Author: Frank, PANews
Although the market has performed poorly recently, some people are still making a lot of money with MEME coins.
On June 21, a MEME coin called WATER Coin raised more than $41 million in the pre-sale stage alone. The project raised 200,000 SOL within 1 minute after the pre-sale started, and 300,000 SOL within 5 minutes, worth about $41 million, becoming the largest MEME coin pre-sale case to date, with more than 26,000 wallet addresses participating in the pre-sale. On June 24, the WATER token was launched on Solana, and its market value once exceeded $1 billion. For a newly launched project without clear endorsement, it is dramatic to complete such a funding amount. PANews conducted an in-depth analysis of the project and found that the popularity of this WATER token is not accidental.
The infamous "German Prince" is the manipulator behind the scenes
According to PANews’ investigation, the team behind WATER is the same team that operated the previously popular MEME token BEER on Solana.
BEER token is a beer-themed MEME token. On May 20, the pre-sale reached 30,000 SOL, worth nearly $5 million. After the launch, the price of BEER tokens soared, with the highest increase of 30 times and the market value reaching $500 million. According to netizens, the team behind BEER coin is Marcus Prinz von Anhalt (generally known as Prinz Markus), a German beer manufacturer. Prinz Markus is a famous German businessman who also runs multiple nightclubs and brothels. He has attracted public attention with his luxurious lifestyle. In 2006, he was adopted by the prince's wife and spent millions of dollars to buy his new name Marcus Prinz von Anhalt, which means Prince Marcus von Anhalt. Since then, Prinz Markus likes to call himself "German Prince" in the media. In 2014, Prinz Markus was sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion and fraud, and was also charged with money laundering, tax fraud and human trafficking.
Judging from Prinz Markus's social media information, he has been keen on investing in the cryptocurrency field in recent years. After the launch of the BEER token, he has taken the initiative to endorse BEER many times. Currently, Prinz Markus has 7.74 million followers on Instagram, and the prizes in the BEER holding event, such as CYBERTRUCK, private jet trips, and free beer supply, have also been displayed on Prinz Markus' social media. However, Prinz Markus's reputation is not good. On social media, some people directly call him a liar.
According to netizens, another initiator of BEER is German entrepreneur Ben Bilski, who was previously a professional swimmer and has won the German championship many times. After retiring, he started a business in the technology field and founded NAGA Group AG (one of the most highly valued fintech companies in Europe). Ben Bilski resigned as CEO of NAGA Group AG in March this year. According to public information, Ben Bilski is also keen on cryptocurrency investment.
In addition to the two German entrepreneurs, there is also a Gotbit hedge fund behind BEER. Gotbit has clearly stated on Twitter that it has reached a cooperation with BEER and helped BEER complete the work of market value management. Gotbit is a hedge fund that specializes in helping tokens achieve market value growth. Previously, the chain detective ZachXBT said on the X platform: "I would be cautious about any project that cooperates with the market maker Gotbit Hedge Fund because a leaked report showed that there are big problems with the services it provides. Gotbit claimed in this document that its strategy is to push the price up to 10 times in the first few minutes of the price discovery phase to create FOMO and accumulate as much purchasing power as possible to reach the limit and sell all tokens in the subsequent peak." Judging from the price curve of BEER, it seems to be in line with this trading idea.
Unique marketing tactics
Unlike many MEMEs, the marketing position of BEER tokens is not on Twitter, but on Instagram and Telegram. Its main user groups are from Germany and Dubai. In addition, BEER has made more designs in the gameplay, in addition to the normal pre-sale. BEER has also launched various coin holding reward activities and rewards after the market value breaks through certain ranges. The rewards include a two-person private jet Munich Oktoberfest trip, an annual beer supply, a Tesla Cybertruck, and a personally customized brewed beer.
WATER adopted the same marketing strategy after its launch. WATER's token rewards include cruises, Maldives tours, etc. In addition, WATER tokens also simulate the characteristics of water in token design, naming staking and token burning as freezing and evaporation.
In addition, the BEER team made full use of its influence on Instagram to promote it to many users who did not know much about cryptocurrency, including some tutorials on how to register a wallet from scratch to buy BEER tokens. An athlete named absolut_lukas has commented on the project and retweeted it many times. The blogger has 66,000 followers on Instagram. A Twitter user named @Shayaniii revealed that "they got in touch with a lot of influential people (not just cryptocurrency people) and spread it like fire, even big rappers like Luciano." Of course, the biggest help was Prinz Markus himself, who posted videos on Instagram many times to promote the token.
In addition, the BEER community’s Telegram channel also has 2 million subscribers.
The team continues to ship, and the chain snipers suffer serious losses
Although the initial increase in the price of BEER tokens was quite exaggerated, the price also plummeted as the team frequently sold. As of June 25, the price of BEER tokens had fallen by more than 90% from its high point, and the market value had fallen back to around US$50 million. According to LookonChain monitoring, the BEER team's associated address had shipped tokens several times after the price rose, with a total sales of more than US$3 million. In this regard, BEER officials said in the Telegram community: "On-chain analysis shows that 95% of the quotas have been sold in the recent panic. This is a very good signal for the project, and we expect the subsequent sales pressure to be greatly reduced."
Perhaps seeing the strong wealth-making ability of MEME coins, WATER achieved unexpected results when it was issued. It received a pre-sale amount of 41 million US dollars in 5 minutes. It far exceeded its expected hard cap of 55,500 SOL. Finally, WATER increased the hard cap to 250,000 SOL (about 32.5 million US dollars) and refunded 11,000 SOL to the robot accounts that participated in the pre-sale.
In addition, the development team seems to have replicated the insider trading operation on BEER. According to lookonchain, the development team has transferred 844 million WATER tokens to 11 wallets that did not participate in the pre-sale. According to PANews’ investigation, these 11 wallets have currently sold WATER tokens worth $2.36 million, and still hold tokens worth 1.75 million, which are being sold one after another.
An on-chain sniper suffered heavy losses in this opening. The sniper, whose address starts with 63KCv, spent 15,000 SOL to buy WATER (worth about 1.9 million US dollars) after the opening. Less than 10 minutes later, he sold it and only recovered 9,306 SOL, worth 1.2 million US dollars, with a loss of 710,000 US dollars.
For the BEER team, the result of this pre-sale was far beyond their imagination. However, the market trend seems to be difficult to replicate BEER's path, and the team's usual strategy of insider trading has already exhausted all the fish in the pond. I wonder how many people will be willing to pay for the next beverage MEME coin when it is issued.