Key Takeaways
- A Project Kimchi token hit a market cap top close to $15 million on Pump.fun yesterday before crashing over 98%.
- Pump.fun co-founder Alon reposted the promo and later removed it, sparking refund demands from traders.
- Bubblemaps traced Kimchi’s TRUMP profits to about $6 million, far below the $40 million claim.
The Poster
Early in the U.S. afternoon of Oct. 22, popular online trader Kimchi’s account posted a photo of a Manhattan sidewalk with a poster that read “project kimchi, same internet, different outcome.” The illustration carried a Pump.fun logo, App Store badges and a QR code. Scanning the code opened a fresh Pump.fun token called Project Kimchi.
Moreover, just two days earlier, Pump.fun had signed Kimchi as a new creative partner, positioning the pseudonymous trader as a face of its retail push.
Subsequently, Pump.fun’s co-founder Alon reposted it from his personal account and according to the timeline of events, the token hit a $10 million market cap within seconds and topped out near $15 million shortly after. Online sleuths were quick to report the run as soon as it transpired.
The Deletion
Roughly half an hour later, the post was nowhere to be found and even Alon removed it from his feed. Traders who scanned the QR code again said it no longer pointed to the token. By one snapshot, Project Kimchi’s market cap had fallen to about $284,000, down more than 98% from the top, after $8.66 million in trading volume.
As expected, the fallout was immediate, and one trader’s post demanding Alon refund buyers gained significant traction. It read as follows:
You literally retweeted a rug pull and made hundreds of people lose money. It was your responsibility as Pump.fun founder to double check.
Hacked or Not?
Early reports said Kimchi’s account had been hacked, but within minutes, onchain investigators questioned that narrative, pointing to Alon’s quick repost and equally quick reversal.
Neither Kimchi nor Pump.fun had issued a statement at the time of writing. Kimchi too has since removed Pump.fun from his X bio and deleted earlier posts about joining the platform.
That silence leaves two readings:
- Either a hijacked account fooled the co-founder of a major memecoin launchpad.
- A planned launch was abandoned once it went wrong.
Whatever be the case, both are bad looks for a partnership that is barely 48 hours old.
The $40 Million Question
Kimchi’s fame rests on a claim that he made about $40 million trading the official TRUMP token after its January 2025 launch. On the same day as the Project Kimchi chaos, onchain analytics firm Bubblemaps traced his linked wallets and put his actual TRUMP profit at roughly $6 million. Bubblemaps said its trace covers only part of the wallet cluster, so a larger hidden address is possible but unproven.
His first token raised questions too, given that the original KIMCHI meme coin ran to about $40 million in its first hour after the Pump.fun signing, but an anonymous deployer bought about 79% of supply for roughly $9,300 and routed all creator fees to a wallet labeled Kimchi. Analysts noted that about 75% of supply sat with that address, which made most of the paper value hard to realize.
None of that has dented his celebrity yet and content creator FaZe Banks said Kimchi could make another $40M from a media career because of how viral he is.
