This Memecoin raised $1 million for rare cancer research following a father’s plea

Pump.Fun memecoin grew from zero to $80 million on Thursday after a father’s daughter’s request to donate to research for a rare brain cancer attracted a large number of crypto traders.

The token’s price has fallen 80% since Thursday’s peak and was down just over a cent on Friday. However, late buyers were sitting on losses and efforts still raised more than $1 million for the reason.

In an X post on Thursday, Runaway founder Ciqi Chen said her daughter Mira was diagnosed with a type of brain tumor in September, and because the disease is so rare, research and funding are “lacking.”

He has a GoFundMe page Raised 80% of $300,000 plan as of Thursday, with all proceeds going directly to research at Hankinson’s lab at the University of Colorado.

Chen also posted an Ethereum wallet on the X thread following user requests, and later posted his Solana and Bitcoin addresses as users asked for more options.

Then there was Pump.Fun.

The platform allows anyone to issue a token with a capital of less than $2, after which they choose the number of tokens, a theme, and a meme image to accompany it. When the market capitalization of any token reaches $69,000, a portion of the liquidity is invested and burned on the Solana-based Raydium exchange.

The user MIRA created the token Attached is a picture of Chen and his daughter, it serves no purpose, it’s just a token to be sold like any other memecoin. Pump.Fun user profile It shows that MIRA was one of the few tokens they created that day, the others failed to break the $6,000 market cap.

X user @Waddles_eth later bought 50% of the supply and sent it all to Chen, who boosted the memecoin on his X account.

This has given the token virality and pushed prices from one penny to 8 cents on Thursday. The value of Chen’s tokens ranged from $400,000 to $18 million. As the market sold off widely, it attracted a peak of $7 million in liquidity (in both Solana’s SOL and memecoin).

It has attracted over $85 million in trading volume 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 shit, but this is the craziest day of my life,” Chen wrote on X’s page, which saw the prices skyrocket. “Every 10 minutes I liquidate $1000 worth of MIRA. If this changes the schedule, I commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance.”

“If you want to raise it to $0, then go for it — at the end of the day, we’re aiming to raise $200,000, and we’re going to have at least $1 million for rare disease research,” Chen said.

Community response The whole event was very positive, with several users noting how such memecoins can contribute to positive outcomes in the world.

Memecoins are mainly based on virality, attention and community hype. They are not considered serious among professional investors, but in the past year they have seen great demand and preference compared to crypto tokens backed by large venture capital – they are perceived as enriching wealthy investors at the expense of small retail traders.

But MIRA made some waves.

“I think memecoins are dumb and have no future and I won’t touch them. But if I want to file a case against them, now I know where to start,” said user X @JaEsf. “It’s beautiful and crazy, you can do it with crypto. EVM, Solana or any chain. That’s why Crypto exists! Simplifying the movement of assets,” said @mbaril010, another X user.

Meanwhile, user @waddles_eth, who sent Chen half of the token, said the overall result met their expectations.

“When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be a good idea to buy and send you some gear in hopes of getting the SOL community behind a good cause this Christmas,” they said in the viral X post. . “I’m really glad it turned out the way it did and I hope the money goes towards finding a cure for Mira and others who have it.”

For goodness sake, crypto may finally be a thing in the new year.