Pump.fun issue coin sparks heated discussion: Opportunities and risks amidst market divergence

Recently, the most关注的 token generation event (TGE) in the cryptocurrency field is Pump.fun. This highly anticipated 发币 activity has been brewing since June, continuing to ferment amidst various expectations and doubts, until it officially launched on July 12. Although there are many doubts about its $4 billion valuation in the market, the actual data shows that investors' enthusiasm remains high. The public offering quota was quickly sold out in just 12 minutes, and some investors even expressed strong dissatisfaction on social media for not being able to participate.

Currently, the performance of Pump.fun can be considered relatively satisfactory. After its launch, its price has shown a stable upward trend. More notably, Pump.fun has recently achieved its first token buyback using the revenue from transaction fees. However, whether the coin price can maintain a high level in the long term remains a significant question in the minds of many.

In this round of the bull market, Pump.fun is undoubtedly one of the most eye-catching applications. It has successfully pushed the MEME coin to new heights, and its fair launch concept and convenient operation methods have completely broken the high barriers of traditional issuance models. Even as the MEME craze gradually fades, the enticing mechanism of creating a coin for just $3 still holds a strong appeal.

From a mechanism design perspective, Pump.fun does not have a pre-sale or private placement stage, relying entirely on smart contract pricing. Even more striking is its "graduation mechanism": when the market value of the coin reaches $69,000, the system will automatically create a liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange (DEX). This almost fully automated coin listing process has gained widespread popularity in the market, making Pump.fun one of the most powerful "printing machines" in this market cycle.

Since its launch in January 2024, Pump.fun has shown impressive performance. The total number of issued tokens has reached 11.44 million, with over 22 million unique addresses used, accumulating nearly $720 million in revenue. Among them, the highest daily transaction fee revenue reached $5.43 million, and the peak daily revenue soared to $15.88 million. It can be said that the dividends of this round of the MEME market have basically been captured by Pump.fun, further promoting the development of the Solana ecosystem.

However, when this project that started with MEME suddenly announced the issue coin, it sparked widespread discussion in the market. The rumors about Pump.fun's issue coin date back to February of this year. At that time, there were reports that Pump.fun originally planned to issue coin on a centralized exchange and had even prepared complete issue coin documents. However, due to the Trump family's frequent issuance of MEME tokens leading to market liquidity drying up, the plan was ultimately shelved.

Until June, rumors about issuing coins resurfaced. According to reports from certain media citing multiple informed sources, Pump.fun plans to raise $1 billion through a token sale, with a valuation of $4 billion. The tokens will be sold to both the public and private investors.

On July 10th, Pump.fun officially announced that it will launch the public sale of its native token PUMP on July 12, 2025, at 22:00, and the PUMP airdrop is coming soon. This plan will issue 150 billion coins at a unit price of 0.004 USDT, accounting for 15% of the total supply (1 trillion coins). Based on a valuation of 4 billion US dollars, this financing scale amounts to 600 million dollars. It is noteworthy that, for compliance reasons, users from the UK and the US are excluded from this sale.

In the PUMP tokenomics design, 33% is allocated for public sale, 24% for community and ecosystem incentives, 20% is distributed to the team, 2.4% for the ecosystem fund, 2% belongs to the foundation, 13% is allocated to existing investors, 3% for live streaming related activities, and 2.6% for providing liquidity and exchange collaboration.

However, compared to the previous market expectations for issuing coins, when the moment actually came to issue coins, the market showed a collective pessimism. The controversy mainly centered around the $4 billion valuation. It should be noted that the stablecoin leader Circle, which recently listed on the New York Stock Exchange, had a valuation of only about $7 billion. A blockchain gambling platform calling for a $4 billion valuation, even surpassing that of most current DeFi blue-chip protocols, inevitably raises questions in the market about whether it has overdrawn its future growth potential.

More critically, the current market environment has undergone significant changes. Looking at the current cryptocurrency market, apart from a slight rebound in the past few days, the performance of most altcoins and MEME tokens is quite sluggish. This is clearly reflected in the trading volume data: according to statistics from a certain data analysis platform, the trading volume of Pump.fun peaked at $5.44 million on January 23, 2025, and has since shown a sharp decline trend. Recent daily trading volumes have stabilized at around $700,000, a drop of up to 87.2% from the peak. In terms of the number of tokens created, the daily token creation has fallen from a peak of 70,000 to around 30,000, nearly halving. The "graduation rate" of tokens is even more astonishingly low, dropping from 1.6% in 2024 to less than 1% currently. These data fully indicate that the "wealth creation effect" of the MEME market is weakening, the market is gradually cooling down, and user enthusiasm is rapidly fading.

Despite how powerful Pump.fun is, it is essentially just a tool, and its development is inseparable from the overall heat of the MEME market. This is also one of the main reasons why the market questions its valuation.

On the other hand, as the overall market size shrinks, Pump.fun is also facing pressure from competitors. Once nearly unmatched in the market, Pump.fun has recently encountered significant challenges. Competitors centered around BONK have developed rapidly in recent times, surpassing Pump.fun multiple times in the number of tokens issued and briefly claiming the top position in market share. Although Pump.fun has quickly retaliated, the competition between the two remains intense, and Pump.fun's leading position in the market is under clear threat.

It is under the combined effect of these factors that Pump.fun's $4 billion valuation has been severely questioned by the market. After rumors of issuing coins emerged in June, the market even showed a clear risk-averse sentiment, with popular MEME tokens in the Solana ecosystem experiencing significant corrections and funds flowing out rapidly. A partner at an investment firm even bluntly stated that this ICO resembles a liquidity exit operation rather than a long-term development plan. A cryptocurrency researcher even pointed out directly that Pump.fun is staging a thorough "harvesting operation."

Interestingly, in March 2024, the co-founder of Pump.fun stated on social media that every presale is a scam. However, contrary to this, Pump.fun chose to issue coins in the form of a presale this time, performing a real-life "slap in the face" operation. This token issuance raised 33% of the total supply, with 18% for the private placement aimed at institutions and 15% for the public offering, all coins being fully unlocked on the first day of listing.

From the final results, although industry insiders generally hold a pessimistic attitude, supporters and institutional investors do not seem to think so. In terms of public fundraising, the PUMP token completed a public offering quota of 500 million USD in just 12 minutes. Six major exchanges, including some well-known centralized exchanges, participated in the public offering of PUMP. According to a data panel, the number of wallet addresses that participated in the pre-sale on the Pump.fun official website and completed KYC was 23,959, while the number of wallet addresses that successfully purchased was 10,145, with an average subscription amount reaching 44,209 USD. A total of 89.7% of the PUMP token pre-sale was completed through the official website, while the total amount sold on centralized exchanges accounted for only 10.3%. Among the official pre-sale addresses, small users are the main group, with 5,758 users having subscription amounts under 1,000 USD, while there were 202 addresses with subscription amounts exceeding 1 million USD, indicating strong interest from institutional investors.

The entire issuance process perfectly illustrates the unique phenomenon of "verbal complaints but actions align" in the cryptocurrency market. Due to technical issues at some exchanges during the public offering process, some users found it difficult to complete their subscriptions, and several users even expressed strong dissatisfaction on social media. There has also been significant disagreement in the community regarding Pump's subsequent performance. Some believe its valuation is too high and that a collapse is inevitable after the spotlight effect ends; others believe that as the most representative product in the MEME field, Pump has a complete revenue logic and cognitive foundation, and will not easily experience a substantial decline.

From the current situation, it seems that the latter viewpoint has temporarily taken the upper hand. After being listed on a certain exchange on July 15, Pump briefly fell from $0.0065 to $0.0042, but after a brief period of fluctuation, it began to strengthen. It is currently quoted at $0.0066, an increase of 55% compared to the fundraising price of $0.004, and the market capitalization has risen from $4 billion to $6.6 billion, bringing considerable profits to investors who participated in the subscription.

Of course, this part of the increase is not without human factors. According to observations by a certain on-chain analyst, as of 8 AM today, Pump.fun started using the fee income to repurchase PUMP tokens after issuing coins. In the past 7 hours, the project team transferred 187,770 SOL in fee income to a specific address for purchasing PUMP tokens, and then transferred the purchased tokens to another address for storage. So far, 111,953 SOL (approximately 1.83 million USD) has been used to purchase 3.04 billion PUMP, with an average purchase price of around 0.006 USD. Although this repurchase operation can support the price to some extent, it inevitably gives the impression of transferring from one hand to another. However, for token holders, regardless of the purpose, as long as it can push up the price, it is ultimately a good thing.

Whether it is to exit liquidity or simply to continue developing the project, the controversy surrounding the valuation of Pump.fun precisely reflects the current state of the market. The MEME market, once known for its liquidity, is collectively falling into difficulties, and the once booming attention economy seems to be gradually becoming a false proposition. At this stage, even the most representative applications have to embark on the path of issuing coins, which seems to imply that a certain narrative is coming to an end. The future direction of the MEME market will depend on the performance of the Pump token, which will become an important barometer. The market's bets on it will serve as an effective observation of the value judgment on the attention economy. If the token price continues to rise, it at least indicates that the market recognizes its pricing; while if the token price falls sharply, people will have to rethink the true connotation of the MEME market, which may trigger more selling sentiment. This may also be one of the reasons why Pump chooses to buy back.

Returning to the initial question: who is the biggest beneficiary of Pump.fun's issue coin? Undoubtedly, the project party is the biggest winner. From the current situation, investors participating in public and private placements have also achieved considerable profits, and short-term bullish investors have similarly made a fortune. However, how long this profitability can last, and how long the project party can maintain the coin price at a high level, remains a huge unknown. There are signs that some large investors have begun to choose to cash out. According to observations from a certain on-chain data monitoring platform, a large investor spent 5 million USDC through 5 wallets.