An anonymous trader on the Tron network turned an initial bid of $1,000 into over $750,000, trading a new Tron-based memecoin called SunWukong.
In an Aug. 21 post to X, blockchain data platform Arkham Intelligence shared that the trader purchased 43.8 million SUNWUKONG tokens for an initial price of $997.
The value of the SunWukong memecoin ballooned following a move from Tron founder Justin Sun to change his profile picture on X to an image of Sun Wukong — a character from a newly released Chinese folklore-based video game Black Myth: Wukong.
The game was launched on Aug. 20 and also notched records of its own, topping over 2.2 million concurrent users on the gaming platform Steam within its first 24 hours, cementing it as one of the most popular single-player game launches in the platform’s history.
According to DexScreener data, the token surged from a value of around $3,000 to as high as $17 million, a gain of over 566,500% in less than 12 hours.
The trader’s memecoin holdings went from being worth $1,000 to as much as $750,000 at peak during the rally.
The value of SunWukong surged following Sun’s profile picture change. Source: DexScreener
The memecoin’s price has since slid 58% from its all-time high, and the token commands a market capitalization of $7.4 million at the time of publication.
But it’s all still paper gains for now.
Tronscan data shows the trader hasn’t sold even a single SunWukong token. This puts their current holdings worth around $329,000 at the time of publication.
The trader hasn’t sold any of their SunWukong holdings. Source: TronScan
The trade comes amid outsized growth in Tron-based memecoin deployer SunPump, a protocol that draws its namesake from Sun.
Related: Solana memecoin protocol teases new ‘short squeeze’ platform
In the 12 days following its launch on Aug. 10, the Tron-based memecoin deployer has already topped $1 million in revenue.
SunPump is an imitation product of the popular Solana-based memecoin deployer pump.fun, which has given rise to a surge in memecoin activity on the Solana network and has generated a staggering $95 million in revenue since its launch in January this year.
While the rise of memecoin trading has been celebrated by its advocates, others have lashed the speculative assets for being “extractive” and claim they’ve destroyed the true principles of crypto.
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