Why is a late buyer on the pump.fun curve almost always worse off?

They buy higher, and early buyers sell to them. Every buy raises the price. The early ones, the creator and bots, lock in profit at the expense of those who came for the hype.

rugcheck shows the creator hasn’t revoked mint. What’s the risk?

They can print more tokens and dilute yours. The mint right is a “print as many as I want” button. In a fair memecoin it is switched off.

A Telegram channel shouts “buy now, it’ll do ×100”. What’s most likely?

The author already holds it and sells into your buys. You need a buyer in order to sell. So does the author, and that buyer is often you.

Memecoins: how they launch and who makes money

Lesson 19 of 58 in the course “Crypto”. Free, with animations and a quiz.

A coin out of a meme

A memecoin is a token with no product: its value rests on a joke, a community and attention. Dogecoin appeared in 2013 as a parody, then Elon Musk’s tweets pumped it. PEPE and BONK followed the same path. Since January 2024, a memecoin can be created in a minute on pump.fun on Solana. The price follows a curve: every buy pushes it up, every sale pushes it down. Whoever got in first, often the creator and their bots, sells to whoever got in later.

Sobering numbers

In 2025 Solidus Labs examined pump.fun tokens and found that 98.6% showed signs of a rug pull or a pump-and-dump. A rug pull is when the creator pulls the liquidity and disappears. A pump-and-dump is when the price is pumped and then dumped on the crowd. The TRUMP memecoin shot up to about $75 within a couple of days in January 2025, and a few months later it was worth under $15. Most people who bought on the hype ended up in the red.

5 checks in 2 minutes

Before buying, open the token on rugcheck.xyz or in an explorer. How much do the top 10 wallets hold? Over 30% means one player can crash the price. Are mint and freeze revoked? Otherwise the creator can print more tokens or freeze yours. Is the liquidity locked? Did bots buy the first seconds in one batch, a so-called bundle? Even if everything is green, that is not a guarantee, just fewer obvious red flags.

Rules if you play anyway

Memecoins are a casino with the cards face up: you can see who holds how much, but the odds still are not on your side. If you want to try, play only with an amount you are fine losing to zero, from a separate wallet. Decide your exit in advance: for example, at ×2 you take out what you put in, and the rest is a free ticket. And do not buy on Telegram “calls”: the person shouting “buy” is often selling you their own coins.

Check yourself

Why is a late buyer on the pump.fun curve almost always worse off?
Correct answer: They buy higher, and early buyers sell to them. Every buy raises the price. The early ones, the creator and bots, lock in profit at the expense of those who came for the hype.
rugcheck shows the creator hasn’t revoked mint. What’s the risk?
Correct answer: They can print more tokens and dilute yours. The mint right is a “print as many as I want” button. In a fair memecoin it is switched off.
A Telegram channel shouts “buy now, it’ll do ×100”. What’s most likely?
Correct answer: The author already holds it and sells into your buys. You need a buyer in order to sell. So does the author, and that buyer is often you.

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