Tech founder raises millions for rare disease research with a
memecoin
Siqi Chen got one hell of a Christmas gift from the Solana community.
Crypto gets a lot of bad press. This time, though, it delivered a true Christmas miracle.
The story begins with Siqi Chen. Chen is a popular tech X personality, the founder & CEO of fintech startup Runway, and the dad to two little girls aged 10 and 4. Unfortunately, the younger one, Mira, was diagnosed with craniopharyngioma, a rare and incurable brain tumor.
Because the disease is so rare, research and funding for the disease is severely lacking. So, on Christmas Eve, Chen took to X to ask for donations to a GoFundMe dedicated to research.
The post went viral (3M views and counting), and thus, caught the attention of some crypto people. So, he posted his Etherem, Solana, and Bitcoin addresses, which is the location for his crypto wallet so that can people can send donations via crypto.
But one of these crypto investors had another idea. Instead of just sending Chen some coins, he decided to make a memecoin in Mira's honor and send half the supply to Chen. This way, Chen would make more money as the memecoin pumped.
And pump it did.
As is so often the case in crypto, the pump continued beyond Chen's wildest dreams. At it's peak, the coin had a market cap of $80M, making Chen's wallet worth a whopping $40M.
Perhaps the most amazing part of the story is that Chen didn't immediately sell the coin. He took an extraordinary amount of care not to "rug pull" investors, which means he didn't want to do anything that would make people quickly lose their money. So, after some thought, he decided to sell $1,000 every 10 mins in perpetuity. This way, he would avoid instantaneously sending the coin to zero.
Now, was MIRA's pump entirely altruistic? Of course not. Some, if not most, people were investing for their own financial gain. But, MIRA does show that speculation is not inherently bad. If pointed in the right direction, speculation can do a whole lot of good in the world.
In this case, it gave a little girl and her dad a Christmas they'll never forget.
I don't really like the idea of using crypto for this, why not just start a non-profit for this and raise cash with either crowdfunding or from donations? If the coin crashes, what happens? Maybe I'm too uneducated about crypto to understand why this isn't a bad idea
People who wouldn't ordinarily donate to the cause will buy the coin because of the potential for financial returns. That's why at one point he had $40M in his wallet.
But yeah, if he doesn't sell it fast enough it could definitely crash.
The idea is defintely creative but it seems ALMOST unethical although you couldn't pinpoint to what exactly is unethical. I feel like if it did the job, especially to cure a disease, it can be worth it.
It's amazing how tech founders are using creative solutions like memecoins to raise funds for important causes, such as rare disease research. It shows the potential of blending technology with philanthropy. If you're working on a project or platform and need reliable hosting to support it, RazorHost offers excellent services.