POOP Token Launch Sparks Controversy: Insider Trading Allegations Surface

Amid the ongoing meme coin craze, Doodles co-founder Jordan "Poopie" Castro unexpectedly launched the POOP token over the weekend. Despite low inherent value, the token surged upon launch as two wallets, including that of NFT collector Pranksy, swiftly acquired over 38% of the supply, raising concerns of insider trading. POOP has since plunged 65% in 24 hours, trading at under half a cent per token, highlighting the volatility and potential for manipulation in the meme coin market.

POOP Token Launch Provokes Controversy Amid Allegations of Insider Trading

The crypto market's meme coin frenzy persists unabated, with the co-founder of the renowned Doodles NFT project unleashing a surprise POOP token over the weekend. While the launch sparked excitement, it has also ignited controversy, with accusations of insider trading casting a shadow over the project.

On Saturday, Doodles co-founder Jordan "Poopie" Castro announced the launch of POOP, a meme coin with minimal inherent value beyond its association with feces. The token was airdropped on Basis, an Ethereum scaling platform developed by Coinbase that has become a breeding ground for meme coin investments.

"There's absolutely no promise or guarantees of anything," Castro wrote about POOP. "This could very well be worth far less than zero, like a fresh, steaming pile of dung."

$poop was airdropped to:

• holders of doodles, genboxes, dooplicators
• holders of custom made 1/1 doodles
• doodlebank people and voters
• genesis field burners
• doodle minters, even if you FLOORED IT AND GTFO

"Read your wallets on base and skim through the post," Castro tweeted, sharing the relevant link.

POOP tokens were distributed to past and present Doodles stakeholders, including holders of affiliated NFTs (Doodles, Doodles Genesis Bins, Dooplicators, and one-of-a-kind Doodles), minters of the initial Doodles and Genesis Field NFTs, and wallets that have participated in the governance of Doodlebank, the project's on-chain treasury.

Despite Castro's apparent connection to Doodles and the token's airdrop throughout the ecosystem, POOP has no official affiliation with the project. This clarification initially confused some community members.

Within minutes of POOP's launch, the airdropped tokens distributed to over 14,000 wallets were collectively worth approximately $3 million. However, Doodles community members were not the primary beneficiaries of Castro's "experiment in flinging poop." Far from it.

Immediately following the launch, before Castro had even announced the token, two wallets seized over a third of the total POOP token supply, according to an analysis by on-chain data firm Bubblemaps.

One of these wallets "sniped" a staggering 23.5% of the entire Poopcoin supply within seconds, promptly distributing the bounty across 54 on-chain addresses. This hoard of POOP tokens was worth roughly $5 million at the time, significantly more than the total value of the POOP airdrop to all Doodles community members.

The other wallet sniped 15% of the total POOP supply before Castro's announcement, accumulating a massive bag of tokens worth approximately $3 million.

The implication that the token launch's two largest beneficiaries had gained an unfair advantage or insider information quickly spread on Crypto Twitter. However, it was not long before one of the POOP snipers revealed themselves to be Pranksy, a prominent pseudonymous NFT collector.

When questioned by Bubblemaps on Twitter about their lightning-fast POOP acquisition, Pranksy responded succinctly: they had noticed that 40 minutes before Castro's announcement, the Doodles co-founder had already airdropped the token to Doodles community members.

A Doodles holder, Pranksy claimed they simply searched for the token's ID and bought as much as they could as soon as it began to surge in price, minutes later. They ended up with 15% of the total token supply.

"It arrived in wallets tied to doodles 40 minutes prematurely of his announcement tweet, I noticed my doodles wallets held it and the contract was locked," Pranksy tweeted. "I loaded the token ID into photon and pressed get after I saw a green candle."

Pranksy's explanation suggests that Castro's "experiment in flinging poop" has demonstrated that fecal matter does not distribute itself evenly downslope, at least in the digital realm. In the meantime, POOP has plummeted nearly 65% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko, hovering at less than half a cent per token.