Solana memecoin presales continue to attract interest despite concerns from industry executives

The founder and CEO of CryptoQuant, an on-chain cryptocurrency and market data platform, has expressed concerns over the recent popularity of memecoins.

“Memecoins are hurting the crypto industry,” Ki Young Ju of CryptoQuant said on social media platform industry-wide, as evidenced by the ICO bust-up in 2018.”

“Some say memecoins are a global lottery system that attracts new users to the crypto industry,” Ju added. “Would you risk losing money to enter the crypto space? Additionally, considering the 2018 ICO “shitcoins” were essentially a casino, did they provide any societal value?

Ju ended his X thread by saying that memecoin supporters must be new to the crypto industry and not have experienced the downsides of “easy money.”

The ICO, or initial coin offering, describes the period in 2018 in which Web3 projects issued digital assets in exchange for financial investment. While some projects were previously engaged in legitimate and successful ICOs, like Ethereum in 2014, many offers during the latter period were found to be ethereal, speculative or simply fraudulent.

Memecoins and the surge in pre-sales

Ju’s comments followed a recent surge in memecoin sales. Memecoins, especially those from Solana, generated so much interest that they increased Solana’s fees and on-chain volume.

For example, a presale for a project titled “Are you stupid” raised 420.69 SOL ($83,717) in a single transaction on March 18. to have 48 hours until March 16 to send funds to the wallet address “areyoustupid.sol”, with a 99.99% chance that the investor will receive nothing in return. Wallet address as “areyoustupid.sol” contains a total of 437.27 SOL, worth over $87,000, at the time of publishing.

A prominent memecoin called “Slerf,” a pun on the word “lazy,” has accumulated a market capitalization of more than $234,800,000 among 74,075 holders, according to blockchain tracker Solana. Solscan. However, the Slerf team accidentally burned $10 million in funds from pre-sale investors.

Solana changed hands at $199.35 as of 3 p.m. ET on March 18, according to The Block’s price page for Solana, with the token seeing a 2.03% increase over 24 hours.

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