A company looking to compete with meme coin launchpad Pump.fun threatened its rival with a lawsuit earlier this month. Just 10 days later, the project launched a token on Pump.fun and self admittedly “rug[ged] the chart” with the founder claiming to have made $800,000.
Yonatan Badash founded Pump Pumpkin in December 2024, announcing the project with a deepfake of Morgan Freeman. This came just one month after he faked stealing the dog of a kid who went viral for rugpulling a token on livestream—also known as the Quant kid.
As the new year dawned, Pump Pumpkin issued a legal notice to Pump.fun threatening to file a lawsuit seeking more than $1 billion in damages based on allegations the project was hiding how much it was charging in fees.
Badash told Decrypt Pump Pumpkin was hiring an in-house legal team to take this case on. That said, he added that the company was unsure where the lawsuit would be filed as Pump Pumpkin is based in Israel and Pump.fun is based in the UK. He said the company was hoping to reach an out-of-court settlement.
Someone is sueing pumpfun for over $1,000,000,000 due to undisclosed fees
Is it the end of pumpfun? pic.twitter.com/9hcx2KV0kY
— lynk (@lynk0x) January 3, 2025
Despite this, the threat went viral. And Badash used the attention as a platform to promote his rival platform and its two Solana tokens: PPA and PP.
In short, Pump Pumpkin intended to release a PPA token on Pump.fun which would then be swapped for PP tokens—the governance token of the project. However, the PPA launch was a mess.
Pump Pumpkin was hyping the token launch across social media, counting down the minutes to its release and starting up an X livestream. Then the token launched on Pump.fun.
Ok, 10 minutes before we are locking in to focus on the launch of $ppa See you in 10 minutes when we post the ca. Don’t buy into copycats. don’t be gay. pic.twitter.com/YHa7w47hDd
— Pump Pumpkin (@pumppumpkinio) January 12, 2025
Just 11 minutes after the token was created, the deployer wallet sold $3,200 worth of the token. This caused PPA to drop 92% in six seconds. Then, 14 minutes later, an additional $3,840 worth of tokens were sold and caused the PPA price to drop an extra 76%.
Despite the two big blows, the token then pumped more than over 700% in the minutes that followed. Around this same time, you can hear people cheer in the room next to Badash on the livestream.
“This is my team getting cooked from whatever the fuck is happening right now,” the founder says, smiling to the livestream that has nearly 85,000 views. Badash goes on to explain the team were struggling to buy enough of the token supply because too many people were buying it, causing the price to increase.
During this livestream, Badash shares his screen as he attempts to control the chat that is flooded with hate against the project. This included blocking the word fuck, jew, and the Palestine flag. The flag was being shared because some viewers claimed they saw the founder had joined a Telegram group called “Fuck Arabs.”
Investors claim there were also project insiders that bought the token early and sold when the price spiked. Decrypt found numerous wallets that bought the token on Pump.fun and profited thousands of dollars—such as wallet 93Fy that bought 1.75 SOL ($309) of PPA and sold it for $23,100.
As hate started to grow within the Telegram, the founder started to provoke investors.
One user claimed to have lost “all” of their money. In response, Badash called them a “poor cock” then threatened to “dump” his apparent 30% of supply if the price didn’t increase. The investor who lost money then threatens to kill Badash. But this didn’t stop the project founder from gloating about his scheme.
“I am about to rug the chart made too much money to do it again to you guys,” Badash said in the project’s Telegram group. “Just made $800k. Suck it [racial slur.]”
Image: Telegram
Badash refused to respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.
PPA dropped 93% to a market cap of $140,000 in the 10 hours following its all-time high market cap of $2.1 million.
This is before Pump Pumpkin announced that holders could exchange one PPA for one PP token, which would burn PPA in the process. In the Telegram chat, Badash claims PP does not have a contract address which is impossible. As such, people in the Telegram reported burning their PPA tokens and never receiving a PP token in return—this only intensified the scam allegations.
Dear Pump Pumpkin Family,
We’re excited to share an important step in our journey toward growth and sustainability. To streamline and strengthen our ecosystem, we are transitioning from PPA tokens to PP tokens. This swap is designed to unify our community and enhance the… pic.twitter.com/YppjQ6ecjW
— Pump Pumpkin (@pumppumpkinio) January 13, 2025
Now, the project’s Telegram is flooded with angry investors that claim to have lost money with many believing there is no way back for the Pump.fun competitor. A meme coin was even created calling for Badash to be put in jail. The founder thought it was funny.
“I lost about $11,000 in this token. I really thought it was a legit project,” Mohammad Muavia, COO of crypto gaming project Convival, told Decrypt. “There is no way they can rebuild its reputation and successfully launch its product now.”
Edited by Stacy Elliott.
