PUMP ICO Raises Eyebrows: Cash Grab or Meme Coin Meltdown?

Since its launch in early 2024, the crypto platform pump.fun has redefined the use and market for meme coins. Now, on Saturday, the creators are launching their own cryptocurrency, PUMP – is it a scam?

Even those who read the announcement about the PUMP on X ICO scheduled for Saturday (July 12) are left somewhat perplexed. Each of the 15 billion tokens on offer, which will become the native cryptocurrency of the infamous meme coin platform pump.fun, is expected to cost $0.004.

The campaign is expected to bring $600 million into the creators’ pockets, plus significant sales to “institutional investors” and allocations to the team and existing investors. This, at least, is what a diagram of PUMP’s tokenomics shows—and the launch is set to take place at a time when pump.fun’s success is noticeably faltering.

pump.fun leaves questions about PUMP unanswered before the ICO

However, even a newly launched website doesn’t answer the crucial questions for skeptical investors about the memecoin’s debut. What is the new cryptocurrency actually supposed to be good for? Vague rumors suggest that pump.fun is considering fee discounts if PUMP is used for payments. An originally expected airdrop with free PUMP for loyal customers has been postponed indefinitely. Whether pump.fun will implement a buyback program like the one for Hyperliquid’s successful HYPE altcoin is also up in the air.

In its best times, like this January, this brought the creators five million or more US dollars in revenue a day; the statistics for pump.fun remain fascinating. But the hype has long since collapsed; word has spread that only a few people are successful at the pump.fun casino with meme coins. Scandals involving offensive and shocking livestreams promoting new meme coins have also damaged its reputation.

The ICO reminds crypto veterans of scandals of the last decade

Nevertheless, the creators are now launching an ICO, an initial token sale – this model has actually been considered outdated for years and, in the case of PUMP, also seems like a relic from the early days of the crypto scene. A colorful video with references to porn, drugs, and memes is intended to promote it, and leading crypto exchanges like Kraken and Bybit are supporting the ICO – but no one is willing or able to answer more detailed questions two days before the launch.

The private sale to “institutional investors” is said to have already sold out, and if the numbers are to be believed, this sale alone has already generated more than half a billion US dollars in profit for the pump.fun creators.

Now, the meme coin is being sold to private investors like you and, according to the sparse information, is subject to a holding period of “48 to 72 hours” – enough time for the preferred early and “institutional investors” to sell their tokens on the open market beforehand. “It’s time to dominate the world,” the announcement about the launch officially concludes – meanwhile, it remains unclear what drugs this copywriter has taken.

Conclusion: PUMP seems like a scam before its debut

With HYPE, Hyperliquid demonstrated how to meaningfully and successfully launch a new cryptocurrency on the market today. A prior or accompanying airdrop, like a buyback program, is a mandatory part of the process. None of this will be implemented at PUMP’s launch; instead, far more than the $600 million from the ICO is expected to flow to the creators of pump.fun. While the promotional campaign may be attractive to some, it ignores the important factor of the dump.

This is nothing less than dumping hundreds of millions of dollars on the backs of the extended community for a cryptocurrency that is useless—at least at its debut. We strongly recommend: Buy popcorn instead of PUMP and watch the launch of the pump.fun coin with amusement from the sidelines—other meme coin platforms like LetsBonk have long since copied models. PUMP seems like the last attempt to make a lot of money out of nothing, which at least worked for pump.fun for more than a year.

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(Featured image by Alesia Kozik via Pexels)

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