Pump.fun Activity Cools as President Milei’s Solana Meme Coin Fiasco Unfolds

As Javier Milei’s Libra fiasco drives industry-wide reflection on meme coins, the epicenter of Solana’s so-called casino, Pump.fun, has shown signs of cooling off.

Since the Argentine president endorsed the LIBRA token on Friday, Pump.fun’s daily volume—which includes purchasing and trading newly minted tokens—has fallen 27% from $184 million to $134 million as of Tuesday, according to a Dune dashboard.

The platform that lets anyone, even children, launch a meme coin easily on Solana has become emblematic of crypto’s latest craze. Over the past year, some of the largest meme coins have been launched on Pump.fun, including Michi (MICHI), Billy (BILLY), and FWOG (FWOG).

At this point, the platform has also become a core part of Solana’s decentralized finance, or DeFi, ecosystem. In January, Pump.fun accounted for more than half of all decentralized exchange, or DEX, transactions on Solana, according to a separate Dune dashboard.

As the dust settles around Milei’s promotion of Libra, a Solana-based token, the sentiment surrounding meme coins is shifting among some industry leaders. On Wednesday, Nic Carter, a partner at Castle Island Ventures, said the meme coin trend had effectively hit a wall.

In a post on X (formerly known as Twitter), Carter said that meme coins are “unquestionably over” because the incident involving Libra exposed how insiders are able to benefit disproportionately from meme coin launches, tilting the casino “in favor of the house.”

Still, Pump.fun continues to rake in millions of dollars worth of fees in Solana each day, totaling $2 million on Tuesday and peaking at a record $15 million in late January.

Libra’s launch has been mired in controversy, prompting allegations of misconduct from the crypto community. On-chain evidence suggested that Libra’s own developers “sniped” the token for a quick profit, and liquidity was extracted in a way that ultimately hurt investors.

Milei has distanced himself from Libra as Argentine lawyers pursue fraud complaints. On Tuesday, he pushed back against the notion that his post on X was in promotion of the token, while again denying any knowledge of how LIBRA was concocted.

Since LIBRA jumped to a $4.5 billion market cap and then quickly crashed, leaving some investors with hefty losses, Pump.fun has seen its growth stall in other ways beyond just volume.

On Tuesday, the platform registered just 59,000 new wallets, representing its lowest level of fresh engagement since November 17, 2024. On the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration last month, the platform saw around 110,000 digital wallets engage with the platform for the first time.

The number of new meme coins launched on Pump.fun has also fallen drastically since the crypto-friendly president assumed control of the White House, from 61,800 then on January 20 to just 27,800 on Tuesday.

“Many are not extremely online and unaware of how extractive the sector is,” Carter said. “But the endless coterie of scandals in meme coin land will turn off the smarter investors and eventually the mass market.”

Edited by Andrew Hayward