http://pump.fun Former Employee Shares: How I Went from $45M to $17K! Former http://pump.fun employee @shaams hosted an AMA, openly sharing his full journey of dropping from a peak of $45 million to just $17,000. According to his account, he entered the market in early 2024 during the early stages of the memecoin cycle. After making his first $100K, he allocated 20% of his portfolio to POOPCAT and the rest to WIF. At their peaks, these positions grew 350x and 48x, respectively. Later, he joined http://pump.fun, and through early investments and employee equity, his holdings reached an eight-figure valuation after the 2025 PUMP TGE. Combined with TRUMP and the summer 2025 bull market, his portfolio peaked at around $45 million. The turning point came in late summer 2025: He mentioned that the crypto market began to weaken as retail funds shifted to AI concept stocks, and his portfolio started bleeding slowly. After a major market crash on October 10, 2025, he went heavy on leveraged altcoin longs, chased low-quality tokens, and was repeatedly exploited by arbitrageurs, leading to mounting losses. In the AMA, he admitted that throughout the entire process, he never withdrew funds to his bank account. The $45 million was always unrealized gains on-chain. His exact words were, "the money was never mine." His goal was to hit $100 million, but instead, he ended up losing it all. Currently, his account balance is around $17K, with an additional $1,500 owed by a friend.