Project Kimchi crash: Memecoin Drops 98% After Pump.fun Repost Vanishes

The Project Kimchi crash took a brand-new Solana memecoin from roughly $14-15 million in market cap to about $284,000 in around half an hour. It happened late on October 22 into October 23, after trader Kimchi posted a QR-code promo, Pump.fun co-founder Alon reposted it, and then both posts disappeared. It came just two days after Pump.fun named Kimchi a creative partner.

What actually happened

According to The Crypto Times, Kimchi's X account (@kimchi1x) posted an AI-generated image styled like a Manhattan street poster for "Project Kimchi," with a Pump.fun logo and a QR code. The code opened a freshly created Pump.fun token. Alon (@a1lon9) reposted it from his personal account.

Traders read that repost as a green light. The market cap passed $10 million within seconds and peaked around $14 million, per Lookonchain, or near $15 million, per TokenPost. Then Alon undid his repost, Kimchi deleted the original, and the QR code stopped pointing to the token. Price collapsed.

Kimchi also removed "pumpfun" from his X bio, TokenPost reports. One angry trader replied to Alon that he had "retweeted a rug pull and made hundreds of people lose money," as quoted by The Crypto Times.

The on-chain trail

Lookonchain flagged that Kimchi's account received 500 million $kimchi before posting, and identified wallets that bought low and dumped into the spike for combined profits above $385,000. Wallet activity alone does not prove who controlled those wallets, and nobody has been charged with anything.

Some on-chain sleuths questioned early claims that Kimchi's account was hacked, pointing to how quickly Alon reposted and then reversed. No party has confirmed or ruled out a compromise, The Crypto Times says. We are not going to guess, and you should be wary of anyone who claims to know for sure in either direction.

At our DexScreener check at 06:07 UTC on October 24, the most liquid Solana pool for a token named "project kimchi", created at 19:49 UTC on October 22 and matching the timing of the promo, showed a market cap near $99,000 and about $121,000 in 24-hour volume, down about 63% on the day. Several copycat tokens with the same name were also trading, which is normal after a viral crash and a trap for anyone searching by ticker.

Why the Project Kimchi crash hits Pump.fun

This is not Kimchi's first token drama this week. When Pump.fun announced the partnership on October 20, Alon called Kimchi "the first ever example of a trader becoming a celebrity." A separate Kimchi-branded coin launched that day already drew scrutiny, as we covered in our Kimchi Aura Final Boss piece.

The trader's famous claim of about $40 million in TRUMP profits also took a hit. Bubblemaps estimated his realized TRUMP profit closer to $6 million, with the caveat that its trace covered only part of the wallet cluster.

When a platform co-founder reposts a token, buyers treat it as an endorsement. Deleting it 30 minutes later does not delete the losses.

Lookonchain also noticed that Pump.fun's daily revenue dipped from about $1.61 million to $1.35 million and active addresses from about 178,500 to 159,500 over the two days around the bio change. The Crypto Times warns those numbers do not prove the Project Kimchi crash caused the decline.

What to do as a reader

Never buy a token from a QR code or a screenshot. A QR code hides the contract address until you have already clicked, which is exactly the moment you are least likely to check it. Copy the contract from a source you can verify, and check how much supply the promoter received before you click anything.

A repost from a founder is marketing, not due diligence. If you are farming Pump.fun incentives, read the fine print, as we explained in our Pump.fun referral program breakdown. And remember that copycat tickers with the same name will keep popping up after a crash like this. Not investment advice, simple as.

Sources: The Crypto Times, TokenPost, Lookonchain and DexScreener.