coindesk.com
In 2025, some of crypto’s most powerful market movers didn’t launch protocols or run funds. Instead, they 'shitposted.’
This feature is a part of CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 list.
The pseudonymous trader known as James Wynn became the archetype. A crypto degen who reportedly flipped a $7,000 PEPE punt into more than $25 million, then graduated to nine-figure bitcoin leverage bets on Hyperliquid, Wynn broadcasted every entry and liquidation to hundreds of thousands of his social media followers.
At the top, his public Profit and Loss (PnL) metric showed around $100 million in profit; weeks later, he confessed to having “lost control" and watched about 99% of it evaporate and briefly nuked his account — a complete boom-and-bust cycle played out live on the Crypto Twitter timeline.
On Solana, “Bonk Guy” (@theunipcs) played the same game with a different flavor of risk. His early BONK position ballooned from roughly $16,000 to well over eight figures on paper, turning him into the unofficial mascot of the chain’s meme revival in 2024. Screenshots of eight-figure swings, brutal drawdowns, a headline $30 million liquidation and side-quests in tokens like USELESS made him both hero and cautionary tale for a new generation of gamblers.
Together, these traders turned Crypto Twitter into a live casino balcony — where influence is measured not in thinkpieces, but in how many people ape into the next trade.
Social media traders are among CoinDesk's Most Influential 2025 for turning X dashboards into public PnL reality shows, sending billions in volume through memecoins and perp DEXs in real time.