin‘s hype and given IP and licensing rights on his behalf to the crypto project.

Launched on Nov. 18 on Solana (SOL), ChillGuy took up the then-viral ‘Just A ChillGuy’ meme that gained people’s attention on social media. The meme coin became quite popular, especially among Gen Z audiences sharing the meme with funny portrayals of everyday situations. The project reached an all-time high with a market cap of $561 million on Nov. 27, after the token perpetual contracts was listed on Binance.

Even though the coin initially saw quite the success, now it is experiencing grave setbacks. The lack of IP rights, coupled with the protest of the founder himself, has many disappointed investors leading to the sell-off spree.

The volatile terrain of meme coins

Often, meme coins are driven by hype, social media manipulation, and shimmers of community sentiment instead of fundamental value or utility. For instance, Hawk Tuah jumped in viral popularity and then crashed as interest faded, leaving a lot of investors holding the bag.

These examples serve to bring out the dangers of the meme coin landscape, which see erratic price movements and controversies, such as that of the ChillGuy IP story, on a near-regular basis.

Alex Beene, an instructor at the University of Tennessee at Martin, explained to crypto.news in a LinkedIn direct message that meme coins draw in investors who otherwise might hesitate to enter the crypto market. However, meme coins often come with risks and create mixed perceptions of cryptocurrencies as a whole to people outside the industry.

“Meme coins have attracted a wide array of individuals who in past decades typically wouldn’t have been interested in investing in other financial products or services. At the same point, for those who view cryptocurrency like Bitcoin as true store of value, it’s difficult to read headlines on the absurdities in the meme coin ecosystem and not feel like it’s devaluing the wider crypto community. Simply put, it’s a mixed bag of perceptions.”

—Alex Beene