A person climbed the long-lasting Hollywood signal on Saturday, waving a flag selling Solana meme coin Vigilante (VIGI). Following his motion, the token pumped to a $3.85 million market cap, earlier than tumbling 69% to roughly $1 million.
The unidentified man waved a white flag atop the D of the signal for about an hour, NBC Los Angeles reported, earlier than he was coaxed down by park rangers and legislation enforcement. Police later confirmed to native information station KTLA that the person was taken into custody.
The flag that the person was holding clearly options the title and emblem of the Vigilante token, in addition to a line of textual content that’s unreadable from images and movies reviewed by Decrypt.
VIGI launched on Pump.enjoyable on Saturday, forward of the stunt whereas teasing the “most viral” advertising and marketing marketing campaign “you’ve ever seen.” Because the information circulated, it pumped to a market cap of $3.82 million earlier than falling 71% within the hour following its all time excessive to $1.2 million, in accordance with DEX Screener.
This isn’t the primary time we’ve seen meme coin workforce members carry out harmful stunts in an try and pump their token. Final 12 months, one developer was hospitalized with third diploma burns after setting himself on hearth for his token. Numerous different meme coin initiatives adopted in his footsteps, together with devs dwell streaming overdosing on medication, recklessly capturing weapons, and abusing animals.
Vigilante claims the Hollywood signal was simply the primary act of a broader advertising and marketing marketing campaign, tweeting that the subsequent stunt can be ten instances greater than this one. The meme coin workforce didn’t reply to Decrypt’s request for remark.
Meme cash’ loopy weekend
The Hollywood signal stunt was largely buried amid a loopy weekend in meme coin land, after the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, promoted Solana token LIBRA on Friday.
Over the weekend, all hell broke unfastened as LIBRA crashed 89%, fraud costs had been filed towards Milei, and one of many creators of the token disclosed particulars concerning insider buying and selling, refunds to mates that misplaced cash, in addition to hyperlinks again to the MELANIA token.
Some merchants have speculated that the LIBRA launch is an “FTX degree occasion for the trenches,” because it casts doubt over the legitimacy of lots of the greatest meme coin launches.
This perception is probably going overblown, nevertheless, as Solana plummeted 41% in every week amid the FTX collapse—whereas its SOL token has fallen simply 9.1% over the previous week, per information from CoinGecko.
That mentioned, “the trenches” usually refers to token launchpad Pump.enjoyable, the place probably the most dangerous belongings are discovered, which on Saturday skilled the least quantity of token creations because the first day of the 12 months, in accordance with Dune information.
Whereas some imagine the LIBRA fiasco would be the starting of the top of the meme coin on line casino, others have known as for the sector to evolve, pushing for extra transparency and fairer launches.
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