Author: Nancy,
Believe is currently facing backlash from its traffic. With the aggressive rally of its platform token LAUNCHCOIN, the introduction of tens of millions in rapid turnover, and the influence of numerous Web2 entrepreneurs, Believe recently seized the spotlight in the Launchpad melee, becoming a focal point 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 escalation of FUD sentiments within the community.
YAPPER’s plummet 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 used to create 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 sector has quickly brought attention to its launched token $YAPPER, which even received multiple retweets of support from Believe’s official account, pushing its market value to briefly exceed $28 million. 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 accidental and is driven by multiple factors: on one hand, Halm is accused of having participated in the operation of another token, $STEALTH, within the Believe ecosystem, which shares the same logo as Stealth Startup founded by Halm. In response to the controversy, the official $STEALTH statement vaguely replied, “This is not plagiarism, nor does it represent a connection, because this logo itself is a common symbol for many ‘stealth entrepreneurs’, much like a signal for an entrepreneur ‘invisibility’”.
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, used the slogan “Harvard students help you advance your education” when founding Acceptitas, attracting a large number of clients and mentors. However, after the company was acquired, Halm failed to properly hand over the operations, resulting in many mentors not being paid and clients having no recourse for refunds, which raised 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, but a market cap of less than 10m, what does this indicate? It indicates that the big players are dumping when retail investors are most FOMOing into the trading volume,” pointed out crypto KOL @xingpt. Furthermore, since Believe allows for the rapid creation of tokens through social tags, this method causes new tokens on the platform to often be quickly snatched up by “scrapers” (the act of botting to buy tokens at high speed the moment they are issued or traded) at low prices, and then after rapidly pushing up the market cap, they “dump” (distribute after a quick pump) onto the market, leaving retail investors who FOMO in at high prices often as the ones left holding the bag. Data shows that in the past 24 hours, over half of the tokens on the Believe platform have seen a decline 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.
Previous reports mentioned that Believe was originally STERNK, a celebrity coin created by Clout founder Ben Pasternak, which will go live 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, STERNAK once saw a surge in popularity, with its market capitalization briefly reaching tens of millions of dollars. However, following an overall market correction and technical issues with the platform, the price of STERNAK subsequently plummeted, dropping to several hundred thousand dollars at its lowest. Moreover, the second token issued on Clout, $IMRAN (named after the founder of Alliance DAO), also experienced a drastic price drop, further exacerbating the market’s loss of confidence in STERNAK.
After a period of silence, on April 29, STERNAK announced its name change to “Launch Coin on Believe” and violently pumped traffic back with LAUNCHCOIN.
According to GMGN data, since the name change was announced on April 29, the market capitalization of LAUNCHCOIN once soared to over 360 million USD, with a maximum return rate close to 321 times, demonstrating strong market explosiveness and enthusiasm for capital.
From the perspective of changes in holding addresses, Holderscan data shows that the number of holding addresses for LAUNCHCOIN experienced a significant turning point on May 1, when the market value broke through 20 million USD, and the pace of user entry noticeably accelerated, with a significant increase in capital attention. After nearly ten days of sideways consolidation, LAUNCHCOIN began to accelerate its volume increase on May 11, quickly rising in market value and setting a new phase high.
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 suggests that there is room for “artificial” dominance in price fluctuations, as the leading capital possesses strong operational capabilities and influence.
In terms of the distribution of holding amounts, the overall average holding amount per person is about $9,100; if the top 100 addresses are excluded, the average holding amount of the remaining nearly 29,000 addresses drops to about $5,600, indicating that the holding scale of ordinary holders is relatively limited, and most investors are small and medium-sized retail investors.
Overall, LAUNCHCOIN shows 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, as of now, the platform has issued more than 13,000 tokens, with a total market value of ecosystem tokens exceeding $390 million, of which LAUNCHCOIN alone contributes about 67.2% of the market value share. At the same time, in the past 24 hours, the trading volume of LAUNCHCOIN accounted for 35% of the overall ecosystem. It can be seen that the popularity of the platform token heavily relies on the market performance of LAUNCHCOIN. However, this platform token has been criticized for lacking dividends and practical application scenarios, leading to significant doubts within the community regarding its long-term sustainability. Once market enthusiasm is difficult to maintain, investor confidence may quickly decline, posing a risk of a stampede.
Amid multiple market concerns, Ben Pasternak has recently posted 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 founders, but they will not be promoting new projects in the recommendation section for the time being; instead, they will focus on supporting projects that are already in development. Believe’s primary task is to ensure they have the tools and resources needed for success.
Overall, projects that truly have the ability to withstand cycles will ultimately return to fundamentals: product experience, mechanism innovation, and community trust. What Believe has to face next is not just how to maintain market enthusiasm, but how to emerge from the “coin minting craze” with a sustainable path.
