Is Believe facing backlash from traffic? The platform token LAUNCHCOIN's explosive pump cannot hide the ecological concerns, and community sentiment has turned sharply downward.

Author: Nancy, PANews

Believe is currently facing a backlash in traffic. With the aggressive rally of the platform token LAUNCHCOIN, the continuous appearance of tens of millions in speed pass, and the influence of numerous Web2 entrepreneurs, Believe briefly occupied the central topic position in the recent Launchpad melee, becoming the focus of attention. However, behind the hustle and bustle, issues such as high platform fees, frequent “knife scraping” phenomena, and a lack of sustainable narratives are gradually emerging, leading to a rapid rise in community FUD sentiment.

YAPPER’s crash has become a trigger for FUD, and the Believe ecosystem is facing multiple risks.

$YAPPER is the trigger for the FUD storm in the Believe ecosystem. According to reports, Yapper is a deepfake AI application for creating funny high-quality videos, with platform users generating over 100 million views. Its founder, Emmet Halm, previously founded the online tutoring company The Massapequa Tutor and the college application platform Acceptitas, both of which have been acquired.

Halm’s entrepreneurial experience in the Web2 field has quickly brought attention to its launched token $YAPPER, even receiving multiple retweets of support from Believe’s official account, pushing its market value to exceed 28 million USD at one point. However, GMGN data shows that as of the time of writing, the price of $YAPPER has fallen by as much as 75.62% from its peak.

However, this decline is not a coincidence; there are multiple factors behind it: on one hand, Halm has been accused of participating in the operations of another token $STEALTH within the Believe ecosystem, which shares the same logo as the Stealth Startup founded by Halm. In response to the controversy, the $STEALTH official gave a vague reply, stating, “This is not plagiarism, nor does it represent a connection, because this logo itself is a common symbol for many ‘stealth entrepreneurs’, just like a signal for an entrepreneur ‘invisible’ in the market.”

Moreover, Halm’s entrepreneurial background has also sparked controversy. According to foreign media The Harvard Crimson, Halm, who claims to be a Harvard dropout and a crypto entrepreneur, promoted the slogan “Harvard students help you get into school” when founding Acceptitas, attracting a large number of clients and mentors. However, after the company was acquired, Halm failed to properly transition, resulting in many mentors’ salaries being delayed and clients unable to get refunds, which led to legal and ethical questions.

On the other hand, the issuance of $YAPPER continued the phenomenon of high margins and scrapers on the Believe platform, resulting in retail investors taking orders at a high level and suffering serious losses. Among them, Believe’s excessively high margin ratio not only caused serious capital outflows, but also led to high transaction costs for users. According to crypto researcher 0xLoki, the core problem of Believe is highly consistent with FriendTech at that time: the net margin (which will not remain in the ecosystem) is too high, and it will be gone if you buy and sell 4% (Believe charges a 2% purchase and sale tax), and if you simply estimate (the cumulative transaction volume of the current Believe ecosystem) of 16.78 billion *2%, the net margin has exceeded 33 million US dollars. The ratio of Pump.fun’s internal and external trading is estimated at 1:3, and the actual net margin rate (net margin/total trading volume) = 1% * (1/4) = 0.25%. It looks like the transaction fee is 1:2, but the actual net margin is 1:8.

“A trading volume of over 100m, with a market value of less than 10m, what does it indicate? It indicates that the whales dumped on retail investors when they were most FOMOing into the trading volume,” pointed out crypto KOL @xingpt. Furthermore, because Believe allows for the rapid creation of tokens through social tagging, this method often leads to new tokens being “scooped” (the act of buying tokens at lightning speed by bots at the moment of issuance or trading opening), quickly seizing low-priced chips, and then pushing up the market value in a short period before “dumping” (distributing after a rapid increase) into the market. Retail investors often become the ones left holding the bag after FOMOing in at high prices. Data shows that in the past 24 hours, over half of the tokens on the Believe platform have seen declines of over 50%.

The main force controls the market, driving a surge of over 300 times, with LAUNCHCOIN contributing more than half of the ecological market value.

PANews previously reported that Believe was formerly known as PASTERNAK, a celebrity coin created by Clout founder Ben Pasternak, which will launch in January 2025. Clout is a SocialFi platform that combines features from platforms like Friend.Tech, Pump.fun, and Moonshot, allowing celebrities and creators to issue tokens named after themselves.

With the endorsement of institutions like Alliance DAO, PASTERNAC saw a surge in popularity, and its market value once soared to tens of millions of dollars. However, following a market correction and technical issues on the platform, the price of PASTERNAC subsequently plummeted, dropping to a low of several hundred thousand dollars. Moreover, the price of the second token $IMRAN (named after the founder of Alliance DAO) issued on Clout also crashed, further exacerbating the market’s loss of confidence in PASTERNAC.

After a period of silence, on April 29, PASTERNAK announced its rebranding as “Launch Coin on Believe” and leveraged LAUNCHCOIN to aggressively attract traffic again.

According to GMGN data, since the name change announcement on April 29, the market capitalization of LAUNCHCOIN once surged to over $360 million, with a peak return rate close to 321 times, demonstrating strong market explosiveness and significant capital enthusiasm.

From the change in holding addresses, Holderscan data shows that the number of holding addresses for LAUNCHCOIN had a noticeable turning point on May 1st, when its market value broke through 20 million USD and the pace of user entry significantly accelerated, with a notable increase in capital attention. After nearly ten days of sideways consolidation, LAUNCHCOIN began to accelerate its volume increase on May 11th, and its market value quickly surged, setting a new high for the period.

From the analysis of on-chain data, LAUNCHCOIN currently shows a highly controlled situation, with the top 100 addresses controlling over 54% of the circulating tokens, indicating a clear concentration of holdings. This structure, in a sense, suggests that there is “artificial” dominance in price fluctuations, with the leading funds possessing strong manipulation capabilities and influence.

In terms of the distribution of held currency amounts, the average holding amount per person is approximately $9,100; if we exclude the top hundred addresses, the average holding of the remaining nearly 29,000 addresses drops to about $5,600. This indicates that the holding scale of ordinary coin holders is relatively limited, and most investors are small to medium retail investors.

Overall, LAUNCHCOIN exhibits a typical pattern of “institutional control + retail following”, where institutional funds drive market sentiment and attract a large number of retail investors to enter the market.

From the overall situation of the Believe ecosystem, up to now, the platform has issued more than 13,000 tokens, with a total market value of more than $390 million, of which LAUNCHCOIN alone contributes about 67.2% of the market capitalization. AT THE SAME TIME, THE TRADING VOLUME OF LAUNCHCOIN ACCOUNTED FOR 35% OF THE OVERALL ECOSYSTEM IN THE PAST 24 HOURS. IT CAN BE SEEN THAT THE POPULARITY OF PLATFORM COINS IS HEAVILY DEPENDENT ON THE MARKET PERFORMANCE OF LAUNCHCOIN. However, the platform token is accused of lacking empowerment such as dividends and practical application scenarios, and the community has great doubts about its long-term sustainability. Once the market heat is difficult to maintain, investor confidence may decline rapidly, and there is a risk of stampede.

Under multiple concerns in the market, Ben Pasternak has responded on social media, stating that the past few days have been very crazy, and he is very grateful for the energy behind the project’s vision. The team has seen a surge in interest from the founders, but will temporarily not promote new projects in the recommendation section, instead focusing on supporting the projects that are already under construction. The primary task of Believe is to ensure they have the tools and resources needed for success.

Overall, projects that truly have the ability to transcend cycles will ultimately return to fundamentals: product experience, mechanism innovation, and community trust. What Believe will face next is not just how to maintain market enthusiasm, but how to emerge from the “coin-making frenzy” with a sustainable path.