Just a few days ago, Siqi Chen, co-founder of finance platform Runway, captured the hearts of Solana’s memecoin community when he raised millions from MIRA, a token created by a mystery Good Samaritan and named after his four-year-old daughter Mira, who suffers from an incurable brain tumor.
Chen’s goal was to raise money to fund research for craniopharyngioma, the disease Mira was diagnosed with, and while it’s unclear how much Chen raised in total from MIRA and other related tokens, there was a time when he had $18 million worth of MIRA alone.
Then on Monday, Chen launched ZERO, a token he claims was just a test, yet he sold it and made a tidy profit of just under $100,000 or 444 solana (SOL), setting off scammer accusations from the crypto community.
“I am really sorry about this, I’m still learning how all this works,” Chen posted on X. “I bought back in, with every penny of profit (444 SOL) I have made, and then burned everything I have so the community knows at least that I have made zero in profits from this.”
Chen claims he created ZERO as part of a self-learning process because other organizations were interested in recruiting his help for their own fundraising efforts, after his success raising millions for Dr. Todd Hankinson, his daughter’s pediatric neurosurgeon who runs the only lab in the world specializing in craniopharyngioma research.
“I have been speaking to other pediatric disease organizations who have reached out and wanted to know if they could also benefit from what happened with MIRA,” Chen explained. “I was hoping to help them and wanted to understand how pump.fun works.”
To be fair, the description for ZERO clearly states, “This token is going to zero and you will definitely lose all your money. Do not buy it.” Nevertheless, many prominent voices have chided Chen.
(ZERO memecoin/pump.fun)
“Stop ‘experimenting.’ It’s gonna kill every bit of goodwill you had from before,” said Dogecoin co-creator Billy Markus.
Pseudonymous onchain investigator ZachXBT accused Chen of playing dumb and said he made the “exact same excuse a few days ago.”
Others pointed out that Chen has been in crypto since at least 2020 and certainly isn’t just now “learning how all of this works,” as he claims. Screenshots of Chen bragging about making $230,000 in 2022 from a psychedelics NFT were posted as proof by multiple users.
(Siqi Chen/X)
But many also argued that Chen is already a successful tech founder who doesn’t need to exploit his daughter’s condition to scam unsuspecting do-gooders.
Linda Xie, co-founder of crypto job site Bountycaster and crypto investment firm Scalar Capital, was part of the cohort willing to give Chen the benefit of the doubt.
“I’m assuming good intent and naiveness,” Xie wrote. “Even if someone has been in crypto before, every cycle/trend has its learning curve. The guy is going through a lot with his daughter, let’s try to educate someone overwhelmed by what’s happened.”
Bitcoin.com News asked Chen to help clear up the controversy surrounding the ZERO launch, and he said he would provide an explanation “in a few days.”
“I don’t really want to make any statements until I’m done with the work, to do the on-chain analysis, to airdrop everyone who was a holder at the time of my dump,” Chen said. “I just want to take action to make the situation as right as I can first.”
ZERO had a price of $0.0002030 and a market capitalization of just under $203,000 at the time of reporting, according to data from pump.fun.
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