Meme coin has long been regarded as a tool for attracting traffic in the new ecosystem.
Written by: Mia
Recently, the leading meme coin on Base, Bald, caused a heated discussion in the crypto community when its value skyrocketed. However, just as everyone was immersed in the speculation of whether Bald would create a new wave of wealth, the rapid Rug Pull of Bald dealt a heavy blow to crypto users.
In just 7 minutes, Bald withdrew a total of 8,660 ETH and 179 million BALD tokens from liquidity, causing a significant drop in the price of BALD, with a maximum decline of up to 80%. According to Geckoterminal data, there is currently only 0.0141 ETH left in the liquidity pool of Bald. In addition, Base’s Total Value Locked (TVL) also plummeted. According to DefiLlama data, Base TVL reached a peak of $41.2 million yesterday, but has now dropped to $8.97 million, a decrease of 78.22%.
Source: Geckoterminal.com
Source: DefiLlama.com
After experiencing a surge and crash, Bald only responded on Twitter, suggesting that “it seems that Base chain can handle heavy loads well”, implying that the release of the Bald project was only to test its actual load handling capacity on the Base chain mainnet, and denied the selling of tokens, stating that “since deployment, only operations such as adding, removing liquidity, and buying tokens have been carried out”.
However, Bald’s mysterious actions have sparked a lot of speculation in the crypto community about its behind-the-scenes manipulator. What’s more important is that with the withdrawal of liquidity from Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 trend projects, more and more on-chain funds are starting to move, and with Base’s upcoming mainnet launch in August and the “Rug Pull” of Bald, can Base create a new Meme frenzy?
Bald, the leading meme coin, suddenly becomes a “runaway leader”, raising suspicions about the mastermind behind it
“Bald” as the name suggests means “bald”, and Bald deployed on Coinbase’s native Layer2 network Base inevitably reminds people of Coinbase’s CEO Brian Armstrong. On the one hand, the bald image in the background of Bald’s social media seems to resemble Brian Armstrong’s bald figure; on the other hand, the holder of a large amount of cbETH has also sparked speculation that Bald was created by Coinbase personnel.
With Bald’s coin price soaring 30,000 times within 24 hours of its launch, people began to speculate whether this was Brian Armstrong’s way of giving benefits to everyone on the Base mainnet. The rumor that “the mastermind behind Bald is Coinbase” began to ferment in the crypto community, leading to intensified FOMO sentiment and a trading frenzy of Meme coins on Base.
According to DEX Screener data, LeetSwap, the largest decentralized trading platform on Base, saw its 24-hour trading volume soar to $230 million, with a total of 526,000 transactions. Apart from the platform token Leet, the other top ten trading pairs are all Meme coins. In addition, investors’ enthusiasm for Bald remains strong, as its 24-hour trading volume accounts for half of the platform’s total trading volume, reaching $110 million.
But soon, the rumor about “Bald and Brian Armstrong” was debunked. Bald’s deployer withdrew most of the liquidity, causing an unexpected “Rug Pull”. If Bald is really related to Brian Armstrong or Coinbase, isn’t this like deliberately shooting oneself in the foot? So, who is the mastermind behind Bald?
Cryptocurrency KOLs coincidentally threw out a “bombshell”, and the instigator of it all was SBF, and the rumors were not groundless. According to on-chain data research, the deployer address had received thousands of ETH from wallets associated with FTX and Alameda Research.
Furthermore, research by Blockworks data analyst Andrew Thurman further confirmed this speculation. He found that the deployer’s related wallet address had made about 400 transfers to blacklisted USDT addresses and said there was “definitely a significant connection with Alameda Research”.
In addition, observant members of the crypto community, such as “Hype”, discovered clues from Bald’s Twitter language. For example, words like “Correct” and “quite well” appeared in Bald’s few tweets, which are commonly used phrases by SBF. Hype also mentioned that the deployer’s wallet address has existed for a long time and was one of the first voters for the Sushi Swap proposal in the DeFi platform, indicating that the Bald deployer can be considered an OG in the crypto circle.
And just yesterday, the FTX 2.0 restructuring plan was resubmitted. This coincidence made crypto users connect the dots and speculate: is SBF really using the funds from the “Bald Rug Pull” to make up for the funding gap of FTX users?
Of course, some people find such conspiracy theories amusing, considering that SBF is currently under strict internet surveillance and can only use a flip phone. These assumptions are completely groundless. Additionally, it is too one-sided to judge SBF as the mastermind behind Bald based on bits and pieces from Bald’s Twitter.
The situation briefly spiraled out of control, and some even blamed SEC Chairman Gary Gensler for orchestrating the collapse of Bald, believing that Bald’s collapse would provide more evidence to sue Coinbase, the behind-the-scenes team of Base.
Currently, the identity of Bald’s mastermind remains inconclusive. But there is no doubt that Bald’s brief myth of getting rich quickly has brought a breath of fresh air to the crypto community. Although it turned into a zero-sum game, it has become a traffic generator for the Base ecosystem.
Meme coins have become a new traffic generator for ecosystems. Can Base recreate the Meme frenzy?
It is worth mentioning that Meme coins, with their characteristics of skyrocketing and plummeting, being full of hot topics and speculation, have gradually become a new tool for attracting new ecology in the bear market with liquidity depletion.
Earlier this year, Solana’s Meme coin Bonk also brought new hope to the Solana ecosystem under the gloom. With the rise of Bonk’s token price, the SOL token price also experienced a significant correction, and more liquidity began to flow back into the Solana ecosystem, and previously fled ecological projects also began to return.
Coincidentally, the first Meme coin in the Arbitrum ecosystem, AIDOGE, also brought new vitality to the Arbitrum ecosystem. On the one hand, AIDOGE’s skyrocketing undoubtedly activated the enthusiasm of Arbitrum community users. On the other hand, it combined popular elements such as AI, Arb, and Doge to create heat, further creating FOMO in the market and opening up new narrative gameplay.
Although Bald also experienced an immediate crash after a sharp rise this time, it to some extent successfully attracted traffic to the Base chain and even became an effective tool for testing the actual load processing capacity of the BASE chain, benefiting some “smart” players.
According to Lookonchain, a blockchain detective, the rapid rise of Bald has allowed some savvy investors to make huge returns. It listed four profitable addresses that purchased 50 million Bald using 0.534 ETH (equivalent to about $1,000). These transactions occurred within minutes of Bald’s launch, accounting for 50% of the total supply, and these addresses quickly sold 37 million Bald, making a huge return of 554 ETH, or over $1.04 million.
With the continuous fermentation of the myth of getting rich quickly on the Base chain, Base has gradually become the birthplace of the new trend in cryptocurrencies, and more and more Meme projects are beginning to gather momentum on Base. Currently, by searching on the Twitter interface, you can find Meme projects of all sizes that are about to be launched on Base.
With the withdrawal of liquidity from Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 trend projects, more and more on-chain funds are starting to take action, and more attention and funds may be concentrated on this Base chain. This is very likely to cause the next wave of Meme frenzy, but the ending of Bald’s “Rug pull” may also serve as a deterrent to users who plan to rush in. It is difficult to say whether Base can become the next “Wild West” of Meme.
In addition, it is worth emphasizing that although the Solana ecosystem’s Meme coin Bonk, the first Meme coin in the Arbitrum ecosystem AIDOGE, and other Meme coins mentioned above have been used as “attracting traffic artifacts” and brought hope and passion for the rapid rise and recovery of the ecosystem, in retrospect, their endings are destined to be negative and short-lived.
What are the market boosters beyond Meme in the encrypted winter?
In the short term, the volatile market, the FOMO sentiment of the community, and excessive speculation have made the cryptocurrency market of Meme coins full of bubble risks. Each wave of Meme market sentiment, whether long or short, has brought down the overall market. This time, Bald’s Rug pull also became the shortest-lived Meme coin in the world. Before Bald’s collapse, users did not discover that Bald did not lock the pool, and even some encrypted big V communities rushed in, cheering for Bald and competing to invest, and investors and the entire cryptocurrency community were like “starving wolves” eagerly awaiting the birth of a “get rich quick” myth.
Perhaps the long and cold encrypted winter has made every new thing become a hot project that investors compete to “Fomo”. However, when we truly review the so-called “hot projects” of this year, we will find that from the Shanghai upgrade of Ethereum at the beginning of the year to the resurgence of the Bitcoin ecosystem (the emergence of Ordinals and BRC-20), and even the once highly praised king-level projects Arbitrum and Sui, in fact, have not brought any surprises to investors, and if there were any, most of them were fleeting.
From the FTX explosion last year, the bankruptcy of encrypted banks at the beginning of the year, to several top-tier exchanges being sued by the SEC, the frequent occurrence of black swan events, the liquidity of the cryptocurrency industry is slowly drying up, and the entire cryptocurrency market is showing an unprecedented weakness. Investors are gradually losing patience and becoming impatient. The entire cryptocurrency industry seems to be waiting for an opportunity to warm up and soar the market as a whole, and before that, every “hot project” becomes a lifesaver for the market.
The restless market atmosphere has also led to frequent security incidents. Just recently, the stablecoin protocol big brother Curve was attacked by hackers due to a vulnerability in the underlying programming language Vyper, facing losses of over $50 million. In addition, the founder will also face on-chain debt liquidation. Influenced by Bald’s breakout, the liquidity pool of the Base ecosystem DEX Leetswap, which is not yet perfect, also suffered a hack with a loss of about $620,000. Trading has been suspended and an investigation to recover funds has been launched.
In the current chaotic market of the cryptocurrency market, compared with the “high-end” project narratives and underlying logic, the blunt Meme coins seem to be more able to become a “booster” to activate the market. However, as mentioned above, Meme coins have pros and cons and are not a long-term solution. The recovery of the cryptocurrency market and even the entire blockchain field still requires the birth of a long-term product or project that can truly break the circle, as well as the expansion of application scenarios, the realization of the extension from Web3 to Web2. Perhaps only by breaking free from the shackles of the cryptocurrency circle and promoting the application of internal concepts and technologies to the outside world can we bring in a broader range of liquidity and bring more new vitality and fresh fuel to the entire market.
Even though the bear market is calm and agonizing, the long bear market also gives the market and the industry an opportunity to pause and think: where will blockchain ultimately go in the future?
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