Although the Pump.fun platform on the Solana ecosystem is highly anticipated with the token launch just days away, whales do not believe in this narrative. Instead, they are betting on the token's price decline.
Alongside the wave of skepticism, the community has particularly noted the founder's change of stance at Pump.fun – from someone who previously criticized the presale model, now directly launching an ICO for their own project.
Whales are betting on a downward trend as Pump.fun's ICO faces skepticism.
On-chain data shows that at least 11 million USDC has been sent to the derivative DEX Hyperliquid. All of these deposits come from newly created wallets and are used to short the upcoming PUMP token, with leverage from 1x to 2x.
Lookonchain reported that a wallet recently transferred 4 million USDC to Hyperliquid and executed a short order on PUMP with 2x leverage. Just a few hours earlier, two other wallets had also opened a total short position worth 7 million dollars on the same token.
The current moment is very critical, as only 2 days remain (July 12) before Pump.fun launches the PUMP token through its ICO. It is expected that all information regarding the token economy will also be announced on that day.
The rising wave of bearish bets has raised many concerns about the transparency and timing of Pump.fun's launch. Although it was once one of the most active memecoin creation platforms, Pump.fun was suspended on X (Twitter) just a few weeks ago.
The founder's change and the sell-off of 741 million dollars has left investors bewildered.
Additionally, this platform has attracted attention with its move to liquidate a large amount of Solana (SOL). From May 19 to June 10, Pump.fun sold approximately 4.1 million SOL — equivalent to about 741 million dollars at an average price of 180 dollars.
"Pump.fun was recently suspended on X and sold a total of ~4.1 million SOL (741 million dollars) at an average price of about 180 dollars since May 19, 2024. Among which, 264,373 SOL were sold for 41.64 million USDC at a price of 158 dollars. 3.84 million SOL (~699 million dollars) were sent to the Kraken exchange at a price of 182 dollars," Lookonchain revealed in a post on June 17.
Lookonchain reports that 3.84 million SOL were sent to the Kraken exchange for liquidation. Since June 10, no additional deposits have been recorded.
The timing of this sell-off coinciding with the ICO announcement has raised suspicions that insiders are cashing out before the market fluctuates.
Another wave of controversy erupted when the co-founder of this launchpad platform, Alon Cohen, publicly labeled token presale rounds as 'scams'.
However, Pump.fun has chosen the ICO model for itself, so the upcoming launch shows a contradiction or change of perspective – this has caught the community's attention, especially in the context of almost no clear information about how the funds raised from the ICO will be used and managed.