“Masked Singer” host Nick Cannon said he’ll soon be launching a second cryptocurrency token, even as he distanced himself from a failed memecoin he promoted — costing some investors hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The 44-year-old actor, singer, and father of 12 has washed his hands of the WILDNOUT memecoin — named after the MTV rap battle show “Wild N’ Out,” which Cannon conceived and hosted from 2005 to 2020 — despite hyping the crypto’s March 5 launch and buying into it himself.
The WILDNOUT coin hit a $10 million market cap nine hours after launching on March 5. But by the next morning, its value plummeted to $3 million, charts show. It was down to $1 million by March 8, resulting in millions in losses for the approximately 16,538 investors who bought into it. This week it was valued around $67,000.
Cannon announced on March 26 he aimed to give it a shot again soon, with an “enterprise token.”
“I never wanna run game on anybody, and I never wanna scam anybody,” Cannon insisted to the more than 11,000 who signed into his March 26 live X forum about the impending crypto project.
“We’re just trying to comply by the rules, because there are rules to this, and I am one of those guys who plays by the rules and doesn’t end up running game on people. That’s not what we about. We about creating community, we about creating enterprise, and offering up real thought-out utility.”
Cannon proclaimed in the live forum “I was not the originator of that last coin,” and added he has no plans to sell off his stake in the memecoin.
“It wasn’t technically mine, and so all of the stuff that we all know went on with it, I just wanted to make sure, moving forward, whatever we do is going to be super official and done the right way,” Cannon said. “I am never abandoning y’all.
“I saw what happened with the last one, and whoever set that up and whoever put it together, I wanna do whatever in the future the right way,” he continued. “I’m locked in. That last coin, I wish I could have did it the way my plans are to operate in the future, but this is how we gotta rock right here.
“Every step we take from here on out, we’ll be thinking about the people.”
An enterprise token is a digital asset, usually managed by a business, that represents a unit of value or ownership.
“The whole goal,” Cannon said of the upcoming enterprise coin, “is to make sure whatever we’re doing, we’re elevating, and we put forth something that’s legit in this world. That’s all I wanna do.”
He added: “I have learned so much to where I get that opportunity to help people and utilize my name in a good way. I wanna make sure all the i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed to protect you all, to protect myself.
He alleged someone “misused” his celebrity by “attach[ing]” his name to the last coin, insisting he made no money on the token.
Cannon promoted WILDNOUT through his X profile, hosting a pair of live video forums about the token — built on cryptocurrency platform Solana.
And on the day it was released, he wrote: “We Wild ‘N Out in the trenches! The official Wild N Out meme coin is Live!…Wildn! Wildn!” He even assured fans on X he would “never” sell his memecoins, and “pull out” of the project.
Critics targeted Cannon soon after the token tanked.
“Your name is mud,” one alleged victim wrote on X. “You didn’t make enough efforts to salvage your coin. People trusted you. That trust is broken.”
“Damn. Yeah, he mastered emotional manipulation for sure. A psychological feat indeed,” another wrote
Others labeled him “disgusting” and a “grifter.”
Watchdog David Kennedy, a longtime crypto trader in Sanford, Fla., said losing money on memecoins is practically a meme unto itself.
“These things are happening so frequently, and there’s so many of them, everything’s gotten diluted,” Kennedy explained. “There’s no regulation.”
Kennedy said the Securities and Exchange Commission determined memecoins are not securities on Feb. 27. “It’s the Wild West out there, and that’s the problem,” he said. “So there’s no real recourse for these people [who lost money on WILDNOUT], other than getting upset or suing.”
An SEC spokesperson declined comment on the memecoin.
Cannon did not return a request for comment.
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