Leading Solana-based memecoin $WHITEWHALE witnessed a brutal dump earlier today, resulting in a massive price crash of 60% in the past 24 hours. The abrupt memecoin sell-off is yet another cautionary tale in the world of digital currencies that are born out of internet virality.
White Whale token price drops 60%
The development was reported by X user Julius Elum, who stated that one of the earliest buyers of the viral $WHITEWHALE memecoin had cashed out $1.3 million, decimating the token’s total market cap from $200 million to $40 million.
Notably, this is one of the largest memecoin crashes since late 2024. The White Whale X account remarked on the token price crash, saying that the token dumping from the whale “triggered a cascade of market selling.”
According to the latest data from Coingecko, the White Whale memecoin is down an astronomical 79.8% over the last seven days, trading at $0.027 at the time of writing.
From a market cap perspective, the token had a market cap of $190 million on January 11. Today, the market cap has plummeted to a mere $30 million.
The White Whale founder, despite the crash in token price, stated the project’s mission remains the same. However, the community didn’t quite appear to have been buying the narrative.
In the X thread’s comments section, several members of the White Whale community alleged the developer was using them as exit liquidity. Some even commented that the post is AI-generated.
For the uninitiated, exit liquidity refers to new buyers providing the demand that allows early investors or insiders to sell their tokens at high prices. In hype-driven markets, such as those for memecoins like White Whale, retail traders often unknowingly serve as exit liquidity when momentum reverses and large holders cash out.
Beware of memecoins
Memecoins have gained immense popularity over the past year or two due to their virality and potential to offer extraordinary profits to traders in a short period of time. However, this is not without any caveats.
Since the majority of memecoins have a short shelf life, they suffer from low liquidity. Due to thin liquidity, it is easy for big ‘whales’ to manipulate the token price compared to large cap altcoins such as ETH or SOL.
