When memecoins become big business: Pump.fun raised $600 million in 12 minutes

Pump.fun, a platform for launching memecoins on Solana, staged something between a flash mob and a financial short track. In just 12 minutes, it raised $600 million in public sales of the PUMP token. As they say in the crypto community, "a memo billion in 15 minutes is the new reality." The platform received another $720 million in a private round. And all this - without any real product, only with the slogan: "Anyone can create their own token and launch a meme".

Here's What We Know

A total of 150 billion tokens have hit the public sale - 15% of the total issuance. The starting price: $0.004 per piece. Major exchanges - Kraken, KuCoin, Gate - participated in the distribution, but Bybit managed to grab an anti-record: the API could not withstand the load, and part of the transactions had to be returned - for an amount ranging from 5 to 30 million dollars.

Pump.fun's founder is 22-year-old Dylan Kerler, who became famous for a little rug-pull scam back when he was 16 (he created over 100 fake tokens and promptly leaked them). He now attributes it all to "the experience of youth". The tokens, by the way, are not available yet - the distribution will start until 15 July.

Pump.fun is an example of how in the world of crypto the line between a joke, a startup and a potential pyramid scheme has long been erased. Perhaps this is the future with token democratisation and open access for all. Or perhaps it's another pump-and-dump that will go down in textbooks as "how to make big money from memes." As always in crypto - you either have the last laugh or you're left with no cache and a very expensive JPG.

Source: @pumpdotfun