Pump.fun ICO Raises $500M in Record-Breaking 12-Minute Sale
The Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun made cryptocurrency history on Saturday, July 12, when its initial coin offering (ICO) garnered
Quick overview
- Pump.fun's ICO raised $500 million in just 12 minutes, marking it as one of the most successful token launches of 2025.
- The PUMP token sale sold 125 billion tokens at $0.004 each, representing only 12.5% of the total supply, leading to a fully diluted value of $4 billion.
- Controversy arose over the token distribution, as the actual public auction allocated fewer tokens than initially promised, raising concerns about fairness among investors.
- The success of the ICO has sparked discussions about a potential resurgence of ICOs in the cryptocurrency market, with some industry leaders expressing optimism about this fundraising model.
The Solana-based memecoin launchpad Pump.fun made cryptocurrency history on Saturday, July 12, when its initial coin offering (ICO) garnered $500 million in just 12 minutes, making it one of the most successful token launches of 2025.
The PUMP token sale sold 125 billion tokens for $0.004 each, which was 12.5% of the total supply of 1 trillion tokens. This price gave the project a fully diluted value of $4 billion. Pump.fun’s official website and exchanges including Bybit, KuCoin, Bitget, Kraken, Gate.io, and MEXC all let investors take part.
The platform’s dashboard shows that most of the purchases—$448.5 million worth—happened directly on the Pump.fun website. The rest were spread out across partner exchanges. Kraken made $30 million in sales, while KuCoin and Gate.io made $16.5 million and $5 million, respectively.
PUMP Token Distribution and Controversy
Some people in the crypto world have disagreed with how the ICO is set up. At first, Pump.fun said that the ICO will get 33% of the token supply, with 24% going to ecosystem and community projects, 20% going to the team, and 13% going to current investors. The actual public auction, on the other hand, only gave out 12.5% of the supply, and there was no official explanation for the difference.
The rest of the tokenomics show that 18% went to institutional investors through private sales. This suggests that the platform may have changed its focus from individual investors to larger ones. This change has made people wonder if the allocation is fair among community members.
Market Response and Trading Activity
Before the market opened, trading was very unstable. PUMP tokens reached a high of $0.006989 on Hyperliquid before quickly dropping back down. After the sale was announced, the token shot up to almost $0.00002000, but then it fell 86% to $0.00000235, which traders called “speculative profit-taking.”
Participants in the ICO should get their tokens within 48 to 72 hours, although transactions will still be off throughout this time. Trading will start right after distribution ends. For US and UK customers, the earliest date is Monday, July 14.
Industry Implications: Are ICOs Making a Comeback?
People are talking about the fundraising model’s possible return again because of the successful ICO. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, led by Gary Gensler at the time, put a lot of pressure on ICOs, which made them mostly disappear from the bitcoin scene. But Pump.fun’s method makes me feel better about this way of distributing things.
“We chose to stick with tradition and start $PUMP through an ICO.” “ICOs are the best way to quickly get tokens to a lot of people,” said Alon, co-founder of Pump.fun.
Haseeb Qureshi, the managing partner of the venture capital firm Dragonfly, said that the launch will make it “one of the highest-grossing revenue tokens in crypto.” But people like Mary Bent, who started Truth for the Commoner, said that sites like Pump.fun are “leading Gen Z to ruin.”
What is Pump.fun?
Pump.fun is a platform for making memecoins that lets users launch tokens in only a few seconds. At first, tokens trade on the platform’s internal exchange. However, projects that do well and reach a market value of $69,000 move to PumpSwap, the platform’s decentralized exchange.
The platform is now the most important player in the memecoin space, however it has been criticized for the quality of the projects it launches. Conor Grogan, Coinbase’s head of product, said that “the great majority” of tokens on these kinds of sites are made by automated bots. One user apparently made 18,000 tokens over the course of several months.
The ICO was a success, and Pump.fun has already bought Kolscan, a blockchain analytics tool. This shows that the company wants to grow its ecosystem while being true to the Solana blockchain. Alon says that the platform’s goal is to “truly empower creators and inventors to control their financial destiny while rewarding their communities.”
As the cryptocurrency market watches PUMP’s first day of trading, the ICO’s quick success could mark the start of a new era of token releases. This could lead other companies to use similar fundraising methods in what some are calling a “ICO Summer.”
- Check out our free forex signals
- Follow the top economic events on FX Leaders economic calendar
- Trade better, discover more Forex Trading Strategies
- Open a FREE Trading Account
Save