A crossover token launch between prominent crypto trader Kimchi and memecoin platform Pump Fun has descended into chaos after users were left wondering whether or not Kimchi had been hacked.
Pump Fun and Kimchi, real name Clayton Kim, have been working together to promote Pump Fun’s “Pill Your Friends” campaign.
The platform’s co-founder Alon Cohen described Kim as “the first ever example of a trader becoming a celebrity,” while Pump Fun tried enticing users to become “the next Kimchi” by using their platform.
— Pump.fun (@Pumpfun) October 20, 2026
Read more: Pump Fun and Kraken delete Hunter Biden $LAPTOP promotion
Kimchi’s X account shared rugpull
Things turned sour yesterday when Kimchi’s X account shared a new token in the form of a QR code.
The Project Kimchi token reached a market cap of $14 million before plummeting to roughly $600,000 within minutes. It currently sits at just $183,000.
During this time, Cohen had reshared — and quickly unshared — the post. Kimchi’s X account then began deleting Pump Fun-related posts and removed the platform from his bio.
Read more: Pump Fun paid $700K to callers shilling mostly tiny tokens
Prior to this, there were already various Kimchi-themed tokens. The fiasco led many users to suspect that Kimchi was hacked.
Some suspect Kimchi is behind it
Some users believe the post may have been intentional, and that the token’s disastrous launch was, at best, a bad case of mismanagement.
Crypto trader Fabiano highlighted that Cohen didn’t share any hack warnings after unsharing the post.
He also suggested that Cohen resharing the post would have involved minute-by-minute planning, and that Kimchi’s deletion of his Pump Fun posts doesn’t make sense if the two had a partnership deal.
Kimchi’s alleged $40M TRUMP trade debunked
In its promotion, Pump Fun also reiterated an unverified claim that Kimchi had made over $40 million trading TRUMP.
However, crypto analyst Bubblemaps reports that his publicly verifiable profits are closer to $6 million.
There is a possibility of an unrevealed addresses, but Bubblemaps notes “he likely would have revealed it by now.”
Kimchi rarely posts online, but when he does, it’s often in the form of lavish displays of wealth.
Kimchi’s YouTube channel only displays one vlog at the time of writing. It was posted two days ago and features a Pump Fun promo in a private jet.
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