Written by: Luke, Mars Finance

The warmth of Christmas always goes through the cold winter and brings miraculous stories. This year, the crypto community ushered in a unique "Christmas miracle": a meme coin called MIRA, which raises funds for rare diseases, soared to $80 million in market value in just two hours, presenting a touching story of kindness and controversy to audiences around the world.

MIRA Express has a market value of 80 million US dollars. What happened?

It all started with Siqi Chen, founder and CEO of Runway. His daughter Mira was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor, which set him on the path of raising research funds for the Hankinson Lab. Against this emotionally charged backdrop, an anonymous user quickly issued a meme coin called $MIRA on the Solana chain and generously donated half of the token supply (500 million) directly to Siqi Chen's public wallet.

Siqi Chen was initially overwhelmed by this sudden "wealth". He admitted: "I really didn't know what to do, because I certainly didn't want to annoy a bunch of random people." But after careful consideration, he chose to liquidate 10% of the token supply, and the $49,200 raised was donated directly to the Hankinson Laboratory of the University of Colorado, and promised to continue to handle the remaining funds in an open and transparent manner.

This event not only excited the Solana community, but also the wider crypto community. $MIRA quickly climbed to a market value of $80 million in a short period of time, becoming a hot topic for discussion.

The outbreak of the MIRA incident also led to the emergence of other well-intentioned donations. Shaw, the founder of ai16zdao, a well-known Web3 figure, also posted on social media: "I donated 100,000 $degenai tokens to help Mira. Let us contribute to those in need together." This public act of kindness seems to have set off a wave of "crypto charity."

Similar donation behaviors have also appeared in other token ecosystems, such as the cooperation between the $DOGE community and the Ethereum Foundation. In this context, MIRA has not only become a symbolic donation tool, but also inspired more explorations of tokens for charitable purposes.

However, this has also been accompanied by an influx of speculators trying to profit from this emotionally appealing event. Relevant on-chain data shows that part of MIRA’s trading volume comes from short-term speculators who intend to get a piece of the market heat.

What are the relevant tokens?

KITKAT——Mira's dog

Mira's dog, also a meme on Pump.fun that was trying to gain traffic, sent 50% of its tokens to Siqi Chen. However, without any endorsement, Siqi Chen has been selling KITKAT, which is now almost worth zero.

Andrew

A little boy from Canada who suffers from brain cancer has a similar story to Mira. His father Kyle is also a crypto enthusiast and disclosed the crypto donation address on X as early as December 10.

Andrew’s market value was close to 4 million US dollars at its highest. Due to Kyle’s sudden sell-off, its current market value is only 400,000 US dollars.

Human blood bun or well-intentioned donation?

The success of MIRA undoubtedly demonstrates the potential of cryptocurrency in the field of goodwill fundraising. Siqi Chen repeatedly emphasized in his statement that all proceeds will be used to support rare disease research at the Hankinson Laboratory, and his family will not profit from it. This transparency and sincerity won the recognition of many supporters.

However, whether the father should sell the tokens is the most controversial point. Many haters believe that fathers should have a bigger picture and use a series of marketing methods to send the tokens to a higher market value, but they forget the original intention of fundraising tokens - to help unfortunate families out of the quagmire. Earlier selling also means that faster and better medical treatment can help sick children in reality.

Therefore, some people also question whether this type of "meme coins with emotional labels" can easily be exploited by speculators, or even become another form of "human blood steamed buns". What's more, cursing fathers and children because of the decline in token prices has allowed us to see the ugliness of human nature behind interest relationships.

Behind this Christmas miracle, there is not only the touching feeling of warm donations, but also deep reflections on the good and evil of the crypto world. Perhaps, the real answer does not lie in the event itself, but in how each of us views and participates in such an event. Should we join together in a good deed that will change the future, or just watch from the sidelines?

As Siqi Chen said: "It's magic." Perhaps the real magic is that when we choose kindness, the world really will become a better place.