A few days after the internet was abuzz with a heartwarming story of memecoiners joining forces to help a girl suffering from a rare brain tumor, it took an unexpected turn when the girl’s father launched another meme coin that ended poorly.
As reported by Cybernews, this past Christmas, memecoiners launched a charity meme coin, MIRA, donating half of the token's supply to Siqi Chen, CEO of the startup finance platform Runway.
Chen had pleaded for help for his daughter, Mira, who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor called a craniopharyngioma. The market capitalization of the token still hovers near $14 million.
However, on Monday night, Chen admitted that he launched a "test token" called "zero" and urged people not to buy it because its price was destined to fall to zero.
"I didn’t expect everyone to just be able to see it and buy it – I thought it was something I would have needed to tweet about. Then I panic-sold 40% of the supply and made about 444 SOL," he explained. SOL is the native token of the Solana blockchain. At the time of writing, 444 SOL is valued at around $85,000.
Chen claims he bought back all the tokens he sold and destroyed them to demonstrate that he did not profit from the trade.
The entrepreneur revealed that he was contacted by other pediatric disease organizations, who inquired whether they could also use meme coins to raise money for their causes. According to Chen, this led him to experiment with the meme coin launchpad Pump.fun.
Soon after, he also committed to "making whole every single wallet that has lost money as a result of my actions." He promised to use his personal funds rather than proceeds obtained from the MIRA meme coin.
"I don’t know how exactly yet, but I will try to figure out details soon with the help of the community. I will airdrop losses directly to affected wallets," Mira's father said.
Meanwhile, reactions to this story were mixed. Some anonymous X users are complaining about their alleged losses and demanding refunds, while others are urging Chen to stop "experimenting" because "it’s gonna kill every bit of goodwill you had from before."
However, some commenters side with him, questioning why people are yelling at him after buying a token that the creator explicitly warned them not to purchase.
"Don’t overthink this. This is adult swim. You didn’t hold a gun to anyone’s head and tell them to buy," an X user said.
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