A Pump.Fun memecoin went from zero to a market capitalization of $80 million on Thursday after a father’s plea for donations for a research study into his daughter’s rare brain cancer attracted a host of traders. of cryptocurrencies.
Prices for the token have since fallen 80% from Thursday’s peak and are trading at just over a cent on Friday. But even though late buyers faced losses, the effort still raised more than a million dollars for the cause.
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Their GoFundMe page has raised 80% of its $300,000 goal as of Thursday, with all proceeds going directly to research efforts at the University of Colorado’s Hankinson Laboratory.
Chen also posted his Ethereum wallet to the X thread after user demand, and later posted his Solana and Bitcoin addresses when users requested more options.
And then Pump.Fun happened.
The platform allows anyone to issue a token for less than $2 in capital, after which they can choose the number of tokens, the theme, and the meme image to accompany it. When the market capitalization of any token reaches $69,000, a portion of the liquidity is deposited into the Solana-based Raydium exchange and burned.
One user created the MIRA token attached with a photo of Chen and his daughter, with no apparent goal except for it to be a token that can be traded like any other memecoin. The user’s Pump.Fun profile shows that MIRA was just one of several tokens they created that day, with all the others failing to surpass a market cap of $6,000.
X user @Waddles_eth then bought 50% of the supply and sent it all to Chen, who pushed the memecoin into his X account.
That ensured the token’s virality and raised prices from fractions of a cent to a high of 8 cents early Thursday morning. The value of Chen’s token holdings went from $400,000 to more than $18 million when the token went viral. It attracted a spike of $7 million in liquidity (value in both Solana SOL and memecoin) as the market became widely traded.
It attracted over $85 million in trading volumes and over 130,000 transactions, making it the most popular small cap in the last 24 hours.
“I’ve been on the internet for 30 years and I’ve seen some things, but this is by far the craziest day of my life,” Chen wrote on X as prices skyrocketed. “I will liquidate $1000 in $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. If I change this schedule, I promise to announce it 24 hours in advance.”
“If you want to reduce it to $0, do it; at the end of the day, we set out to raise $200,000 and we will end up with at least $1 million for rare disease research,” Chen said.
This is a long read, but I had some time to think over dinner and wanted to share some thoughts and provide a plan to follow:
0. I’ve had many memorable days on the Internet over the past 30 years, but this one tops them all. My wife Yi and I are incredibly grateful to… pic.twitter.com/Aeggjc7vwH
– Siqi Chen (@blader) December 26, 2024
The community response to the entire event has been overwhelmingly positive, with several users pointing out how these memecoins can contribute to positive outcomes in the world.
Memecoins rely heavily on virality, attention, and community enthusiasm. They are considered unserious by professional investors, but have seen massive demand and preference in the last year compared to larger venture capital-backed crypto tokens, which are perceived as enriching wealthy investors at the expense of more retail traders. small.
But MIRA changed some of the trends.
“I think memecoins are stupid and have no future and I don’t touch them. But if I wanted to defend them, now I would know where to start,” said X user @JaEsf. “It’s beautiful and pretty crazy that you can do that with cryptocurrency. EVM, Solana or any chain. That’s why cryptocurrencies exist! Simplify asset movement,” said @mbaril010, another X user.
Meanwhile, @waddles_eth, the user who originally sent half of the token supply to Chen, said the overall result met his expectations.
Hello @blader,
I am the person who sent you 50% of $look earlier today.
When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be nice to buy and send them supplies in hopes that the SOL community will support a good cause at Christmas. I am very happy that…
– waddles (@waddles_eth) December 26, 2024
“When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be nice to buy and send them supplies in hopes that the SOL community will support a good cause at Christmas,” they said in a now-viral X post. . “I’m very pleased it worked the way it did and I hope the money will help find a cure for Mira and anyone else with her condition.”
Cryptocurrencies forever may finally become mainstream in the new year.
