In 2024, the Solana blockchain experienced a rapid expansion in the memecoin market, with pump.fun being at the forefront. The platform captured a massive audience seeking quick profits. Crypto.news conducted an in-depth analysis of the profitability of investing in pump.fun tokens, revealing that while a few early adopters managed to secure profits, the majority of investors ultimately lost money.

Pump.fun is the leader in Solana’s memecoin ecosystem and holds 50% of the market share. It achieved this by streamlining token launches and making them both quick and easy. It also focused on ensuring a fair process for creating and trading tokens, avoiding problems like presales or team allocations.

Pump.fun operates as follows:

• Users pick a meme coin they like.
• They buy the coin through a bonding curve.
• They can sell the coin anytime to either secure a profit or cut a loss.
• If the token’s market cap hits $69,000, $12,000 of liquidity is locked into Raydium, a decentralized exchange on Solana, and then burned.

Using various queries and scripts inspired by Dune analysts @adam_tehc, @hashed_official, and @evelyn233, we developed our own versions that allowed us to gather data for this article.

Due to the ease of use and the rise in popularity, around 300,000 tokens have been created on Solana each month since March 2024. However, not all of these tokens even reach a market cap of $69,000. Over six months, 33,683 tokens made it to Raydium, while a total of 1,883,578 tokens were deployed on pump.fun. This results in a graduation success rate of only 1.79%.

The statistics for investors on the pump.fun platform paints an even grimmer picture. Out of 29,601,462 total wallets involved, a majority experienced negative outcomes:

• 17,725,908 wallets (59.9%) recorded negative Profit and Loss (PNL). 89% of those wallets realized losses, locking in their negative returns by selling at a loss.
• On the other hand, 11,126,772 wallets (37.6%) reported positive PNL, with 98% of these realizing actual gains.

The distribution of profits further shows the low probability of winning through memecoin investments. To provide a clearer picture of the probabilities associated with different profit levels on pump.fun, here are some realistic comparisons:

• +$100 profit (6.47% chance): Less likely than being accepted into Harvard as an early applicant (7.8% in 2021).
• +$1,000 profit (0.76% chance): Similar to the probability of having twins, which is around 0.4%.
• +$10,000 profit (0.046% chance): Less likely than becoming a NASA astronaut (0.055%).
• +$100,000 profit (0.0033% chance): Less likely than being struck by lightning in a lifetime (about 0.00653%).
• +$1,000,000 profit (0.000540% chance): Comparable to the chance of being killed by a meteorite impact (approximately 0.0004%).
• +$10,000,000 profit (0.000132% chance): Similar to the odds of flipping a coin and getting the same side 20 times in a row.

Many individuals are searching for a quick way to transform their financial situations, inspired by stories of random people making huge profits overnight. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that most will lose, often catastrophically. Instead of gambling on unproven tokens, investors should focus on assets like BTC, ETH, and SOL — assets with a proven track record. These won’t turn $100 into a million tomorrow, but they will grow an individual’s wealth steadily and sustainably. At the end of the day, investing is for making money and not losing. The sooner one abandons the dream of instant riches and embraces this truth, the sooner they’ll start making decisions that truly increase their net worth. Anything else is a reckless path to financial ruin.