A memecoin minted shortly after billionaire Charlie Munger’s death experienced a staggering surge of over 31,000% on Wednesday, but lost more than 98% of its value the next day.
The Surge and Crash
As news broke of the Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman’s death, the MUNGER memecoin rose more than 31,000% as investors quickly ran to decentralized exchanges with millions of dollars worth of Ether and stablecoins. Daily trading volume for MUNGER peaked at $3.5 million on Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap.
However, the token suffered a substantial decline of over 98% in value on Thursday following revelations about the token’s smart contract which was revealed to contain erroneous functions, enabling developers to impose restrictions on the sale of the asset.
The smart contract included a blacklist function and authorization that could potentially manipulate users into approving a malicious smart contract, according to GeckoTerminal.
Daily trading for MUNGER now sits at less than $40,000 at the time of writing, with the token now worth $0.00000003039.
Charlie Munger’s Stance on Cryptocurrencies
Often referred to by Warren Buffett as his closest partner and right-hand man, Munger was a steadfast skeptic of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies in general. He once described Bitcoin as “detestable.”
“I’m not proud of my country for allowing this crypto s***,” Munger said earlier this year. “It’s worthless, it’s no good.”
Munger’s reasons for his dislike of Bitcoin were based on its volatility and the lack of established regulatory frameworks. He also previously expressed concerns about Bitcoin’s potential facilitation of criminal activities, including drug dealing, terror funding, kidnapping, and extortion.
“I don’t welcome a currency that’s so useful to kidnappers and extortionists and so forth, nor do I like just shuffling out your extra billions of billions of dollars to somebody who just invented a new financial product out of thin air,” he once said.
Hundreds of memecoins are created daily, and they have a rich and storied history of capitalizing on breaking news to pump highly speculative tokens of questionable origin. Last week, a newly minted CZ token, spawned right after Changpeng Zhao’s resignation as Binance’s CEO, experienced an 18,000% surge. However, the rapid rises also come with significant risks.
Memecoins such as MUNGER are frequently subjected to “rug-pulling” by their anonymous creators, who withdraw liquidity, leaving investors with substantial losses.
