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Are you us? return?
BTC is back at an all-time high of $121K, ETH is back above 3K, and Aave has surpassed $50 billion on TVL.
But perhaps most importantly, the return of the first coin product (ICO). Last Saturday, Pump’s ICO raised $500 million with a $4 billion FDV.
They say “Saturday,” but it was finished in 12 minutes. All 125 billion pump tokens (12.5% of the total supply of tokens) were sold for $0.004 each.
As of this morning, the pump is trading at 0.017, so if you get caught in an ICO, it’s a 325% profit.
Who was the buyer?
10,145 unique addresses culminated at a very fair median median of $537.
Interestingly, more users came from DEXS than CEXS. Approximately 3,878 pump investors came from Solana Dexs, including Raydium, Solfi and Jupiter, compared to CEXS’s 2,525 investors.
Many Bibit users were unable to receive the pump allocation due to “unexpected API delays,” so instead they get a refund and a $20 spot fee coupon.
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I think the key point here is that Onchain infrastructure is less streamlined and effective than ever before.
Pump Strategy
The $500 million ICO on the pump is big, but not that big. Let’s put that into context.
EOS’ (now called Valuta) 2017-18 still holds the record for the largest ICO ever, with a whopping $4.1 billion.
Telegram’s 2018 ICO raised $1.7 billion in two phases. The gram tokens sold were eventually refunded due to regulatory issues, and app backers later created Ton.
However, compared to Ethereum, the pump’s ICO is larger. Ethereum raised $18 million in Bitcoin in 42 days in 2014.
These are clearly not apples and apps, given differences in duration, market maturity, product type, etc.
But the biggest difference between all is that unlike previous ICOs in the industry, pumps are not merely proof of concept.
Pump has won $786 million in cumulative revenue since its launch in January 2024. That’s a staggering $377 million annual revenue from a company two years ago.
Additionally, it is said that Pump is planning to share 25% of its revenue with token holders, my colleagues Katherine and Jack reported last week.
“There’s a reasonably high probability that pump tokens have a valuable mechanism,” Blockworks Research’s Ryan Connor told me.
Pump wants to follow the social media market. In the team’s own words, “Our plan is to kill Facebook, Tiktok and Twitch. In Solana.”
