Creators and traders of meme coins (tokens) earned more than $2 million after the murder of right-wing influencer Charlie Kirk on Wednesday. This event divided the crypto community obsessed with meme tokens – while some call profiting from someone else’s death “disgusting,” others point out that the market has long been accustomed to morally questionable tokens.
After the fatal shooting in which a prominent conservative activist and ally of Donald Trump was killed, four meme coins were created that quickly reached multi-million dollar values. The largest of them reached a market capitalization of $36 million. In the first 24 hours alone, the creators of these tokens earned more than $563,000 through fees and commissions, according to data from the Solana platform Pump.fun. The five most successful traders of each of the tokens achieved a total profit of more than $1.6 million, according to DEX Screener.
As trading in these tokens grew on Wednesday evening, social networks were abuzz with discussions and attempts to identify those who are profiting from the death of a close associate of President Trump.
Some users suggested that Pump.fun introduce filters that would prevent the creation of tokens related to violence and shootings. The platform has terms of use and a moderation team, but such tokens do not currently violate their guidelines. Pump.fun did not respond to a request for comment.
Pump.fun itself also profited from the whole situation. PumpSwap, the decentralized exchange where their tokens are traded, recorded a daily trading volume of $533 million – the most in the last three months. However, the number of new tokens and the platform’s revenue did not significantly increase, data from Dune Analytics shows.
“I think profiting from someone else’s death, especially such a big event, is sick,” streamer Jytol told Decrypt. “Personally, I don’t trade memes that involve death, racism, or violence.”
On the other hand, the well-known anonymous trader 0xWinged called these criticisms “virtue signaling,” pointing out that the community is now trying to draw a line that was never clearly defined before.
“I’m sad about Kirk’s death and I would certainly have traded these tokens, but unfortunately I didn’t get to it,” said 0xWinged. “If it’s not me, someone else will earn. Meme coins are based on attention and publicity. Kirk was the most viral event. Crypto Twitter, with moderate right-wing views, saw a martyr in him. And the tokenization of this event reduced his real achievements to market capitalization.”
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Source:Yahoo, Foto:AP / Tess Crowley