Luckiest Trader Ever? From $16 to $3 Million in 2 Weeks on a Meme Coin
It’s every crypto degen’s wet dream.
A lucky trader threw just $16.20 at a Solana meme coin only two weeks ago, letting it sit in their wallet for 10 days, watching the value of the token soar. The trader then began to slowly take profits over the next three days. When it was all said and done, they pocketed a whopping $3 million.
A Solana wallet starting with “6r3W” bought $16 worth of the Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) meme coin on October 31 while it was still on token launchpad Pump.fun—a platform that allows anyone to create a token cheaply and easily, and that’s been responsible for the launch over 3 million new coins since the start of the year. At the time of purchase, PNUT had a market cap just shy of $10,000.
Now two weeks later, the meme coin’s market cap has soared past $2 billion.
Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) is the meme coin inspired by the pet squirrel turned social media sensation. Before Peanut made headlines around the world, it had already amassed more than 500,000 followers on Instagram. Then, New York state authorities seized the squirrel, alongside a raccoon named Fred, and euthanized it over fears it may have rabies. The story really caught fire after that.
As people started making noise about the pet’s death, Elon Musk joined the fray with a flurry of tweets. It then even became a political issue in the run up to the U.S. presidential election, with Vice President-elect JD Vance quoted as saying at the time that Donald Trump was “fired up” about the story.
Around this time, the PNUT meme coin hit a market cap of $120 million, climbing even further to $180 million after Trump won the election. But still our lucky trader didn’t sell—nuts of steel.
That proved to be a wise move. Early this week, PNUT became the first Pump.fun token, alongside ACT, to be listed for spot trading on Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trading volume. The price of PNUT spiked 247% in a matter of hours, climbing to a market cap of $530 million over the next day.
This is when the lucky trader decided to first start unloading their stash. Across 48 transactions spanning six hours, wallet “6r3W” sold more than $95,000 worth of PNUT—already a nice profit, but they weren’t done.
New York officials revealed Thursday that neither Peanut nor Fred had rabies. Outrage on social media ensued, and the PNUT meme coin pumped another 390%, from $462 million to over $2.2 billion. During this run, our lucky trader emptied their bag.
Over 16 hours, the trader dollar cost averaged—a method of selling portions of your bag over a period of time to reduce the impact of poor timing in a volatile market—out of their PNUT position.
As a result, the meme coin degen turned $16 into $3 million in under two weeks.
The wallet processes thousands of transactions every day, mostly gambling on low market cap tokens on Pump.fun. Some of those gambles turned into decent profits—but never millions.
So, now that this trader is a multi-millionaire, is it time to thank their lucky stars and call it quits? Wallet activity over the last day shows they’re still throwing a few dollars worth of SOL at any and every meme coin on Pump.fun that strikes their fancy.