A blockchain researcher accidentally destroyed $58,270 worth of Pump.fun's PUMP tokens on Solana while attempting to clear spam tokens from his wallet. Chang Min Yu purchased $40,000 worth of PUMP during Saturday's highly sought-after ICO, which sold $500 million worth of tokens at $0.004 each in just 12 minutes.
When PUMP began trading on Monday at $0.005827 (a 45% increase from ICO price), Min Yu was using Axiom Exchange's burn feature to remove unwanted tokens. Mistaking his PUMP holdings for spam, he permanently sent them to an inaccessible blockchain address. He only realized hours later after seeing social media posts about the incident.
Remarkably, Min Yu maintained philosophical composure, telling Decrypt: "I'm not sad or angry... Focus on what you can control." His friends and partner were reportedly more upset than him about the loss. Separately, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain identified another wallet that accidentally burned 10 million PUMP tokens worth $75,000 during similar cleanup operations.
Despite participating in the ICO, Min Yu revealed he was bearish on PUMP's long-term prospects and had planned to short the token between $0.005-$0.007 while holding his ICO allocation as a hedge. The PUMP tokenomics include a maximum supply of 1 trillion tokens, with 33% allocated to the ICO and 20% to the development team.