Siqi Chen caused another chaotic moment in meme token circles, after launching the Zero (ZERO) token. He then put up a selling order, claiming it was a mistake, then bought back and burned his earnings.
Siqi Chen, CEO of Runway and co-founder of Serious Business, once again caused chaos in the world of meme tokens. A rug pull and a token going to zero would not be noticed if it were not for Chen’s public profile and the recent losses from the MIRA token. MIRA was launched on December 25, granting a share of the tokens to Chen. That share briefly expanded from around $440K to $6M in notional value, boosted by the hype of belonging to a legitimate cancer research charity.
Chen launched ZERO with a warning that it is a test token that would go down to zero. Since meme token trading often uses bots, there were in fact buy orders, immediately injecting SOL liquidity and raising the token’s value. Chen at one point sold ZERO, acquiring 444 SOL, then reversed that and demonstrated he held no earnings.
so i launched a test token called zero, with the description: “this is going to zero … do not buy it” thinking that people would read it and not buy it.
i didn’t expect everyone to just be able to see it and buy it – i thought it’s something i would have needed to tweet about.… pic.twitter.com/bH4b0PIlJH
— Siqi Chen (@blader) December 30, 2024
On-chain researcher ZachXBT raised objections, showing that Chen also bought another token, ChAIrity, also placing a sell order that crashed the price. After the second token launch, however, Chen has stated he is ready to make some of the losing parties whole, despite the token warnings. Others warned Chen to avoid paying those that claim ZERO caused losses, as the token had a clear warning. No payments or compensation has been offered for MIRA traders, who managed to take much more significant profits.
The ZERO token still holds $141K in liquidity, and has not actually gone to zero. Since bots and irrational buyers are always active, the asset may see ongoing activity and not be abandoned. Until then, ZERO may continue to lead to losses, or put pressure on Chen to recover the damages.
MIRA continues to slide as a charity token
The older MIRA token continues to slide, showing that mixing charity and meme token trading has a big downside. MIRA pumped again to $0.026, then erased 50% of its value to $0.013. The token has only $814K in liquidity and has survived for several days.
Chen has warned he expects the token to go to zero, as he continued selling to take profits for his cancer research charity. At the same time, early buyers blamed him for not warning about potential losses. Whales were also easily taking profit, benefitting from the charity hype.
Initially, Chen said he did not mind the profit potential of MIRA, despite causing losses for the community. Some of the early wallets achieved profits of over $480K, essentially taking away funds that some buyers thought would go to charity. While MIRA was more efficient than the GoFundMe approach, it also led to great inefficiencies as traders sold their early positions.
MIRA gets boost from Binance Alpha
Despite whale selling, and despite warnings that Chen would liquidate his entire share of MIRA, the token may continue to trade. MIRA was added as one of the daily selections of Binance Alpha, allowing for fast purchases.
MIRA has already spread to 11,944 holders, and new whales have appeared. The token also sees activity from high-volume clusters. The clusters are unrelated to Chen’s known wallet.
As of December 31, part of the donation is still in Chen’s wallet, valued at around $1.1M after the recent price slide. MIRA can only be sold in small batches, due to its low liquidity. The token still lacks market-makers, and there is no long-term strategy for continuing its charity purpose.
With MIRA and ZERO, Chen may find himself involved with an unintended crypto community, who may continue to pump the token and demand exposure.
After the introduction of MIRA, the brief charity token trend subsided. The one asset that remained more active was ChAIrity, with only $50K in liquidity. The token pumped briefly, then lost more than 90% of its value as most of the holders were selling. Even those that wanted to donate to charity were reluctant to give up their funds to whales, instead of an actual charity.
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