David Portnoy launches GREED, the new meme ended up incurring more losses

David Portnoy doubled down on his meme token drive, launching GREED, another high-risk meme. Portnoy sniped a big portion of the supply early on, while traders later posted deep losses. 

David Portnoy launched GREED, another meme token with a high-risk profile. The launch arrived just days after Portnoy caused deep losses through the Jailstool token, and later shilled for LIBRA, the failed meme token supposedly backed by Argentina. 

This time, Portnoy performed an even more blatant rug pull. He bought 35.79% of the supply, then sold all the tokens in a single transaction, making the price tank by 99%. The move on GREED may have been a test of the market, or a demonstration of the risk of meme tokens. However, Portnoy once again caused deep losses for some traders. 

One wallet lost $101K after sniping GREED. It is unknown if the trader was aware of Portnoy’s involvement. The wallet invested 911 SOL to snipe GREED, but only sold for 309 SOL after the asset tanked. 

Even after the losses, GREED lined up among trending meme tokens, accumulating 19,982 holders. GREED did not produce any millionaire whales, but top traders still managed to sell on time, locking up to $435.3K in gains. 

Just as GREED and Greed 2 were pumping and crashing, Portnoy also locked in gains from LIBRA. Portnoy received a compensation of $5M in USDC , which he later converted to SOL and sent to Kraken. The SOL tokens were valued at $5.29M as of February 17, later losing value.

The recent pump-and-dump activity from Portnoy is also raising questions about the influencer’s relationship with Kraken. The exchange, one of the fast-growing markets during the bull market, has seen reputational damage , both from connections to Portnoy’s wallets, and from rushing to list high-risk new tokens. 

David Portnoy goes to war against the meme community

The influence of Portnoy was seen as one of the main factors for drawing investors to Jailstool and LIBRA. Some proposed to send the tokens to zero, though at this point, Portnoy had already locked in early gains. 

Portnoy went on to launch Greed2, another high-risk token, which also performed a 10X upward move, followed by a crash. The token came with a high-risk warning, but memes are often sniped by automated bots, leaving each new launch with baseline liquidity. 

In less than eight hours, Greed2 was already in 9,550 identified Solana wallets, and then was sniped and sold, with the top whale gaining over $280K. 

Both tokens were tied to Portnoy’s identity from the beginning, but still attracted traders despite the risk. This time around, the launches did not get the same hype as Jailstool. Portnoy himself did not claim to remain a long-term holder, or to support the asset’s cult status. 

Instead, the launches relied on the overall isolation of meme tokens, where contagion did not spread to the rest of the market. However, the serial launches happened at a time when the crypto community is sobering up from the meme token casino, especially from launches that have insider holders. 

Portnoy did not end up launching cult coins with long-term holders. Even for Jailstool , he only stated he would hold until the asset hits a $1B market capitalization. At that point, Portnoy went in and crashed the market. 

The new launches arrived at a time when Solana had the healthiest volumes and was considered the star of the bull cycle. However, the effect of Portnoy and his connections to LIBRA promoter Hayden Davis were among the factors that broke down the interest in new Solana memecoins. Previously, whales and snipers did similar rug pulls, but the high-profile influencers led to deeper losses. 

The serial launches by Portnoy have invited claims of deliberate scams, despite the disclaimers and warnings about meme tokens. The influencer has received many calls to leave the meme space and stop shilling assets. 

New Pump.fun launches are slowing down, with under 40K daily launches. Despite this, the market sees over 200K daily active wallets looking for the next breakout. Both Pump.fun and direct launches on DEXs allow for cabal-controlled tokens. In the past, traders have attempted to make gains on cabal-controlled assets, but Portnoy’s actions were too fast in an illiquid market, immediately erasing value.

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