Pump.fun Raises $600 Million in 12 Minutes ICO

Pump.fun, a platform that enables the creation and launch of memecoins, successfully concluded one of the fastest initial coin offerings (ICOs) in history. The ICO, which went live on Saturday, raised $600 million in just 12 minutes. This rapid fundraising was achieved through the sale of 15% of the platform’s token supply at $0.0040 per token, significantly exceeding the assigned 72-hour window.

The ICO's swift conclusion resulted in a fully diluted valuation of $4 billion for the platform. Over the next 48-72 hours, all 150 billion PUMP tokens will be transferred to investors. However, these tokens will remain untradeable and untransferrable until the platform completes the distribution phase by July 15.

The PUMP token was available for purchase on various centralized exchanges, including Gate, Kraken, and KuCoin. These exchanges saw cumulative investments worth $5 million, $30 million, and $16.5 million, respectively. Bybit, another exchange, announced that due to unexpected delays in its application programming interface (API), the PUMP sale was oversubscribed. The exchange is currently verifying the final allocation of users whose funds are frozen and will refund all funds to those who did not receive an allocation.

Investors from the U.S. and the U.K. were barred from participating in the ICO due to regulatory reasons. The ICO pushed Pump.fun’s total token sales to $1.32 billion.

The PUMP token is described as a utility coin that will be used alongside the Pump.fun brand behind the Pump.Fun Protocols. Holders of the PUMP token can participate in promotional giveaways, although the protocols will remain permissionless and will not require the use of PUMP tokens. The PUMP token’s maximum supply is capped at 1 trillion, with 33% or 330 billion tokens allocated to the ICO. Of this allocation, 18% or 180 billion tokens were sold to institutional investors in a private sale, while the remaining 15% was sold to retail investors during the ICO.

Despite the success of the ICO, the crypto community is divided over its merits. Some view it as one of the largest and highest-grossing revenue tokens in crypto, while others criticize the platform’s tokenomics, describing them as exploitative. The platform faces growing competition from LetsBONK, a Solana-based memecoin launchpad, which has seen more volume than Pump.fun over the past week.