Last Tuesday, a new father guided his wife during the birth of their first daughter, a girl named Solana — all while being accompanied by a group of cryptocurrency enthusiasts in a live stream on the memecoin launch platform Pump.fun, where the commemorative token for the event was being traded.

"PUUUUUSHHHH," traders of the token PREGOWIFE spammed in the chat while the woman had been in labor for hours. Those watching the stream saw only the ceiling of the hospital room but heard everything. According to reports to the site Decrypt, viewers heard the screams, the contractions, the nurses, and the father encouraging his wife during the birth.

"I HEAR HER," wrote a trader in the live stream, followed by a flood of congratulatory messages from people who had been watching the birth for hours. "DEV, MINT THE BABY," commented another.

As expected in the universe of memecoins, many traders were dissatisfied with the outcome of the episode — some doubting the legitimacy of the trading for the token PREGOWIFE (no surprise here).

The token reached a market capitalization peak of $86,940 just hours before the birth, but plummeted 89%, to just $9,460, a few hours after the baby was born.

The father — who identified himself to Decrypt as "Lay-Jee-Un" (legend?) — then tokenized his newborn daughter with another memecoin on Pump.fun: the SOLBABY.

According to him, the intention was to "do something historic," making his daughter the first person "born on the blockchain." The name Solana was chosen because of the cryptocurrency that underpins Pump.fun and is widely used in the memecoin market.

Coincidentally, "Solana" has become an increasingly popular name in the United States, currently ranking 242nd among the most chosen names, after entering the top 1,000 in 2023.

Live streams from Pump.fun have already recorded bizarre moments — like developers setting themselves on fire and users overdosing on fentanyl — but this was the first time a child's birth was broadcast. Many compared the situation to the movie "The Truman Show," starring Jim Carrey.

When asked about his wife's consent, the father explained to Decrypt: "I didn’t record the birth itself. The hospital didn’t allow it, and out of respect for my wife, who asked me not to film, I didn’t do it," stating he would have recorded the moment if she had agreed.

"I respect her a lot for being calm with all this; she’s an amazing woman," he said. "There were moments when I had to move the camera because she didn’t want to appear."

He also said that his wife understands that his motivation was to provide financially for the family. In the last 24 hours, the new father raised $2,830 just from the revenue fees from Pump.fun. The platform rewards creators of memecoins with SOL, the native token of the Solana network, based on the trading volume of their projects.

Market manipulation?

However, some traders suspect that there was manipulation in the launch of the tokens PREGOWIFE and SOLBABY.

According to the TrenchBot, over 50% of the supply of both tokens was acquired via 'bundle', a practice where large quantities of tokens are bought by multiple digital wallets to create the illusion of decentralized distribution.

The pseudonymous trader Ogawa believes that someone with that manipulated control suppressed the price of the tokens.

Some community members speculated that the father himself was behind this strategy, but the anonymous trader K9alphas told Decrypt he doubted this hypothesis.

"He was totally a novice at launching tokens and didn't know the unwritten rules," explained K9alphas. "For example, he was swing trading with the token and selling large amounts directly from the developer's wallet." In other words, for this trader, the new father wasn't knowledgeable enough to have orchestrated everything — it was probably someone else.

The father, in turn, did not like being called a novice. "I’m a veteran [in crypto]," he retorted. "I may be new to the trends of Pump.fun, but I am no novice in crypto."

He also denied any involvement with bundling: "I have never grouped any token, sir," he stated. "I have screenshots of the transactions showing that I used only 0.5 SOL to create the tokens."

"Don't listen to those people. They lie and are angry, lol," he added.

At a certain moment, according to DEX Screener, the developer's wallet sold $3,225 in SOLBABY tokens with a market capitalization of $410,840 — causing a 41% drop to $242,240 in just one minute.

Tools like Photon or BullX alert traders about sales made by developers' wallets. When this happens with low-cap tokens, the impact on price is direct — driving away speculators or discouraging new investments.

Even so, SOLBABY reached a market capitalization close to $700,000 — a jump compared to the mediocre performance of PREGOWIFE. However, the father's lack of experience with Pump.fun and his token sales ended up cooling the community's enthusiasm, and the capitalization plummeted 92%, dropping to $58,049.

"He seemed like a nice guy," said K9alphas. "[He probably] was recently introduced to Solana and Pump.fun, so he didn't know what he was doing but knew he could make money streaming his child's birth, lol."

Despite the negative reaction, the father — who calls himself a "legend" — stated that he has long-term plans for SOLBABY, calling it his "longevity coin," which will last "forever" as an on-chain representation of his daughter.

What are these plans? He still doesn't know. He has been awake for over 48 hours and needs to sleep.

Giving birth is exhausting — but creating a memecoin? There is no manual for that.