On June 21, a MEME coin called WATER Coin raised over $41 million in the presale phase, making it the largest MEME coin presale case to date.
By Frank, PANews
Despite the recent poor performance of the market, some people are still making crazy amounts of money with MEME coins.
On June 21, a MEME coin called WATER Coin raised over $41 million in the presale phase. The project raised 200,000 SOL within 1 minute of the presale, and 300,000 SOL within 5 minutes, worth about $41 million, making it the largest MEME coin presale case to date, with over 26,000 wallet addresses participating in the presale. On June 24, the WATER token was launched on Solana, and its market value once exceeded $1 billion. For a new project without a clear endorsement, achieving such a fundraising amount is dramatic. PANews conducted an in-depth analysis of this project and found that the popularity of the WATER token is not accidental.
The notorious "German Prince" is behind the scenes
According to PANews investigation, the team behind WATER is the same team that operated the hot MEME token BEER on Solana.
The BEER token is a MEME token with a beer theme, which raised nearly $5 million in value with 30,000 SOL in presale on May 20. After going live, the price of the BEER token soared, with the highest increase reaching 30 times, and the highest market value reaching $500 million. According to netizens' revelations, the team behind BEER coin is led by Marcus Prinz von Anhalt, a German beer factory owner. Prinz Markus is a well-known businessman in Germany, who also operates multiple nightclubs and brothels. He gained public attention with his luxurious lifestyle and in 2006, he spent millions of dollars to buy his new name Marcus Prinz von Anhalt through adoption by the prince's wife, meaning Prince Marcus of Anhalt. Subsequently, Prinz Markus liked to call himself "German Prince" in the media. In 2014, Prinz Markus was sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion and fraud, and was also accused of money laundering, tax fraud, and human trafficking.
From Prinz Markus's social media information, it can be seen that he has been keen on investing in the cryptocurrency field in recent years. After the BEER token was launched, he actively endorsed BEER several times. Currently, Prinz Markus has 7.74 million followers on Instagram, and the prizes offered in the holding activities launched by BEER, such as CYBERTRUCK and private plane trips, free beer supply, etc., have also been displayed on Prinz Markus's social media. However, Prinz Markus's reputation is not good, as some people directly call him a fraud on social media.
According to netizens' revelations, another initiator of BEER is German entrepreneur Ben Bilski, who was a professional swimmer and had won the German championship several times before. After retiring, he started several businesses in the technology field and had founded NAGA Group AG (one of the highest valued fintech companies in Europe). Ben Bilski resigned as CEO of NAGA Group AG in March this year. From public information, Ben Bilski is also enthusiastic about cryptocurrency investment.
In addition to the two German entrepreneurs, a hedge fund called Gotbit is also behind the scenes of BEER. Gotbit has explicitly stated on Twitter that it has cooperated with BEER and helped BEER manage its market value. Gotbit is a hedge fund specialized in helping tokens achieve market value growth. Previously, blockchain detective ZachXBT stated on the X platform, "I would be cautious about any project that cooperates with market maker Gotbit Hedge Fund, as a leaked report shows that the services it provides have significant issues. Gotbit claimed in this document that its strategy is to push the price up to 10 times in the initial minutes of price discovery to create FOMO and accumulate as much buying power as possible, and then sell all tokens at the peak." From the price curve of BEER, it seems to fit this trading strategy.
Unique marketing tactics
Unlike many MEME coins, the marketing of the BEER token is not on Twitter, but on Instagram and Telegram. Its main user base comes from Germany and Dubai. In addition, BEER has done more design in terms of gameplay, in addition to normal presales. BEER also launched various holding rewards and rewards after breaking through certain market value ranges. The rewards include a trip to the Munich Beer Festival in a private plane for two, annual beer supply, a Tesla Cybertruck, and custom-brewed beer.
After the launch of WATER, the same marketing strategy was adopted. The holding rewards for WATER include cruises, trips to the Maldives, and more. In addition, the WATER token also simulates the characteristics of water in its token design, naming staking and token burning as freezing and evaporation.
In addition, the BEER team fully utilized its influence on Instagram to promote to many users who are not familiar with cryptocurrencies, including tutorials on how to register a wallet and purchase BEER tokens from scratch. An athlete named absolut_lukas has commented on the project several times and reposted it. This blogger has 66,000 followers on Instagram. A Twitter user named @Shayaniii revealed, "They have contacted many influential people (not just cryptocurrency enthusiasts) and spread it like wildfire, including big rap singers like Luciano." Of course, the biggest help comes from Prinz Markus himself, who has promoted the token several times on Instagram.
In addition, the BEER community's Telegram channel has 2 million subscribed users.
Team continues to sell, causing severe losses to on-chain snipers
Although the initial increase in the price of the BEER token was quite exaggerated, with the frequent selling by the team, the price also plummeted. As of June 25, the price of the BEER token had dropped by over 90% from its peak, and the market value had fallen to around $50 million. LookonChain monitoring found that the team's related addresses of BEER had sold more than $3 million worth of tokens after the price surged. In response, the official BEER Telegram community stated, "On-chain analysis shows that 95% of the quota has been sold in the recent panic. This is a very good signal for the project, and we expect that the subsequent selling pressure will be greatly reduced."
Perhaps seeing the powerful wealth-generating ability of MEME coins, WATER achieved unexpected results at the time of issuance. It raised $41 million in presale within 5 minutes, far exceeding its expected hard cap of 55,000 SOL. Eventually, WATER increased the hard cap to 250,000 SOL (approximately $32.5 million) and refunded 11,000 SOL from bot accounts that participated in the presale.
After going live, the price of the WATER token surged nearly 10 times in a short period, then plummeted in a few hours. As of June 25, its price dropped to as low as $0.00097, falling below the opening price of $0.0016.
In addition, the development team seems to have replicated the insider trading operations seen with BEER. According to lookonchain, the development team transferred 844 million WATER tokens to 11 wallets that did not participate in the presale. PANews investigation found that these 11 wallets have already sold WATER tokens worth $2.36 million and are still gradually selling tokens worth $1.75 million.
One on-chain sniper suffered heavy losses in this opening. The sniper with the address starting with 63KCv bought 15,000 SOL worth (approximately $1.9 million) of WATER after it went live, but sold it for only 9,306 SOL worth (approximately $1.2 million) in less than 10 minutes, resulting in a loss of $710,000.
For the BEER team, the results of this presale far exceeded expectations. However, it seems difficult to replicate the path of BEER on the market, and the team's familiar insider trading strategy seems to have reached its limit. It remains to be seen how many people will be willing to buy the next beverage-themed MEME coin when it is issued.
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。
