Dumb money is pouring back into the crypto space, with one trader turning $62 into $2 million by betting on, of all things, a token whose mascot is a “silly dragon”. The lucky trader bought the memecoin Silly Dragon (SILLY) on Halloween 2023, shortly after it made its debut on the Solana blockchain’s DeFi markets.
$62 To $2M In 22 Days
On-chain sleuth Lookonchain posted on X (Twitter) on Dec. 27, driving attention toward a trader who made $2 million, thanks to dragon-themed memecoin Silly Dragon (SILLY).
Lookonchain notes that the trader started with only 1.5 SOL (worth approximately $92). But, the mystery trader caught wind of SILLY and swapped 1 SOL, valued at around $62 at the time, for 43 million SILLY tokens just five minutes after the memecoin went live.
Starting with only 1.5 $SOL($92), this trader made $2M in 22 days, a gain of 21,715x!
This trader spotted $SILLY 5 minutes after it opened trading and spent 1 $SOL($62) to buy 43.1M $SILLY.
Then he sold 33.34M $SILLY for $528K, and currently has 9.76M $SILLY($1.5M) left,… pic.twitter.com/ByY1Tpupah
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 27, 2023
Roughly 22 days later, the value of the cache ballooned to $2 million as SILLY skyrocketed to new record highs, hitting a market cap of over $120 million. According to Lookonchain, the trader withdrew about $528,000 of his profits while letting the remaining 9.76 million SILLY tokens worth $1.5 million ride in his wallet. At the moment, the unknown trader is the eighth-largest holder of SILLY.
Lucky Trader Or Insider Trade?
A new wave of interest hit the Solana ecosystem in recent months, with memecoins based on the network delivering enormous gains to investors. Earlier this month, dog-themed memecoin Bonk (BONK) became the third-biggest memecoin in the market, joining fellow canine-themed memecoins Shiba Inu (SHIB) and Dogecoin (DOGE) in the top three and beating the frog-themed memecoin Pepecoin (PEPE). As BONK has shot up in price, it spurred surprising new demand for the Solana Saga smartphone, which recently sold out fast.
Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko’s Nov. 8 X post saying this is the “year of the silly dragon” inspired the SILLY memecoin. The tweet referenced Yakovenko’s dragon Halloween costume at the Solana Foundation’s 2023 Breakpoint conference. The team behind the meme coin posited on the project’s official website that the Solana CEO’s tweet “infused a fresh and playful energy into the Solana narrative.”
Although the $2 million SILLY trade is quite remarkable, crypto observers on X speculated it was definitely an insider trade. Some stressed it was simply impossible for anyone to execute such a trade without inside information, while others were confident it was a developer.
