BALD price rallies as developer burns 60% of supply following rug pull on blockchain

• BALD is a meme coin on Coinbase’s Base chain that was subject to a rug pull, and investors lost nearly $23 million.
• The meme coin’s developer burned approximately 600 million tokens on Tuesday, triggering 45% daily gains in BALD. 
• BASE has seen a surge in meme coin prices in the past day. 

Coinbase’s BASE chain has seen a spike in its popularity due to the meme coin rallies in its ecosystem. Early on Tuesday, one of the earliest projects on BASE, the BALD meme coin, made headlines for a burn of 60% of its tokens. 

This is reminiscent of the SLERF meme coin in the Solana ecosystem where the developer accidentally burned nearly 50% of the supply and apologized to token sale participants. 

BALD developer burns 600 million tokens within hours

BALD developer burned approximately 600 million BALD tokens, amounting to 60% of the supply, early on Tuesday. BALD is one of the first meme coin projects on Coinbase that suffered a rug pull in July 2023. The developer withdrew nearly 3,000 Ether from the community during the rug pull incident and came back online within the past few days.

The developer’s token burn of 60% of the supply within a five-hour window on Tuesday caused BALD price to rally by nearly 45%. 

On-chain data shows the BALD token burn in two transactions:

BALD token burn. Source: Basescan 

BALD price rallied in response to the drop in the token’s supply. A decrease in circulating supply typically pushes an asset’s price higher if market participants sustain demand for the asset. Data from CoinGecko shows that BALD price is $0.051, up 46% in the past day. 

The event is reminiscent of what SLERF’s developer did in March, where the developer allegedly burned 50% of the token’s supply, and token buyers lost nearly $10 million worth of assets. 

BASE ecosystem meme coins see increase

Several meme coins in the BASE ecosystem have seen an increase in their prices in the past day. Toshi (TOSHI), Mochi (MOCHI), Smudge Cat (SMUDCAT), Degen (DEGEN) and Brett (BRETT) noted nearly double-digit gains in their prices in the past day. 

TOSHI: 17%

MOCHI: 28%

SMUDCAT: 154%

DEGEN: 8%

BRETT: 20%

Despite their recent gains, BASE meme coins’ market capitalization remain low compared to other meme coins in the ecosystem.