Project Kimchi token falls 98% after Pump.fun partner’s QR-code post and co-founder’s repost vanish

A Pump.fun token called Project Kimchi (ticker KIMCHI) rose to about $15 million of market value and lost about 98% of it within an hour on Thursday evening, 22 October 2026 (UTC). The rally followed a post on the X account of Kimchi, the trader Pump.fun had signed as a “creative partner” two days earlier, showing a QR code that led to the token, and a repost by Pump.fun co-founder Alon. According to Bitcoin.com News, the post was gone about half an hour later and the repost had been undone.

Nobody has said who created the token. As of 16:45 UTC on 23 October, Coindaro had found no statement from Pump.fun, Alon or Kimchi, and none of the outlets that covered the episode reported one. Talk of a hacked account came from traders on X and has not been confirmed. Coindaro does not know whether this was a hack, a planned launch or a promotion that went wrong, and this article does not claim it was any of them.

What the episode does show is how fast a memecoin pushed by a famous trader and repeated by the platform’s own co-founder can fill up and empty, and how little a buyer can check in the seconds it takes to scan a code.

Pump.fun Kimchi token: the QR code, the repost and the crash

The picture showed a poster on a Manhattan pavement reading “project kimchi, same internet, different outcome” next to the Pump.fun logo. Its QR code opened a newly created Pump.fun token named Project Kimchi. Alon (@a1lon9 on X) reposted it from his personal account. Bitcoin.com News places the post in the US afternoon of 22 October; no source gives the exact minute of the post, the repost or the deletion.

The trading data narrow it down. Protos links its coverage to the Solana token B1Y2fJW8rtirrBuUcda14pSaeiASHaGqTxQdxU8Mpump on Dexscreener, listed there as “project kimchi” with the ticker kimchi, and the timing matches the reports. Data from GeckoTerminal show that the token finished its Pump.fun bonding curve at 19:49 UTC and moved to a PumpSwap pool. It then traded quietly until about 20:25 UTC, when the price nearly quadrupled in five minutes. Between 20:30 and 20:40 UTC it touched $0.0151, which on a supply of 1 billion tokens is about $15.1 million.

Lookonchain wrote on 23 October, as quoted by crypto.news, that the token “quickly surged to a $14M market cap before crashing over 95%.” Bitcoin.com News put the top near $15 million. Then, in Lookonchain’s words: “But @a1lon9 later undid his repost, and @kimchi1x deleted the post.” The QR code stopped leading to the token.

The price did not wait for the deletion. In the same five-minute window as the high, GeckoTerminal recorded trades near $0.0006, a value of about $600,000, the level Protos describes “within minutes”. By 21:10 UTC the token was near $0.000285, about $285,000 of value. About $7.7 million changed hands in the half hour from 20:25 UTC.

Outlets published their own snapshots, mostly without a time, so the figures differ by source and by moment. The table puts them side by side with the timed on-chain data.

What Lookonchain says Kimchi received

The most cited on-chain claim needs care. Lookonchain wrote that “kimchi (@kimchi1x) received 500M $kimchi and posted about the token, and @a1lon9 reposted it.” Five hundred million tokens is half of the 1 billion supply. Lookonchain’s post, as quoted by crypto.news, does not say who sent the tokens, from which wallet, or whether any were sold. A MarsBit report relayed by KuCoin News, citing “community leaks”, said an address linked to Kimchi held more than half of the token.

This rests on Lookonchain’s attribution of a wallet to Kimchi, which Kimchi has not confirmed. Receiving tokens is also not the same as launching them: anyone can send tokens to a public address, and nothing published shows that this wallet sold. Coindaro has not traced the transfer itself.

Lookonchain also reported that several wallets bought the token cheaply and sold into the rally, for estimated combined profits above $385,000. Crypto.news printed one of the three Solana addresses Lookonchain named. Being early is not proof of inside knowledge, and nothing published links those wallets to Kimchi, Alon or Pump.fun.

Who Kimchi is and why Pump.fun signed him

Pump.fun signed Kimchi as a creative partner on Tuesday 20 October, the same day its app started selling Rolex prize packs, according to Coinspeaker as relayed by KuCoin News. The launchpad is fighting a rival trading app, Fomo, for retail users: Coinspeaker gave Pump.fun 30-day launchpad revenue of $45.4 million against $19 million for Fomo. Our Pump.fun project page explains how the launchpad earns its fees and buys back its PUMP token.

Protos names Kimchi as Clayton Kim and reports that Alon Cohen called him “the first ever example of a trader becoming a celebrity.” Pump.fun repeated Kimchi’s claim of more than $40 million of profit on the TRUMP memecoin. Bubblemaps said his publicly verifiable profit was closer to $6 million. It added that its trace covers only part of his wallets and that a larger, unrevealed address is possible, though “he likely would have revealed it by now.”

The partnership was disputed before Thursday. Protos reports that an X community note on Pump.fun’s announcement said wallets linked to Kimchi were associated with sniping, meaning buying new tokens in the first moments after launch.

An earlier KIMCHI coin, the same week

Project Kimchi is not the first token with that name this week. After the signing, a KIMCHI memecoin reached about $40 million of market cap in its first hour, according to Bitcoin.com News. An anonymous deployer had bought about 79% of the supply for roughly $9,300 and sent all creator fees to a wallet labelled as Kimchi’s, the outlet reported. An analyst quoted by Coinspeaker, Ai Yi, said Kimchi held 75.32% of a KIMCHI coin’s supply, so most of the quoted value existed only on paper: one holder with three quarters of a thin market could not sell at that price.

Bitquery found about $104,000 of gains across three linked wallets on that launch, crypto.news reported, but said it could not connect those wallets to the deployer through direct transfers. Ai Yi also said Kimchi withdrew 1.35 billion PUMP, worth about $6.43 million, over three hours. Lookonchain wrote that he “may have received 1.35B $PUMP ($6.25M) in marketing”. Neither Pump.fun nor Kimchi has said what, if anything, he was paid.

Hack, rug pull or a promotion gone wrong: none is proven

Each explanation in circulation has supporters. The evidence published so far settles none of them.

One is that Kimchi’s account was hacked. That framing came from traders on X and from early reports. Bitcoin.com News says on-chain investigators doubt it because Alon reposted quickly and then reversed. Fabiano, a trader quoted by Protos, noted that Alon shared no hack warning after removing his repost, and also argued that a planned reshare would have needed minute-by-minute coordination. Those are arguments, not evidence.

Another is a deliberate pump and dump. The trader tontheneko asked Alon on 22 October to refund buyers and wrote: “You literally retweeted a rug pull and made hundreds of people lose money.” Another trader, Arez, alleged that the QR code’s destination changed after trading began, crypto.news reported. No published on-chain proof ties the token’s creator to Kimchi or to Pump.fun.

A third is mismanagement: a campaign post that went out, drew a crowd and was pulled. Kimchi has since removed @pumpfun from his X bio and deleted earlier posts about joining the platform, according to Bitcoin.com News. Lookonchain noted the bio change came “just 2 days” after the signing. Deleting posts explains nothing, and nobody involved has offered an explanation.

Pump.fun’s own numbers moved too. Lookonchain, citing DefiLlama, said daily revenue fell 16% over the two days, from $1.61 million to $1.35 million, and active addresses fell 11%, from 178,539 to 159,492. Crypto.news notes that nothing shows the Kimchi episode caused the drop.

What the episode says about creator-promoted memecoins

The conflict is built into the model. Pump.fun earns fees on tokens created and traded on it, as we explained when it added Hyperliquid perpetuals to its app. A partner with a large audience posting a token, amplified by a co-founder, sends traffic straight into a product that earns from that traffic, whoever made the token.

The sequence also leaves late buyers with the worst price. When a market value goes from under $400,000 to $15 million in about a quarter of an hour, the first buyers are usually bots and wallets watching the accounts involved. A reader who scans a QR code and buys a minute later is often buying from them. In an October study cited by crypto.news, Bitquery found that 79% of launches in its sample recorded no trading after their first day.

How to check a Pump.fun token before buying

None of this guarantees safety, and a token can pass every check and still go to zero. These steps only show what is visible on-chain before you commit money.

1. Get the contract address from more than one place, and do not trust a QR code or a link in a picture. Pump.fun addresses end in “pump”, so the ending alone proves nothing; compare the full string.
2. Open the token on a holder map such as Bubblemaps and on Solscan. A few wallets holding most of the supply, or clusters funded from the same source, mean a handful of sellers can drain the price.
3. Look at who bought in the first seconds. Large early buys followed by sales into a spike are the pattern Lookonchain described here.
4. Check the developer wallet: what it bought, what it sold and where fees go. In the earlier KIMCHI coin, the deployer bought about 79% of supply.
5. Treat a famous name as a reason for more checks. A celebrity post brings attention, and attention is what early sellers need.
6. Never buy with money you cannot afford to lose, and wait: if the token is worth anything, it will still be there in an hour.

Our guide on how to avoid crypto scams covers the red flags and where to report a suspected fraud, and the glossary entry on market capitalisation explains why a quoted market cap on a thin memecoin is not money anyone can withdraw.

What is still unknown

The exact times of the post, the repost and the deletion are not public; the price data only show when buying started. Nobody has said who deployed Project Kimchi. Nor is it known whether the 500 million tokens Lookonchain says Kimchi received were a gift, a fee or a purchase, whether his account was compromised, or whether anyone will refund buyers.

Pump.fun, Alon and Kimchi had not commented in any source Coindaro found as of 16:45 UTC on 23 October. Coindaro will update this article if they do, or if on-chain analysts publish a link between the token’s creator and any of the people named here.