A charitable memecoin led to nearly $100 million in trading volume, benefiting a rare brain cancer research initiative. While some traders lost money, the effort ultimately raised significant funds for the cause.
The MIRA token, part of the Pump.Fun platform, surged from zero to an $80 million market cap on Thursday after a father’s emotional appeal for donations to support his daughter’s rare brain cancer research attracted attention from crypto traders.
Although the token’s price dropped by 80% from its Thursday peak, currently trading at just over a cent, the effort raised over $1 million for the research.
On Thursday, Siqi Chen, founder of the Runway corporate finance platform, shared a post on X, revealing his daughter Mira’s diagnosis of a rare brain tumor in September. He emphasized the lack of research funding due to the condition’s rarity. His GoFundMe campaign had raised 80% of its $300,000 target by Thursday, with all proceeds directed to research at the Hankinson Lab at the University of Colorado.
Chen also shared his Ethereum wallet on X, adding Solana and Bitcoin addresses upon user requests for more options.
Then came Pump.Fun.
Pump.Fun allows users to create tokens for under $2, with choices for token numbers, themes, and meme images. Once the market cap of any token reaches $69,000, part of its liquidity is deposited to the Solana-based exchange Raydium and burned.
A Pump.Fun user created the MIRA token with an image of Chen and his daughter, seemingly without any grand objective other than making it a tradable memecoin. The user’s profile revealed that MIRA was just one of many tokens they launched that day, with none of the others surpassing a $6,000 market cap.
But then the token gained traction. X user @Waddles_eth bought 50% of the MIRA supply and sent it to Chen. Chen, in turn, promoted the token on his X account.
This sparked virality, sending the price from fractions of a cent to a peak of 8 cents by early Thursday. Chen’s token holdings skyrocketed from $400,000 to over $18 million. At its peak, MIRA saw $7 million in liquidity, becoming one of the most traded smallcap tokens within 24 hours.
Trading volume reached $85 million in over 130,000 transactions, making MIRA the most popular token in that timeframe.
“I’ve been on the internet for 30 years and have seen some crazy things, but this is by far the craziest day of my life,” Chen shared on X as the price soared. “I will be liquidating $1,000 worth of $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. If I change the schedule, I’ll announce it 24 hours in advance.”
He added, “If you want to rug it to $0, go for it—at the end of the day, we set out to raise $200K and will end up with at least $1M for rare disease research.”
The community response has been largely positive, with many highlighting how memecoins can have a positive impact. Memecoins are often dismissed as frivolous, but their virality and attention-grabbing qualities have made them increasingly popular in the crypto space, often outpacing larger, venture-backed tokens that are seen as enriching the wealthy at the expense of retail traders.
MIRA’s success has shifted the conversation.
“I think memecoins are dumb and have no future, but if I were to make a case for them, I now know where to start,” wrote X user @JaEsf. Another user, @mbaril010, said, “This is beautiful and quite crazy that you can do that with crypto. EVM, Solana, or any chain—this is why Crypto exists! Simplifying the movement of assets.”
Meanwhile, @waddles_eth, the user who sent half the token’s supply to Chen, said they were pleased with the outcome.
“When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be good to buy and send supply to you with the hope of getting the SOL community behind a good cause for Christmas,” they shared in a now-viral X post. “I’m really glad that it worked out the way it has, and I hope the money helps find a cure for Mira and others with her condition.”
It seems that, as we head into the new year, the concept of crypto being used for good is starting to take shape.
