A weeks-long feud between the team behind a surging meme coin and the creator of the cartoon that inspired it appeared to reach a happy conclusion late Thursday—until it was revealed that the supposed armistice was fake news spread by a hacker, predictably causing the token to dump in the process. Could a sentence be more crypto than that?
On Thursday evening, an X (formerly known as Twitter) account belonging to Philip Banks, creator of the beloved “Just a Chill Guy” meme, announced that he had officially given his blessing for the soaring, Solana-based CHILLGUY meme coin to license his intellectual property.
“Some members of CHILLGUY token reached out to me and we had a long discussion,” the post read. “They have been really supportive and nice, and we reached an agreement. I’ve decided to provide licensing and IP rights to the CHILLGUY token and team.”
Previously, Banks had threatened the creators of the token—which leveraged the sweatshirt-wearing dog character to climb to a value in excess of $400 million—with legal action. Unsurprisingly, CHILLGUY’s value immediately rocketed over 22% on news of the supposed peace treaty. In the past, licensing agreements between meme coins and their unauthorized inspirations have caused those tokens to skyrocket.
After all, who wants a (fairly compelling) trademark infringement suit hanging over the fundamental premise of their project? But in short order, it became clear that the detente was a hoax. Banks’ account soon posted again, and again, and again—claiming that the crypto-skeptical illustrator had set up a Solana wallet, and was now launching his own “official” Chill Guy meme coin via Pump.fun.
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