Bitcoin Pizza Day was supposed to be a celebration of crypto utility, but instead it was dampened by a flurry of new pizza-themed memecoins that swindled thousands of dollars from investors.
Every May 22, many crypto and Bitcoin faithful celebrate the anniversary of when, in 2010, a computer developer named Laszlo Hanyecz bought two pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin, a sum now worth more than $260 million.
While many crypto users (and some company executives) this year celebrated and shared jokes on Crypto Twitter, others ginned up memecoins that accumulated hundreds of thousands of dollars in market capitalization before rugging investors.
Happy #Bitcoin Pizza Day đ pic.twitter.com/NslwCvhiCr
â Michael SaylorâĄď¸ (@saylor) May 22, 2023
#Bitcoin Pizza Day â CZ giving tips on making the best #BinancePizza pic.twitter.com/yMEMyzV1dG
â Richard Teng (@_RichardTeng) May 22, 2023
In total, four tokensâBTCPizza, BPizza, PizzaDay, and EthPizzaâthat all were created within the past three days have accumulated more than $300,000 in market cap, according to Dextools. Itâs possible there were more.
The team or person behind BPizza, the new memecoin with the second-largest investment total, quickly changed its sell tax, to 100%, meaning it would be unfeasible for investors to sell it. Meanwhile, EthPizza turned off transfers and sales for the token shortly after accumulating a market cap of $38,000.
The coin with the highest market cap, BTCPizza, was still trading as of Wednesday afternoon at a market cap of nearly $200,000. The tokenâs price was down 16% from its high on Tuesday.
Memecoins are highly volatile and are backed by nothing but hype. They have no practical use and quite often are scams for unsuspecting investors seeking the next big thing. Â
One of the latest, and perhaps most surprising memecoin moons, came from Pepe coin, which quickly peaked at market cap of $1.6 billion before plummeting. The coin still had a market cap of more than $250 million on Wednesday, according to CoinMarketCap.