The crypto community has started to warn of “peak degeneracy,” with memecoin founders raking in millions worth of Solana (SOL) through token presales in the last 72 hours alone.
As of the time of publication, crypto traders have sent around $100 million worth of Solana in an attempt to buy into new Solana memecoins in the last 72 hours, per aggregated data viewed by Cointelegraph and cited by crypto researcher 0xGumshoe.
These tokens have been raising money for unreleased coins by way of a controversial presale model, most notably including Book of Meme (BOME), $NAP (NAP), Nostalgia (NOS), and many others.
“This is legit peak degeneracy. Aping $180k and $90k into memecoins,” wrote pseudonymous crypto investor Nick in a March 18 post to X — attached to a screenshot of outsized buys on an undisclosed memecoin.
The memecoin presale mania was kicked into gear when a memecoin called Book of Meme launched using the controversial crowdfunding model.
Launched on March 14 by pseudonymous artist Darkfarms1 at an initial value of around $4 million, BOME rallied more than 36,000% to reach a peak market capitalization of $1.45 billion in less than 56 hours.
One early investor, sundayfunday.sol — a personal friend of BOME’s creator — turned an initial investment of 420.69 Solana — worth $72,000 at the time — into a staggering $32 million in less than 3 days, according to a March 17 post from blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain.
A “pre-sale” involves crypto investors sending a cryptocurrency to a wallet address and then receiving a weighted distribution of tokens in return when the token goes live.
There is no guarantee that an investor will receive tokens in exchange for the cryptocurrency sent to a presale wallet address, making presales an extremely popular model for frauds and scammers to steal money from unwitting investors.
Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano lashed out at the pre-sale model, saying anyone who sent their money to a random wallet address in the expectation of receiving a token was “dumb as hell.”
“2 years later and everyone is right back to bidding ponzis. People can do what they want with their money but sending money to a ‘memecoin presale’ that has a 99.9% chance of rugging is actually just dumb as hell”
Meanwhile, the memecoin mania has gone well beyond the niche realm of crypto X.
Entrepreneur David Sacks, well-known for his role as the All In podcast co-host, saw the drama around his memecoin escalate, allowing one lucky user to reportedly profit roughly $39,000 from the situation.
Pseudonymous X user DeFiRabbitHole says when Sacks first began posting about his memecoin on X, they expected another All In memecoin to also appreciate.
So, when Elon Musk tweeted “ok fine, I will buy ur coin” to fellow All In podcast host Jason Calcanis, the affiliated JASON coin skyrocketed, turning their initial investment from 1 SOL into 200 SOL.
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