Pump.fun's $600M Memecoin Frenzy: Bitcoin's High Can't Stop the Madness

While Bitcoin's soaring to new heights, the crypto world's still got a wild side, craving those wacky, pointless memecoins like never before.

Hold onto your hats, because Pump.fun, the Solana-based memecoin minting machine, just raked in a mind-blowing $600 million in a mere 12 minutes during its public token sale! That's right, folks, according to Bloomberg, this brings their total haul to a whopping $1.32 billion after already selling 180 billion tokens to private investors at a cool $0.004 each.

This sale? It's one of the biggest initial coin offerings (ICOs) the crypto scene has ever seen!

Pump.fun dropped the news bomb on X (the new Twitter) on July 9, but here's the catch: no U.S. or U.K. investors allowed, probably to dodge regulatory headaches, even with the White House being chill about crypto and President Donald Trump getting his hands dirty with memecoins.

Launched in 2024 by the trio of Alon Cohen, Noah Tweedale, and Dylan Kerler, Pump.fun's turned into a memecoin-making, cash-printing beast. They've reportedly raked in nearly $800 million since launch, letting retail traders whip up and trade those joke tokens on a whim.

Memecoins, those crypto tokens themed around memes, celebs, or internet inside jokes, keep pulling in the speculative bucks, even if they're often as useful as a chocolate teapot and can tank faster than you can say "HODL." Take the Official Trump coin (TRUMP), it's been trading near its yearly lows lately.

Pump.fun's skyrocket is part of a bigger comeback for ICO-style fundraising, which had gone out of style after the 2018 bubble and the Securities and Exchange Commission's crackdown under ex-SEC chair Gary Gensler.

But now? It's a whole new ballgame. The current Trump administration's all over crypto—treasuries, meme coins, stablecoins—and Pump.fun? It's growing like a weed on steroids.

Just this week, they snapped up wallet analytics tool Kolscan in their first-ever acquisition. This move brings real-time tracking of top onchain traders, those key opinion leaders (KOLs), right into Pump.fun's toolbox.

Kolscan's got wallet-level insights, live transaction tracking, and a leaderboard that ranks Solana traders by their wins and losses. Pump.fun's planning to weave these features into "totally new experiences" for users, amping up the social, gamified trading vibe.

Co-founder Cohen's all in on the vision, saying "onchain trading is a social sport."

Oh, and Bitget Wallet just launched MemeScan, a mobile-first trading app for those high-volume, early-stage memecoin traders. It's built for the pros and integrates straight with Pump.fun, making it the first memecoin launchpad to partner with the new kid on the block.

Right now, Pump tokens are set to hit the trading floor 48 to 72 hours after the sale wraps up, according to their July 9 X post.

But holding a token sale? It's stirred up some controversy. Cohen used to call presales "scams," and now some in the community are calling him out for flip-flopping. And then there's the drama with Gate.io—they listed PUMP for pre-market trading, then yanked it and refunded users, blaming ongoing talks with Pump.fun.