Presale Coin Shenanigans
18 March 2024
So people on Twitter, including known grifters, are posting “presales” for memecoins they promise to launch. The premise is, “send me money (usually a minimum of 1 SOL), and I will return you a share of my cryptocurrency that I have not yet created”. Millions of dollars (at least $50mm in the last ~24hrs) have been collectively raised (20Mar24 edit: $149.2mm+ in a span of a ~1 week).
This is completely mind-boggling. In a climate where crypto hedge funds with solid track records and perfect-resume founders have been struggling to raise double-digit millions, anonymous Twitter accounts have raised more than these institutional funds can dream of in less than a day.
While people outside crypto analyse money velocity and household disposable incomes and borrowing rates and the lack of government stimulus cheques to explore the potential for another bull cycle, there are actual human beings who collectively send millions and millions of dollars to random, anonymous internet people.
This has completely solidified in my mind that there is no such thing as “too dumb” of an idea in crypto. “Crypto” can be a bit of a catch-all phrase that encompasses a wide array of underlying motivations within the industry, and what this presale meta has revealed is that there exists a large sample of participants who have managed to define a tier below “too dumb”. It doesn’t matter if something doesn’t make logical or rational sense, and your initial “I don’t get it” reaction means quite literally nothing if (seemingly) functioning humans are sending 5~6 figures of $$$ to anonymous Twitter accounts (with history of scamming) in hopes of getting back a… memecoin??
A popular meme amongst crypto participants is the bell curve one, which in a nutshell jokes that while the smart (“right-curves”) and dumb (“left-curves”) traders make money by thinking simplistically, most people (the “mid-curves”) think too much and fail to make money:
But this presale shenanigan period has reminded me of another meme that seems to hold much truer for crypto retail:
When hunting for secondary market memecoins to punt, many consider a market cap of $1mm a bit high since given the risk, you want the potential reward to be 100x, and only a few memecoins get to $100mm market cap. But there have been real adult human beings sending 5 figures to these presales that had already raised $30mm! My whole framework for “money” and how people view it has been altered. A life-changing moment for me, and frankly, I would have been less shocked if I found out I could fly.
Its ironic that the unstoppable desire to make money, which is a “selfish” desire, leads people to give away their money so recklessly. The bounds of stupidity among some of these crypto participants is literally an endless pit.
5 years ago me would have looked at this whole ordeal and felt overwhelmingly bearish on the industry (as well as on humanity). But not 2024 Rick. It makes me insanely bullish that there will always be marginal buyers. Given the right tailwinds - which is an important consideration as the “macro” environment (not necessarily tradfi macro) can over power retail flow entirely - there will always be opportunities to make money on the long side.
Examples (non-exhaustive):
[20Mar24 edit] Some tweets below have since been deleted and some presales were returned after severe backlash. Also, $SLERF, the presale that gained the most attention in this period (4th dot point below), has a market cap of $430mm at time of publishing :)
(20Mar24 edit) Here’s a summary by ZachXBT outlining the 33 presales that raised $149.2mm: https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1770138079044485357?s=20
Known scammer raises $1mm in less than 24 hours: https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1769354163937280210?s=20
Someone jokingly says they are raising money to buy a Lamborghini and ends up raising $55k in 30 minutes (funds returned): https://x.com/RedpandaLuu/status/1769463996350861717?s=20
A Twitter account made in March 2024 raises $10mm and immediately “accidentally” burns it: https://x.com/3orovik/status/1769633881689350355?s=20
$HUND founder apparently tricked (wink wink) into sending tokens to OKX listing impersonators and tokens were dumped: https://x.com/MuroCrypto/status/1769323127777976420?s=20
Dev accidentally sells 450 ETH instead of airdropping: https://x.com/0xs4mmy/status/1769540455337758910?s=20
An account that hadn’t tweeted since November 2023 raises $4mm: https://x.com/PopPunkOnChain/status/1769368234493452367?s=20
Someone raises $33mm in ~24hours: https://x.com/0xDekadente/status/1769103142317080618?s=20
An old Twitter account raises $90k then scams: https://x.com/zachxbt/status/1769511773890097263?s=20
Less than 30mins for a 16k follower account to raise $30mm: https://x.com/dexter_cap/status/1769692520022184216?s=20