The LILANSEM
experiment.

An experiment in attention, influence, and the power of speculation.

Memecoins have proven to be incredibly effective at attracting retail speculation through deeply passionate communities, but have historically struggled to maintain sustained activity once peak attention fades. Creators, on the other hand, have proven capable of generating sustainable revenues through loyal communities of followers, but until recently there has not been an effective way to speculate directly on a creator's influence and impact.

My original thesis with $ANSEM was that combining these two distinctly different things into one token could create an entirely new category of assets: the Tokenized Creator Economy.

With the birth of my son, Kingston, I am launching a new experiment: $LILANSEM.

While $ANSEM was designed around tokenizing my existing influence and social network, $LILANSEM explores something different: what happens when speculation itself becomes the catalyst for creating an entirely new social network?

The difference between the two launches is intentional.

With $ANSEM, I first interacted with the token through my personal X account, introducing it to an established audience of over one million followers.

With $LILANSEM, the initial announcement will come directly from a new X account that I own and will use to run the project, rather than my personal account.

The connection to me is public, but the distribution mechanism is different.

Instead of using an established social network to create speculation around a token, I want to experiment with whether speculation around an established identity can create an entirely new social network.

This is an experiment in the reflexive relationship between speculation, attention, and community formation.

The Speculation Flywheel

The underlying hypothesis is simple:

Speculation → Attention → Community → Distribution → More Speculation

Speculation attracts attention. Attention brings new participants. Participants create content, build communities, and distribute the narrative to new audiences. That distribution creates the potential for additional speculation, bringing new participants into the network.

The process can then repeat.

What makes this particularly interesting is that speculation is not merely an outcome of attention. It can also become the mechanism that produces attention in the first place.

Traditional businesses spend enormous amounts of money acquiring customers. Creators spend years building audiences and establishing relationships with followers. Memecoins introduce a new model where market participants have a financial incentive to discover, discuss, and distribute an idea.

In traditional markets, attention is often a consequence of success.

In speculative markets, attention can become both the input and the output.

The strongest speculative narratives create feedback loops where growing attention attracts new participants, those participants generate further distribution, and the resulting network becomes increasingly recognizable.

This is also why memecoins can fail so quickly. The exact same feedback loop works in reverse when attention begins to disappear.

The question is whether this initial speculative attention can be converted into something sustainable beyond the first wave of market activity.

That is what I want to explore with $LILANSEM.

The $2 Trillion Creator Economy

Asset valuations are determined by both tangible and intangible metrics.

Tangible metrics include revenues, product development, business positioning, and technological innovation. Intangible metrics include attention, cultural relevance, storytelling, and network effects.

The best assets are often those capable of combining both.

Memecoins and the Creator Economy are two of the clearest examples of markets assigning financial value to attention, but they operate in fundamentally different ways.

Memecoins can attract enormous amounts of speculative capital despite having no underlying revenues. Dogecoin, for example, reached an approximately $88 billion valuation in 2021, driven largely by cultural relevance, community participation, and attention from Elon Musk.

The Creator Economy generates economic value through similar mechanisms of attention, but translates that attention into advertising revenues, subscriptions, merchandise, and businesses.

According to Precedence Research, the global Creator Economy is projected to grow from approximately $254 billion in 2025 to over $2 trillion by 2035.

What I find especially interesting is the potential for tokenization to combine these two models.

Creators have the ability to maintain attention over long periods of time, while memecoins have demonstrated the ability to rapidly acquire attention through speculation.

The original $ANSEM thesis was that combining these two properties could establish an entirely new category of onchain assets.

$LILANSEM takes that thesis one step further.

Rather than beginning with an established audience and attaching a token to it, I want to explore whether speculation can accelerate the development of an entirely new audience.

From $ANSEM to $LILANSEM: Two Different Experiments

I have been active in crypto Twitter since 2017, growing from around 1,000 followers to over 1.1 million followers in 2026.

Over the past decade, I have watched multiple experiments in tokenized communities, including memecoins, celebrity coins, NFTs, SocialFi, and creator tokens.

I have also built my own ecosystem through Bullpen, my trading terminal, and Market Bubble, my podcast on X.

One of the advantages of $ANSEM was that it could connect these existing audiences, products, and relationships through a common onchain asset.

With $LILANSEM, the starting point is deliberately different.

With $ANSEM, my personal X account served as the initial distribution channel. The token gained exposure through an audience that had already been developed over years of community building.

With $LILANSEM, the initial post will come from the project's own account.

My involvement will be publicly known, but I want to study whether the speculation surrounding the launch and its connection to my identity can cause people to discover, follow, and participate in a new community.

This is not an experiment that completely removes existing social capital. My identity remains an important part of the narrative.

The difference is that the token's initial distribution does not begin with a direct broadcast to my entire personal audience.

$ANSEM was about converting existing attention into tokenized participation.

$LILANSEM is about testing whether tokenized speculation can generate new attention and independent participation.

Both experiments ultimately explore the same broader vision: the formation of onchain social networks around communities with shared interests and financial incentives.

Speculation as a Marketing Mechanism

The largest social networks in the world spend billions of dollars developing products, retaining users, and building advertising infrastructure.

Their business models depend on attracting and monetizing attention.

Memecoins have demonstrated another way to attract attention, where individual market participants voluntarily participate in distributing a narrative because they are financially or culturally invested in it.

This mechanism has similarities to word-of-mouth marketing, but introduces a speculative component.

Instead of receiving direct compensation to promote a product, token holders may choose to create content, discuss ideas, or build tools because they want the network to succeed.

An important distinction is that speculative participation does not automatically create long-term value.

For the model to become sustainable, the attention needs to develop into something people remain interested in even when markets are no longer rising.

There is academic research supporting the broader relationship between narratives, attention, and cryptocurrency returns.

A 2023 study published in Finance Research Letters, titled Narrative Attention and Related Cryptocurrency Returns, found evidence of a two-way relationship between narrative attention and returns for several cryptocurrency categories. Greater attention was associated with increased returns, while price growth could subsequently attract more attention. The findings were not universal across every narrative studied.

Research: Narrative Attention and Related Cryptocurrency Returns

This is the mechanism I am interested in exploring with $LILANSEM.

In a traditional creator model, an individual spends years accumulating influence before having a meaningful opportunity to monetize it.

In a speculative model, a token may attract attention to a creator, idea, or community before that network reaches meaningful scale.

The two models approach audience formation from opposite directions.

The challenge is ensuring that the speculative network evolves into a community with genuine reasons to remain engaged.

The Birth of $LILANSEM

My online alias, Ansem, originated from Ansem the Wise and Ansem Seeker of Darkness from the Kingdom Hearts franchise.

Over the years, the black bull became a symbol associated with my identity in crypto. Bulls are universally recognized in financial markets as representations of optimism, strength, and upward momentum.

With the birth of my son, Kingston, the idea of $LILANSEM came naturally.

The baby black bull represents a new generation of the Ansem identity.

But beyond the personal connection, there is a more interesting experiment I want to conduct.

My original account took nearly a decade to grow into a network of more than one million followers.

During that period, the account gained recognition through years of education, trading ideas, community building, and participation in crypto markets.

$LILANSEM allows me to approach audience formation from the opposite direction.

Instead of spending years building attention before introducing a speculative asset, the asset itself becomes the initial event around which attention can organize.

The question is whether this mechanism can meaningfully accelerate the development of an independent community.

The baby bull gives the project a recognizable identity, a connection to an existing cultural narrative, and a meme that people can understand without needing to know my entire history.

A successful memecoin needs more than an individual attached to it. It needs an identity that the broader internet can relate to, reinterpret, and participate in.

This is one of the primary lessons I have learned from previous experiments in creator tokens and SocialFi.

Building a Tokenized Social Network

Instagram has billions of users globally, but the majority of people contributing content and attention to the platform do not own shares of Met

Traditional social networks are structured around platforms capturing the economic value of their users' attention.

Tokenized communities introduce a different mechanism, where participants can acquire a transferable asset associated with a network.

These tokens are not necessarily equity or claims on business revenues, but they can give participants shared financial exposure to the success or failure of a cultural network.

My original $ANSEM thesis focused on combining memecoin distribution with sustainable creator attention.

With $LILANSEM, I want to understand how quickly a community can emerge around a recognizable identity when speculation acts as the initial catalyst.

There are several things I am particularly interested in observing.

Organic Discovery: How many people discover the project through social discussion rather than a direct post from my main account?

Community Formation: How quickly do people begin producing content, developing memes, and establishing an identity around the baby bull?

Independent Distribution: Can the community create meaningful attention without requiring me to personally drive every interaction?

Sustained Participation: Does the community continue growing and contributing when initial launch speculation begins to subside?

These are more meaningful indicators of network formation than market capitalization alone.

Lessons From Previous Experiments

The idea of combining speculation, social networks, and creators is not entirely new.

Several projects have attempted different versions of this model. Some demonstrated extraordinary initial demand but ultimately struggled to retain participants.

Understanding where they succeeded and failed is essential to the broader thesis.

Friend.Tech

Friend.Tech allowed users to speculate on keys associated with individual social media accounts, granting holders access to private conversations.

The platform demonstrated that users were willing to pay for financial and social exposure to individual creators.

However, its bonding-curve model, trading fees, and limited sustained utility created obstacles to long-term retention.

Friend.Tech saw substantial trading activity at launch before suffering a dramatic decline in interest.

The important lesson is that attaching a financial asset to a creator can generate significant speculation, but speculation alone does not guarantee sustained engagement.

Time.fun

Time.fun experimented with tokenizing individuals on Solana while connecting tokens to creator interactions and social experiences.

The interesting aspect of Time.fun was its attempt to give creator-linked tokens utility beyond speculation.

However, attaching a coin directly to an individual does not automatically create the same cultural appeal as a recognizable internet meme.

One of the biggest lessons I have learned is that successful internet communities often organize around symbols and shared ideas rather than individuals alone.

That is one of the reasons I believe the black bull is an important part of both the $ANSEM and $LILANSEM narratives.

It makes the brand relatable beyond the original creator.

Memecoins and Celebrity Coins

Memecoins such as Dogecoin demonstrated that a simple, recognizable internet meme can accumulate enormous amounts of attention over time.

Celebrity tokens demonstrated that recognizable names alone are not sufficient to maintain that attention.

Many celebrity launches attracted immediate speculation but failed to develop lasting communities or continued participation.

What separates a durable cultural asset from a temporary speculative event is not simply how much attention it receives.

It is how much of that attention can be converted into recurring participation, community identity, and continued relevance.

$LILANSEM is designed to explore that relationship, not assume that speculation guarantees a successful outcome.

The Real Experiment: Can Attention Compound?

There is one final distinction I believe matters.

Not all attention is equally valuable.

A token can experience millions of impressions during a speculative event, but if nobody remains interested afterward, the network has created very little lasting value.

On the other hand, a smaller group of highly engaged community members can produce content, build tools, attract new participants, and create a network that remains relevant for years.

That is where the potential for compounding comes from.

Speculation can be the initial catalyst, but the community must ultimately become capable of generating attention independently.

In simplified terms:

Speculation creates attention.

Attention attracts participants.

Participants create a community.

Community activity creates distribution.

Distribution attracts more attention.

The crucial variable is retention.

If each cycle brings in new participants who remain active and contribute to the network, the community has the potential to compound over time.

If most participants leave as speculation fades, the network contracts.

This distinction is central to the $LILANSEM experiment.

I am not simply interested in whether a new token can attract immediate speculation because it is connected to my identity.

I am interested in whether that speculative event can create a new, independently active social network.

Conclusion: A New Experiment in the Tokenized Creator Economy

I believe the Tokenized Creator Economy represents one of the most interesting emerging categories in crypto.

My original thesis with $ANSEM was that combining the speculative appeal of memecoins with the sustained attention and economic opportunities of the Creator Economy could create an entirely new kind of onchain network.

$LILANSEM explores another aspect of that same idea.

With $ANSEM, I began with an existing audience, years of accumulated social capital, and an established ecosystem of products and relationships.

With $LILANSEM, I am beginning with a new account, a recognizable identity, a personal narrative, and a speculative asset.

The distinction is important because it allows me to explore how much of a new network can be formed through the attention generated by speculation itself.

The birth of my son, Kingston, inspired the creation of $LILANSEM.

But the broader thesis extends far beyond one token.

I believe we are only beginning to understand how speculation, attention, and tokenization interact to create new internet communities.

Social media enabled anyone to become a creator.

Crypto enabled anyone to create a tradable asset.

The convergence of these two innovations opens up entirely new possibilities for how communities form, grow, and coordinate.

$ANSEM is an experiment in tokenizing existing influence.

$LILANSEM is an experiment in whether speculation can create new influence.

If we can better understand how speculative attention converts into sustained participation, we can begin to understand how tokenization might change the way social networks are built.

Speculation is the catalyst.

Attention is the distribution.

Community is the network.

And sustained participation is what determines whether that network lasts.

Welcome to world, $LILANSEM.