Bitcoin Core dev Peter Todd shilling a Joker memecoin for $5,000
Senior Bitcoin developer Peter Todd has shilled a Joker-themed memecoin for $5,000 that initially rugpulled users before its market cap rocketed over 4,600% to $225,000.
Todd, who helped contribute to the early development of Bitcoin, promoted the “HAHA” Pump Fun memecoin at 6:25 UTC on X (formerly Twitter). His post read, “One bad day… one good pump Laugh your way to the moon. #HAHA.”
He revealed he was paid $5,000 for the post and that he wasn’t asked to disclose the promotion as an AD, but he did it anyway.
As for why he did it? Todd told Protos that there’s “not much to say,” and that “It’d be pretty funny if I disclosed up front that it was an AD and how much it cost.”
Read more: Justin Sun’s marketing push can’t revive his Sun Pump memecoin launcher
It seems Todd didn’t do much of a background check on who was paying him either, as he said, “Dunno who they actually are. Some random twitter user.”
He noted that AD disclosures are often a legal requirement and that, “They didn’t negotiate an NDA on how much they paid. So there was no reason for me not to disclose that too.”
“Unsurprisingly, the guy who paid me was pissed off that I openly disclosed the fact that this was just a paid advertisement,” Todd told Protos.
Immediately after Todd’s promotion, the token rose by 1500% to $0.00008 before dropping 95% minutes later in a rug pull typical of most Pump Fun memecoins. Roughly 24 hours later, however, the Peter Todd-promoted memecoin picked up major traction and reached a price of $0.0002, increasing 3,900%.
Read more: Samson Mow claims Peter Todd was ‘paid’ for OP_RETURN PR
Peter Todd is a Bitcoin Core Developer who wrote the code that would change the OP_RETURN data carrier limit from Bitcoin Core’s default mempool.
Todd was also named as the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin in Cullen Hoback’s Bitcoin documentary, a claim Todd rejects.
Plenty of onlookers weren’t impressed with the promotion. Some described it as “Insane” and suggested that it lacked “Integrity.” Others found it funny that he disclosed the promotion and described it as a “10/10” move.
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