Solana Meme Coin Pumps—Then Dumps—After Promoter Climbs Hollywood Sign

A man climbed the iconic Hollywood sign on Saturday, waving a flag promoting Solana meme coin Vigilante (VIGI). Following his action, the token pumped to a $3.85 million market cap, before tumbling 69% to approximately $1 million.

The unidentified man waved a white flag atop the D of the sign for about an hour, NBC Los Angeles reported, before he was coaxed down by park rangers and law enforcement. Police later confirmed to local news station KTLA that the individual was taken into custody.

The flag that the man was holding clearly features the name and logo of the Vigilante token, as well as a line of text that is unreadable from photos and videos reviewed by Decrypt.

VIGI launched on Pump.fun on Saturday, ahead of the stunt while teasing the “most viral” marketing campaign “you’ve ever seen.” As the news circulated, it pumped to a market cap of $3.82 million before falling 71% in the hour following its all time high to $1.2 million, according to DEX Screener.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen meme coin team members perform dangerous stunts in an attempt to pump their token. Last year, one developer was hospitalized with third degree burns after setting himself on fire for his token. Countless other meme coin projects followed in his footsteps, including devs live streaming overdosing on drugs, recklessly shooting guns, and abusing animals.

Vigilante claims the Hollywood sign was just the first act of a broader marketing campaign, tweeting that the next stunt will be ten times bigger than this one. The meme coin team did not respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

Meme coins’ crazy weekend

The Hollywood sign stunt was largely buried amid a crazy weekend in meme coin land, after the President of Argentina, Javier Milei, promoted Solana token LIBRA on Friday.

Over the weekend, all hell broke loose as LIBRA crashed 89%, fraud charges were filed against Milei, and one of the creators of the token disclosed details regarding insider trading, refunds to friends that lost money, as well as links back to the MELANIA token.

Some traders have speculated that the LIBRA launch is an “FTX level event for the trenches,” as it casts doubt over the legitimacy of many of the biggest meme coin launches.

This belief is likely overblown, however, as Solana plummeted 41% in a week amid the FTX collapse—while its SOL token has fallen just 9.1% over the past week, per data from CoinGecko.

That said, “the trenches” often refers to token launchpad Pump.fun, where the most risky assets are found, which on Saturday experienced the least amount of token creations since the first day of the year, according to Dune data.

While some believe the LIBRA fiasco will be the beginning of the end of the meme coin casino, others have called for the sector to evolve, pushing for more transparency and fairer launches.