Dad Livestreams Birth of Baby 'Solana' to Pump Meme Coin—Then It Got Weird

A new dad coached his wife through the birth of their first child on Tuesday, a baby girl they named Solana—all while joined by a group of crypto degens on the livestreaming meme coin launchpad Pump.fun, who were there, naturally, to trade the token commemorating the event.

“PUUUUUSHHHH,” traders of the PREGOWIFE token spammed the chat while the woman was hours into labor. Those watching the stream could only see the ceiling of the hospital room at the time but could hear everything. Viewers told Decrypt they heard the screams, the convulsions, the nurses, and the father supporting his wife through the birth.

“I HEAR HER,” one trader wrote on the livestream, followed by a stream of congratulations from viewers who'd been watching and listening for hours. “DEV MINT BABY,” one viewer wrote.

Of course, because it's crypto and we're talking meme coins, many of those traders were dissatisfied by the end of the ordeal, with some casting doubts as to whether trading of the PREGOWIFE meme coin was really on the up and up (surprise, surprise).

PREGOWIFE peaked at a market cap of $86,940 a few hours before the birth of the baby, but it then plummeted 89% to just $9,460 a couple hours after the baby was born. The dad—who told Decrypt he goes by "Lay-Jee-Un" (legend?)—then tokenized his newborn daughter with her own Pump.fun meme coin, SOLBABY.

The father told Decrypt he “just wanted to do something historic” by making his daughter the first person “born on the blockchain.” He told Decrypt he named his daughter Solana, after the cryptocurrency network that hosts Pump.fun and the go-to blockchain for most meme coin trading action.

Coincidentally, "Solana" has become an increasingly common name in America, recently surging to the 242nd spot after entering the top 1,000 in 2023.

Pump.fun livestreams have seen their fair share of bizarre moments, from devs setting themselves on fire to degens overdosing on fentanyl—but childbirth is a first. As such, onlookers were surprised the dev’s wife was willing to share such an intimate moment, comparing the whole thing to the Jim Carrey movie “The Truman Show.” 

“Well, I didn’t record the birth on-screen,” the dad told Decrypt in response to whether his wife was comfortable with the livestream. “Hospitals would not let me record the actual birth, and [out of] respect for my wife, as she asked me not to [film the actual birth],” he said, adding that he would have filmed it if his wife permitted it.

“I respect her for being cool about it; she’s an amazing woman,” he explained. “There were times I moved the camera because she didn’t want to be on at those points.”

Ultimately, he said, his wife understands he was only doing it to financially support his family. Over the past 24 hours, the new father has made $2,830 on Pump.fun creator revenue fees alone. Pump.fun rewards meme coin creators in SOL, the native token of the Solana network, for the volume their projects generate. 

The trouble is traders suspect there may have been some funny business around the launch of both the PREGOWIFE and SOLBABY tokens. According to TrenchBot, both tokens had more than 50% of the supply bought in what’s called a “bundle.” A bundle is when tokens are bought in large amounts across multiple digital wallets to give the illusion that no single entity has too much control over the supply. Pseudonymous trader Ogawa believes whoever controlled the bundled supply was suppressing the price.

Some bag-holding "community members" have speculated the dad may have been behind the bundling scheme, but pseudonymous trader K9alphas told Decrypt he doubts that's the case.

“He was a fucking noob when it came to launching coins and did not know any of the unspoken rules,” K9alphas explained. “For example, he would be swing-trading the coin and selling large quantities [from the dev wallet].” In other words, in this trader's view, the new dad doesn't seem crypto-savvy enough to have pulled this off, so it must have been someone else.

The dad, though, took offense at the suggestion he was some crypto novice. "I'm a [crypto] vet," he said. "I might be new to Pump.fun trends and how they do things. but I'm no noob to how crypto works."

But he also said he absolutely had nothing to do with the bundling: “Never bundled any coin ever sir,” the legend said. “I have transaction screenshots of coins being made I only put 0.5 SOL.”

“Don’t listen to these people. They lie and are mad lol,” he added.

At one point on SOLBABY, the dev wallet sold $3,225 of the token at a market cap of $410,840 and the token tanked 41% to $242,240 in a single minute, according to DEX Screener.

Many meme coin degens use trading tools like Photon or BullX, which notify them when the dev behind a new token sells. Not only does selling such a large quantity directly impact the price of a low market cap token, but it also tends to turn off degens in the trenches, either causing them to sell or just not invest in the first place.

Still, SOLBABY peaked at a market cap of almost $700,000—a major improvement on the middling success of PREGOWIFE. However, the dad’s relative inexperience with Pump.fin and apparent selling of the tokens has led to his community falling out of love with his story, and the token’s market cap has since plummeted 92% to $58,049.

“He seemed like a good dude,” K9alphas said. “[He] was just probably recently introduced to Solana and Pump.fun, so he didn't know what he was doing, but still knew it would be easy for him to make money off streaming the birth of his kid lol.”

Despite the backlash, the legendary dad told Decrypt he has long-term plans for SOLBABY, calling it his “longevity coin” that will last “forever” as an on-chain representation of his daughter.

What are those long-term plans? He’s not sure. He's been awake for over 48 hours and needs some sleep.

Childbirth is tiring work, but raising a meme coin? There's no handbook for that.