Single-day 50 times, listed on Binance in 3 days, evaporating 200 million in 10 minutes? Unveiling the extreme operations of the presale MEME

Written by: Tuo Luo Finance

If someone asks you to transfer money to a bank card, promising that they will return other types of assets later, even though the price of these assets is uncertain now, but may bring tenfold or even hundredfold returns in the future, would you believe it?

For many self-proclaimed rational observers, this seems absurd, but in the often absurd world of cryptocurrency, it does exist. And the presale system is the recent "hot topic" in the crypto circle.

Delving into the presale system, it is essentially just an old wine in a new bottle. At its core, it operates similarly to the ICOs of yesteryear, only shifting from the original ETH and BTC to relatively inexpensive new public chain tokens. It issues crypto assets in an extremely simple and crude manner—by directly transferring money to the project address, and after the transfer, new tokens are distributed according to the contribution ratio, establishing a liquidity pool to pump the price.

In today's crypto circle, which places greater emphasis on fair launches, such practices should not be so popular. Yet, they have indeed exploded, and with a "rise to convince people" momentum, it has forcefully educated everyone. For a time, seasoned investors were heartbroken, while new investors rejoiced, but ultimately, as always, a scheme is just a scheme; most people will eventually find themselves in a fleeting dream.

Everything began with BOME.

On March 10, Darkfarms, an artist previously focused on creating Pepe memes, announced the upcoming Launch project and revealed the project name and concept on the 12th. In its description, "BOOK OF MEME" focuses on the MEME field, permanently storing MEME data on Arweave/IPFS/ inscriptions and adding some creative functions based on this.

Despite the announcement, the concept did not spark much discussion at the time. Darkfarms himself had only launched a Pepe-themed NFT series called SMOWL two years ago, which has remained lukewarm since its inception.

By March 13, Darkfarms officially launched the presale, announcing a total of 690,000,00420 BOME tokens, with 50% allocated for presale. Users could participate by sending SOL to a designated Solana address, and unlike previous presales, the currency was not priced. Instead, all participating presale users would receive tokens based on the proportion of SOL they donated, and finally, liquidity pools could be created based on the price of each BOME multiplied by 1.5.

The presale's popularity was unimaginable for the initiators. Initially expecting to raise 500-600 SOL, by the morning of March 15, they had raised 10,131 SOL. Due to the excessive fundraising, Darkfarms even initiated a community vote to determine the allocation of the surplus presale funds.

At 3 PM that day, Darkfarms added all the raised SOL to the LP pool, with an initial price of approximately 0.0{3}496 USDT. Perhaps due to the lack of self-preservation and more so due to the interests of the paying users, the token quickly spread within the community. With sufficient pool depth and strong capital capacity, the price surged 20 times within just three hours, reaching a market cap of over 80 million USD. Faced with such a surge, even industry heavyweight Sun Yuchen humorously remarked on X platform that he was "broken" by this round of MEME price increase.

Source @justinsuntron

The unstoppable upward trend accelerated even further after Binance announced the listing of BOME. On March 16, Binance announced the launch of the BOME contract, followed by the listing of the spot market. Just three days after its inception, on March 18, BOME's market cap exceeded 1.1 billion USD, peaking at nearly 1.5 billion USD. The previous single-day 50-fold increase was merely an appetizer. However, ultimately, in line with other meme trends, after officially listing on Binance, BOME's narrative came to an end, and the price quickly retraced by 50%, currently reported at 0.01622 USDT.

However, the presale phenomenon created by BOME continues. Following BOME, presales have been booming, with both new and old crypto practitioners hoping to turn the tide through cost-free presales. In no time, various conceptual coins like POGAI, KANG, Byte, etc., have emerged. As of March 19, ZachXBT released data on social media stating that recent presales in the Solana ecosystem raised over 655,000 SOL (approximately 122.5 million USD) across 27 projects.

The next protagonist has shifted to Slerf.

At first glance, Slerf seems unremarkable, just another project riding the presale wave. On March 17, Slerf's newly established official account on X platform published a fundraising tweet, with fundraising operations identical to BOME, allocating 50% of the funds for presale and 50% to the LP pool. Thirteen hours after the announcement, the fundraising was declared complete, raising over 50,000 SOL.

The next day, while the fundraisers awaited trading, Slerf pulled off a magical operation. Founder @Slerfsol suddenly posted on X platform, claiming he accidentally destroyed the LP and airdrop reserved tokens, and that the minting rights had been revoked, expressing his helplessness. As everyone was confused about the authenticity of this claim, he reiterated his apology, stating it was no joke, and expressed regret for those who participated in the presale and for his team.

The founder apologizes on X platform, source @Slerfsol

Unexpectedly, as the founder opened a space on Twitter to tearfully confess his mistakes to thousands, Slerf surprisingly sparked a wave of retail sympathy, promoting itself as "for the small investors," leading to a frenzied price increase.

Even more amusingly, at one point, when the founder mentioned the possibility of recovering the LP tokens, Slerf's price was halved, evaporating nearly 200 million USD in just 10 minutes. It was only after confirming that recovery was impossible that Slerf resumed its upward momentum. After being listed on XT.COM and Bitget exchanges, Slerf surged 62 times in a single day, with a market cap exceeding 600 million USD, nearing 700 million, completing the miraculous journey of BOME in just three hours.

On March 19, due to its excellent narrative, Slerf's topic continued to rise. Slerf initiated a rescue operation for presale participants, with LBank as the first donor and donation address custodian. In no time, many well-known influencers joined in. Andrew Kang, co-founder of Mechanism Capital, publicly announced his purchase of Slerf on X platform, while big names like Beeple and Floor Protocol's founders promoted Slerf for free. Exchanges also came to support, with Sun Yuchen stating he would donate all SLERF trading income from HTX, and XT.COM, Bitget, etc., also announced they would donate Slerf's trading fees to the community.

Stimulated by this, Slerf's price experienced a small spring surge, but ultimately, after a series of dramatic twists, Slerf's price has struggled to maintain support, currently reported at 0.8097 USD, down over 60% from its peak.

Recent price trend of Slerf

Looking at the rise of Bome and Slerf, aside from their topicality, there is no other outstanding value generated, which aligns with the characteristics of MEME. Memes thrive on topics; these tokens have no intrinsic value, only dissemination and emotional value. The stronger the dissemination effect, the higher the price. This model has previously been seen with Pepe, SHIB, DOGE, and now it has simply shifted to tokens like BOME.

At this stage of going mainstream, there is undoubtedly an element of timing and location. After a round of intense price increases, mainstream coins Bitcoin and Ethereum have entered a correction phase. During the rise of MEME, Bitcoin gradually fell from 73,000 USD to 61,000 USD, while Ethereum slowly dropped to 3,100 USD. At that time, crypto users were in a period of high capital and emotional expansion, and the decline of mainstream coins would stimulate them to seek other avenues, while new public chains appeared in everyone's sight. Compared to Ethereum, Solana, which is cheaper, easier to operate, and still has strong network effects, has stepped into the spotlight.

It can be seen that Solana is the ultimate beneficiary of this presale game. Since last November, the legendary Solana, backed by Wall Street capital, has risen from a bear market low of 8 USD, attracting much attention. During the presale period, SOL once broke through 200 USD, reaching 209 USD, the highest level since December 2021. Currently, SOL is reported at 190.77 USD, with a 24-hour increase of 10.59%.

SOL rebounded from 8 USD, source: Binance

Although Solana's co-founder has called for an end to presale issuance, it cannot be denied that the presale system has, from a certain extreme perspective, propelled Solana's development, at least raising its visibility and momentum. Moreover, the beneficial effects of the project will inevitably attract more users, with higher retail participation, similar to the previous NFT boom benefiting Ethereum. Interestingly, previous MEMEs generally relied on Ethereum as their base, but now they are more concentrated on Solana, Aptos, Base, and other new public chains.

However, it is precisely because of these benefits that suspicions arise. In fact, if we delve into BOME and Slerf, there are many doubts. Taking BOME as an example, a product with almost no prior promotion, no venture capital, no airdrop, no TGE, no whitelist, and no KOL support—a "six-no product"—achieving a market cap of over a billion in such a short time is enough to raise eyebrows, and its speed of listing on Binance in three days has sparked much controversy.

As the absolute leader among exchanges, Binance naturally gains a lot of liquidity after listing a token, which also means that the scrutiny for listing tokens is usually quite strict. Comparing with previous MEMEs, Shib took several years, Bonk took half a year, Pepe took two months, and the fastest WIF took one month. However, BOME only took three days to break this record, which has left diligent project operators dissatisfied.

Looking back at the timeline before BOME's listing, a large holder purchased 314 million BOME tokens for 2.3 million USD on the Raydium decentralized exchange, further leading users who suffered losses from the price volatility to suspect insider trading, with some even believing it might be an internal Binance account.

In response to these accusations, Binance quickly stated that it had initiated an internal inquiry and would conduct a thorough investigation into the allegations surrounding BOME, emphasizing that the core individuals involved in the accusations "have no relationship with Binance." Although the response was quite clear, it did little to dispel market doubts.

Binance announces the initiation of an investigation, source: Binance

In addition to Binance, the operators behind Solana have also been listed as suspects, as the rumored Wall Street capital has been continuously driving up SOL to accumulate, always needing to find an opportunity to offload. In this regard, some have jokingly remarked on X platform, "Eastern inscriptions, Western Solana discount tokens, all want the other to foot the bill."

On the other hand, regardless of how people glorify presales as efficient, it cannot be denied that the presale system is a natural breeding ground for scams and rug pulls. Simply transferring one's own tokens to another address without reason is already against human nature; after all, if money comes so easily, it's hard not to develop other psychological issues.

On March 20, on-chain detective @zachxbt exposed several presale tokens on X platform, revealing cases of embezzlement, fake bot accounts, and even instances of creating different tokens for fundraising. Running away with funds is also not uncommon; for example, the Avalanche fundraising project Sener raised approximately 93,000 AVAX, worth about 4.8 million USD, but before the launch, the founder only added 20,000 AVAX to the LP pool and then disappeared with the funds.

The old saying goes, do crypto users not know about these issues with MEME? It's not that they don't; aside from inexperienced newcomers who are lured in by FOMO or other means, slightly experienced users have already gone through multiple rounds of high openings and low closings with MEMEs. Generally speaking, whenever there is a blank narrative in mainstream coins, emotional MEMEs will inevitably emerge to fill the gap, which is a common sight in the crypto world.

As for why, despite knowing the numerous problems, people still love MEMEs so much?

A friend who was previously keen on meme coins once said something that might explain: "Everyone knows Bitcoin and Ethereum are safer, but for small retail investors like me, they can improve life but not change it. Meme coins are different; with a similar small investment, one could change their life class. Who doesn't hope to get rich overnight? There are risks, but at worst, it could go to zero."

Perhaps from a certain perspective, MEME participants truly have a grand vision. But one must remember that while they are willing to gamble, they should also be prepared to lose.