Crypto traders have been undeterred by the lack of a two-way token bridge, a clunky decentralized exchange (DEX) experience, and a network closed to the public, as they flock to Coinbase’s layer 2 blockchain in search of a fortune. Late on Saturday, a call was made on Crypto Twitter about a meme coin, BALD (BALD), funded by Coinbase staked ether (cbETH). This quickly sparked speculation that the token was likely issued by someone at Coinbase.
The price of BALD surged 4,000,000% in less than six hours, reaching a market capitalization of $85 million. This netted the original tweeter, @cheatcoiner, over $1.4 million from an initial $500 investment. As the developer of BALD tokens kept adding more ether to a liquidity pool, the trading pair held over $32 million in liquidity and surpassed $100 million in volumes.
Four crypto wallet addresses transferred a cumulative 0.534 ether, or just over $1,000, to buy 50 million BALD within 4 minutes of the token’s issuance. These addresses sold 37 million BALD for 554 ether as trading volumes picked up, netting $1 million in less than a day.
The tides shifted late on Saturday, said Lookonchain. Such tweets are commonly known as ‘calls’ colloquially – mostly made up of influencers hyping up tokens only to dump them on unsuspecting followers at higher prices.
As of Monday, there is only a one-directional way to move funds over to Base from Ethereum, with no official support for the other way.