LAUNCHCOIN has surpassed a market value of 200 million USD today, with the long-awaited liquidity and such a high market cap "Memecoin" drawing nearly half of the on-chain crypto community into the conversation. The community is buzzing with discussions about this token, half driven by FOMO and half by FUD. This token, originally issued under the personal identity of Believe founder Ben Pasternak, has transformed into a new platform coin after rebranding.
What happened from a near-zero valuation to a market cap of 200 million USD?
The Rise of PASTERNAK
On January 8, 2025, Ben Pasternak, a 25-year-old Australian entrepreneur, tweeted on social media platform X, "Buy me on Clout APP." At that time, not many in the crypto circle knew him, but two weeks later, on January 24, the token met the fundraising criteria for the Clout platform, achieving 100% and becoming the first token launched on the platform, skyrocketing to a market cap of 80 million USD.
At that point, we learned that Ben had developed the popular game "Impossible Rush" at the age of 15, founded the social platform Monkey at 17, which surpassed 20 million users, and launched plant-based chicken nuggets NUGGS at 20, successfully entering the Walmart market. When he turned his attention to the crypto space, he introduced the "SocialFi" concept with Clout.
The core idea of Clout was to transform "personal influence" into tradable digital assets. When a social media account's follower count reached a certain threshold, the system would automatically generate a corresponding token contract, making influence a quantifiable and tradable asset. At that time, Ben likened Clout to "Wall Street and Hollywood of the Web3 era."
As the first token on the Clout platform, $PASTERNAK surpassed a market cap of 80 million USD within 5 hours of its launch, largely due to investments from various influential investors and members of the Solana community, particularly Imran Khan from AllianceDAO. Not only did AllianceDAO publicly support the project, but Imran's token also became the second token launched on the Clout platform, referencing the previous successes of AllianceDAO's investments or support, such as "dYdX, Pumpfun, etc.," which led to extreme FOMO in the market.
Mobile App Frontend Crashes, Disappears
Unfortunately, the good times didn't last long. Aside from $PASTERNAK, the community's impression of the platform was that the chances of making money were extremely low, and nearly everyone participating in the platform's celebrity tokens faced significant losses. To make matters worse, after the mobile app was launched, the app's frontend crashed, and the tokens that were supposed to be launched on external exchanges were not released, leaving participants in an awkward situation where they couldn't trade and received no tokens.
After generating 250 million USD in trading volume within 24 hours, the token's price began to decline the next day, and just a week later, its market cap shrank to 1/30 of its peak. By March, it had fallen to a market cap of 180,000 USD, and everyone believed this platform would fall like many other SocialFi projects, which the market had long since become accustomed to.
Believe in the Power of Belief
On April 28, Clout announced it would be rebranded as Believe, captioning it "Believe in someone → Believe in something." The official account deleted all previous tweets, marking a new beginning, and the platform's concept shifted from a "Nasdaq for celebrity social media" dominated by traffic economics to a value investment model led by "Silicon Valley tech independently investing in Silicon Valley."
The next day, $PASTERNAK was also renamed to $LAUNCHCOIN, sharing the same name as Believe's launcher on X, solidifying the community's speculation that PASTERNAK had become the official platform coin.
Nikita Bier, a former product growth advisor for Solana, xAI, and Coinbase, praised Believe, calling it a "killer viral app" and citing a series of data to support this claim. As a fellow super entrepreneur, Nikita's previous products had been acquired by social tech companies like Meta and Discord, lending more credibility to his words. Due to Nikita's influence in the community, the token's market cap surged from 1 million USD to 22 million USD within 24 hours.
In the following two weeks, LaunchCoin continued to see new projects emerge, but none made a significant impact. However, around May 12, as entrepreneurs like $GOON, $BUDDY, and $NOODLE entered the market with their products and achieved decent market caps, the market's attention gradually returned. As of the time of writing, the token's market cap has exceeded 260 million USD. Thus, LaunchCoin completed its comeback.
Community Reactions
Notable on-chain player James recently shared his experience of losing 340,000 USD on LaunchCoin, which resonates with many players who participated in this ecosystem during the Clout era. After being severely "hurt" the last time, the distrust led many to miss out on this genuine surge.
Trading is often such a "counterintuitive" behavior. The well-known "head" Gake, more commonly known by her other name "DNF," showcased her trading philosophy with this token. From on-chain data, after the initial hype of LaunchCoin faded, she chose to "buy the dip" at a market cap of 25 million USD after it fell 70% from its peak.
However, the price did not rebound as expected but continued to decline to a market cap of 280,000 USD, at which point DNF chose to "buy the dip" again at 3,500 USD. The price had dropped 90% from the last buy-in, and the position size became 17.5% of the previous one. She then took profits at three different points as the price increased by 50%, 400%, and 800%, reducing her overall position cost.
What followed was two months of patient waiting. After Clout rebranded to Believe, she gradually "unloaded" her holdings, and the current address holds only about 13% of the position, with total profits reaching 1.3 million USD. This was not the most profitable or highest multiple battle for DNF, but how to assess the holding targets, when to hold long-term, and when to buy the dip is highly representative of what all traders need to consider.
This 100X review of LaunchCoin is not a particularly "glorious" project but rather a hundredfold coin with a dark history. Yet, it is a microcosm of the "zero-sum game" in the thousands of token trades. From "influence Clout" to "trust Believe," this represents BEN's shift in understanding the first principles of currency after the last failure, as well as what is currently happening in the market.
Our market is not lacking in influence, but rather in trust.
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
