A fake X account posing as a former trader donated memecoins inspired by his name to charity after these Tokens surged in price to nearly 1 million USD.
This account, under the name Richard E. Ptardio, stated that it received 700 million Richard Ptardio (PTARDIO) Tokens on December 17, created through the Solana Token creator tool Pump.fun, with a screenshot showing that these Tokens were worth 53,250 USD at that time.
Just a few hours later, Ptardio shared another screenshot showing that his PTARDIO Tokens had increased by 1,765%, reaching nearly 1 million USD.
Ptardio then posted on X that the creator of the Token “did this entirely without my knowledge or consent,” and he wanted to distance himself from the project.
“I will sell all my positions and donate all the money to Save the Children. A much better use of funds,” he added.
The value of the Token has decreased significantly, but Ptardio shared that he donated 313.4 Solana (SOL), worth 69,000 USD, to that charity, aimed at supporting education, healthcare, and other programs for children worldwide.
It is not uncommon for memecoin creators to send a portion of the Token supply to the person they were inspired by.
The Ptardio account appeared as an older man claiming to have worked for 35 years at exchanges in London, Hong Kong, and New York before starting to comment on the “strange and wonderful world” of cryptocurrency on X in mid-September.
Ptardio recently encouraged investment in memecoins, stating that its “quirkiness” drives real action while claiming that “the market rewards the brave, not the rational.”
Having been created just 20 hours ago, PTARDIO reached a peak market capitalization of about 4.75 million USD before dropping to 258K USD, data from GeckoTerminal shows.
The current market capitalization of memecoins is at 128.2 billion USD, led by Dogecoin (DOGE) and Shiba Inu (SHIBA) with 57.9 billion USD and 15.4 billion USD, according to CoinGecko.
