Solana’s Pump.Fun Moves Another $22M to Kraken—Founder Says It’s Not All Being Sold

Pump.fun, the Solana meme coin launchpad, sent another $22 million of Solana to Kraken earlier today. The latest outflow brings the total to more than $94 million sent by the Pump Fun Fee Account to Kraken in the last month, according to blockchain data on Solana block explorer Solscan.

The most recent outflow fueled speculation that Pump Fun is selling Solana on centralized exchanges, a move some feel could be suppressing Solana’s price. That speculation was quickly met with a reply from Pump Fun’s pseudonymous co-founder Alon, who indicated the sell claims were “spreading misinformation.” 

“Did you know that you can send assets to an exchange without intending to sell those assets?” he said on X (formerly known as Twitter) in response to popular on-chain data account Lookonchain’s claim that Pump Fun sold Solana. Lookonchain later issued a correction, clarifying it could not verify the sale of Solana. Pump Fun’s founders did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment. 

The popular meme coin launchpad has been a standout crypto application of this cycle, generating more than $220 million in revenue since its creation in January 2024, according to data from DefiLlama. 

A notable percentage of that revenue has been presumably sold or moved off-chain, drawing ire from the community as early as June. 

“Pump fun devs actively selling down the money they are extracting into USDC, taking money out of the hands of retail; if this pace of value destruction continues it becomes a pretty meaningful headwind for coining on Solana,” said pseudonymous crypto personality 0xSisyphus in June. 

As such, Pump Fun has been likened to the Ethereum Foundation, which is frequently cited for sending Ethereum to exchanges, a fitting scapegoat for the relative underperformance of Ethereum compared to its crypto peers Bitcoin and Solana. 

Whether Pump Fun is using Solana as collateral for leveraged trading on Kraken or simply selling, the asset has continued to gain ground alongside the platform’s ascension. Solana recently hit an all-time high, climbing above $260 before pulling back in recent days. 

Since its creation nearly 4 million tokens have been launched on Pump.fun, and the platform has accounted for more than 62% of Solana’s decentralized exchange (DEX) transactions in November.