Let’s be honest: pump.fun has always had disaster written all over it.
This is a site that allows anyone to create their very own meme coin in a couple of clicks — a chaotically designed platform built for greed and speculation.
Some of the better-known tokens launched through pump.fun include Peanut the Squirrel and MOTHER. Thousands more struggle to ever get off the ground.
The Peanut the Squirrel token. Image: pump.fun
But a recently unveiled feature has unleashed something dangerous — promoting critics to liken it to the dark web.
And when crypto enthusiasts themselves are calling for the website to be taken down immediately, degens who normally rail against censorship, it’s got to be serious.
For the uninitiated, it turns out pump.fun added a livestream feature not too long ago, enabling token creators to interact with the degens snapping up their meme coins.
Over the weekend, I came across a couple of weird examples on X.
I don’t know how to caption this. Image: pump.fun
One guy wearing a mask had locked himself into a dog cage — declaring he would only be freed if his meme coin raced to a market cap of $25 million.
But that wasn’t the only milestone that lucky degens had to look forward to. He’d also bark when the token’s value rose to $100,000, urinate in the cage at $1 million, and defecate at $5 million.
Nice. Really nice. This is perhaps the only time when we can all be grateful it turned into a rug pull instead — meaning these grim milestones were never reached.
Another degen has plonked himself on to a toilet, declaring that he’ll stay there until his token (literally called S***COIN) ramps up to a value of $50 million.
Three days have passed, and he’s still there. He must be bored s***less.
He wants to be flush with cash. Image: pump.fun
Beyond the potential financial harm for anyone stupid enough to pile into these tokens, all of that’s pretty innocuous. Classic crypto. Downright weird.
Yet now, the joke’s not funny anymore. There’s a real risk that people are going to get hurt — and if rampant speculation on X is to be believed, some people already have.
One guy appeared to be firing a gun outside of his window every time his token rose in value.
Another claimed a dog would be shot dead unless their token reached $11 million.
Videos are circulating of a man brandishing a gun against a goldfish in a bag — threatening to pull the trigger unless his meme coin rallies.
Gunning for investments. Image: pump.fun
There are also claims that a 12-year-old was threatening to attack his family if his token didn’t make it big.
It’s even alleged a child was being abused every few minutes on a pump.fun livestream.
Unsubstantiated screenshots are doing the rounds that a person has killed themselves while broadcasting on this platform, and an ISIS hostage was executed on camera.
I’m going to say this: I really doubt Islamic State even knows about pump.fun, and I’m skeptical about claims someone was murdered on a livestream. But that doesn’t make this recent descent into criminality any less unsettling.
Comparisons have rightly been drawn to an episode of Black Mirror. And when you boil this down, this is a whole new type of “ransomware” — literally anyone can threaten for something bad to happen until their demands are met, in front of an audience of thousands.
For its part, pump.fun has been absolutely silent about the chaos unfolding on its platform.
As all of this was unfolding, it produced an ill-timed X post telling a story about how a SOL investor had accidentally crashed into a car — and offered to send some crypto to cover the damage. The caption? “State of the trenches.”
That led to hundreds of replies warning the state of the trenches couldn’t be any more different — and urging the livestreaming to stop before things get worse.
The website’s founder is yet to speak out either. Comically, he’s been pontificating about how pump.fun can be a powerful use case for charity.
That REALLY flies in the face of the post that’s pinned to the top of his X page.
It’s inevitable that there will be a climbdown from pump.fun soon: probably today, definitely this week.
And at this particular point, anyone still using the site needs to ask searing questions of themselves — and ask whether they’re complicit in the harm being caused.
What remains to be seen is whether there will be wider ramifications.
Meme coins didn’t exactly have the best reputation to begin with. Very soon, they’ll be in shreds — with a barrage of negative publicity for crypto in the media.
Questions could be raised about how President-Elect Donald Trump could pursue deregulation when animal abuse and gun violence is running rampant on an ill-moderated platform.
Pump.fun may likely end up being pulled down altogether — becoming another short chapter in a history of crypto that’s already littered with controversies.
You could argue it also raises wider philosophical questions about the limits of decentralization — proof that, at some point, there needs to be some safeguards in place.
Now in the throes of a PR disaster that it’s yet to acknowledge, pump.fun isn’t fun anymore.
Disclaimer: The opinions in this article are the writer’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Cryptonews.com. This article is meant to provide a broad perspective on its topic and should not be taken as professional advice.
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