Ansem responds to creator token controversy: Won't rug pull, cites Dogecoin and BONK to illustrate his philosophy

Crypto KOL Ansem has responded to the controversy surrounding the recent "creator token" trend. He admitted he was previously cautious about celebrities issuing tokens because he mistakenly assumed they would share his moral standards and wouldn’t "rug pull" for millions of dollars. "That assumption was wrong, but I won’t make the same mistake again," he said, stressing he is not a celebrity and has no plans to rug pull. Ansem noted he believes there is a mutually beneficial way to issue tokens: attract new users to the crypto industry, let people participate via tradable assets, provide liquidity for veteran crypto traders at the bear market bottom, and then channel the resulting attention to truly meaningful projects and teams in the space. He cited Dogecoin and BONK as examples: Dogecoin, which started from zero, still boasts a $11 billion market cap today and was a major user acquisition milestone for crypto; BONK revived the Solana ecosystem at the lowest point after the FTX collapse and airdropped tokens to core developers and teams. Ansem also disclosed he entered the crypto space in 2017, quit his software engineering job in 2021 to focus fully on crypto, and now co-founded trading app Bullpen.fi and hosts a podcast. He emphasized this is the first project he has led, where he controls the majority of token supply; multiple "degen coins" he previously supported were "dumped" after anonymous teams hoarded tokens in advance and hyped them using his influence.