Founder Launches $200M Coin, Musk's Short Video Platform Vine Makes a Comeback

Original Article Title: "Founder's Coin Launches Rapidly, $2 Billion, Musk's Short Video Platform Vine Makes a Comeback"

Original Article Author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

This morning, another rapid-launch token appeared on the Solana chain — VINE. The token, named after the short video platform Vine that Twitter announced the closure of in 2016, saw its market value surpass $1 billion within just 1 hour of launch. It then experienced a short-term pullback to $5 million. However, after Vine co-founder Rus Yusupov claimed the dev identity in a Twitter post, the price of VINE skyrocketed, reaching a peak market value of $2.4 billion. It currently remains around $2 billion.

Vine is a short video platform similar to TikTok, allowing users to create up to 10-second video clips and share them on social networks. The platform was launched in June 2012 by three co-founders: Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll. In October 2012, it was acquired by Twitter (now known as X), but Twitter announced the closure of Vine on October 27, 2016, as part of a company restructuring plan.

Musk Mentioned Vine Multiple Times, Market Reacts to Speculation

After Musk acquired Twitter, he repeatedly expressed the idea of relaunching Vine on social media.

On October 31, 2022, Musk conducted a Twitter poll asking whether the Twitter-owned short video app Vine should be restored. The results showed that 69.6% of participating users supported the restoration of Vine. After the poll results were announced, Musk immediately instructed the Twitter engineering team to relaunch the short video app Vine on November 1, 2022, and announced that it would be ready by the end of that year. However, nothing came of it thereafter.

On April 18, 2024, Musk once again initiated the same poll on the X platform, asking whether Vine should be restarted. By 2024, meme coins had surged on Ethereum, leading to several Vine-named meme coins on Ethereum, with the highest market value reaching $7 million, which has now dropped to zero.

After a year, Musk mentioned restarting Vine again, but this time without conducting a poll. On January 19, a user tagged Musk on the X platform saying, "It's time to relaunch Vine," to which Musk replied, "Considering it."

On that day, multiple Vine-themed Meme coins appeared on the Solana blockchain. Among them, the most widely accepted Meme coin in the market (Fun...D4AU) saw its market cap surge past $10 million.

Vine Co-founder Personally Launches Coin

Despite the abundance of Vine-themed Meme coins in the market, none of them received recognition or engagement from Vine or Musk.

In a rather dramatic turn of events, this morning, one of Vine's co-founders, Rus Yusupov, personally launched a Meme coin bearing the same name and stated on the official website, "I released this Meme coin to commemorate unity and the beauty of creation. I will not sell any Dev token shares, and all profits will be donated to X." Although Rus Yusupov sold the short video platform Vine to Twitter four months after its creation and has since had no ownership of Vine or involvement in its subsequent development and maintenance, due to his "founder" status, the market quickly hailed the VINE coin he launched (6A...pRpump) as the leader. Meanwhile, other Meme coins with the same name plummeted close to zero.

However, the FOMO was far from over. This afternoon, Rus Yusupov announced, "All VINE tokens held by developers are locked until April 20 and will remain locked until Vine restarts." Following this announcement, VINE surged, breaking the $1 billion market cap.

Rus Yusupov publicly holds 5% of the total VINE supply, which is currently locked. While developer token locking is bullish for the token, besides Rus himself having a brief connection to Vine, and the same-named Meme coin being just another meme coin riding the trend without any association with the Vine platform, the key point always remains with Musk.

It is worth noting that after selling Vine, Rus Yusupov and Dom Hofmann ventured into founding HQ Trivia, a live game interaction app, post-2017. In February 2020, HQ Trivia announced its closure. Although Rus Yusupov subsequently purchased the HQ licensing rights and kept it operational, there have been no games since November 2022, and HQ Trivia was removed from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store on August 5, 2023.

In the current market environment, the funding capacity of Memes has exceeded previous levels. Although the Vine meme coin has been hyped in the past, it still manages to attract attention, and it remains to be seen whether this time Musk will actually fulfill his promise to revive Vine.

Whether Rus Yusupov's coin issuance is a money-making scheme or a show of support for the Vine platform, in a world where even the U.S. president personally participates in coin issuance, it doesn't seem that unusual. After all, there are few people left who, like the founder of the dark web Silk Road, Ross Ulbricht, do not take advantage of the hype to issue coins.

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