- Pump Pumpkin’s founder Yonatan Badash admitted to manipulating the project’s token price, rug-pulling over US$800K from users.
- The project became embroiled in a legal dispute with Pump.fun, threatening the memecoin launchpad with a US$1B lawsuit.
Pump Pumpkin, a rival to Pump.fun, Solana’s most popular memecoin launchpad, decided to push the self-destruction button after its founder, Yonatan Badash, admitted to manipulating the price of the project’s token and allegedly pocketing US$800K (AU$1.29M).
The drama began with a legal threat and culminated in accusations of insider trading, racial slurs against Arabs, and investor losses.
Related: Two More US States Eye Bitcoin Reserves, While Kenya Ramps Up Efforts to Legalise Cryptocurrencies
Lawsuits and Rugpulls
Badash founded Pump Pumpkin in December 2024 and made a name for the platform through stunts like a deepfake of Morgan Freeman and a staged theft of a viral crypto influencer’s dog. On January 1, 2025, Pump Pumpkin issued a US$1B (AU$1.63B) lawsuit threat against Pump.fun, alleging undisclosed fee structures.
But things got messy from there on, as the company reportedly felt uncertain about filing the lawsuit due to jurisdictional challenges, as Pump Pumpkin is based in Israel and Pump.fun in the UK.
Despite the legal speculation, Pump Pumpkin launched its token, PPA, on Pump.fun, marketing it heavily across social media. However, the launch was chaotic, and just minutes after its release, the deployer wallet sold large amounts of PPA, triggering a 92% price drop within seconds.
Despite a brief recovery and subsequent 700% pump, insider traders decided to take profits, some turning US$309 (AU$498) into US$23,100 (AU$37K).
During a livestream with nearly 85,000 views, Badash admitted his team struggled to control the token’s price due to high demand. He also said he faced backlash for inflammatory remarks in the project’s Telegram group, where he mocked investors, threatened to dump his holdings, and used racial slurs.
Badash said in the project’s Telegram group:
I am about to rug the chart made too much money to do it again to you guys.
Yonatan BadashRelated: Meta Shareholder Advocates for Allocating Dollar Reserves to Bitcoin
In the hours following its US$2.1M (AU$3.39M) peak, PPA’s market capitalisation dropped 93% to US$140K (AU$226.4K).
Pump Pumpkin announced a token swap program, allowing PPA holders to exchange their tokens for PP tokens, but users claimed they received nothing in return. The founder’s claims that PP had no contract address, a technical impossibility, only intensified skepticism
Credit: Source link
