Less than 24 hours after joining Pump Fun, the two memecoins tied most closely to Martin Shkreli are down 94%.
On Monday, Shkreli drew over 700,000 views on his announcement that he would join the Solana memecoin launchpad and start livestreaming his trades.
Elated, PumpFun’s official account welcomed him, claiming he already had a 6,263% gain and $1.6 million in his wallet within one day.
At time of writing, CITRINI, which he created, and MARTIN, a namesake coin that topped Shkreli’s trading history before his CITRINI transactions, have each crashed at least 94% since their highs yesterday.
Traders have been paying particular attention to Shkreli recently after he made headlines talking about a short-sale of Moderna earlier this month.
Unfortunately, the pharmaceutical maker skyrocketed higher on positive FDA Phase 3 results shortly after he “was playing around shorting this thing at 80 bucks.”
Moderna currently trades precisely 100% higher than Shkreli’s $80 per share.
MARTIN, CITRINI, DJT, and MSI
A downward-sloping chart is a familiar shape for Shkreli.
Another Solana memecoin tied to him in 2024, DJT, also collapsed after a wallet dumped tokens on buyers.
An Ethereum token linked to him in 2022, MSI, performed even worse. His pattern of losses exceeding 90% for his followers keeps repeating.
Shkreli launched CITRINI live on air. Several viewers described it as a joke, even though it lost people real money.
Yesterday and today, he has spent hours livestreaming trades to tens of thousands of cumulative viewers via X and his PumpFun profile.
The buyers on the other side of those trades were mostly anonymous wallets trying to ride the momentary pump on his endorsements.
The MARTIN memecoin peaked at $0.0031 on Monday, the same day it launched. It then fell to $0.00016 by Tuesday morning. Its market capitalization has fallen to roughly $150,000.
CITRINI has followed the same path. It has traded from $0.0031 to $0.000087, a decline of 97%.
Martin Shkreli’s followers keep losing money
In a reply thread under Shkreli’s join announcement, a user posted a screenshot showing a 95% loss, accusing Shkreli of endorsing a scam.
Shkreli’s responses to complaints on social media follow his typical, cagey communication style, often single words, symbols, quips, or questions that admit nothing.
A follower complained about losses in his replies. With no remorse, he simply asked a rhetorical question, “How are you down 97%?”
As countless followers lose money on Shkreli-themed memecoins, almost every response from Shkreli carries an element of plausible deniability.
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A pattern of losses
CITRINI was not the first collapsed token that Shkreli created. In July 2022, he launched Martin Shkreli Inu (MSI), which hit an all-time high near $0.0000343.
On August 12 that year, a wallet linked to Shkreli dumped more than 160 billion MSI tokens in a session. The price crashed more than 90% in a day, according to Bloomberg.
In his own defense, Shkreli told Futurism that he was a hack victim, not the seller. Regardless, MSI now trades more than 95% below that peak.
Two years later, in June 2024, Shkreli surfaced as the figure behind another memecoin, DJT. That Solana memecoin surged on rumors that Barron Trump was involved, even though the son of the president never publicly joined the project.
On August 6, 2024, a wallet tied to the deployer dumped roughly $2 million in DJT. That erased the bulk of its $55 million market cap within minutes, a crash Protos covered at the time.
DJT now trades below $0.000033, down more than 98% from its all-time high.
