From PASTERNAK to LaunchCoin, Believe transformed from an influence concept to a trust concept, reborn from the ruins of extreme volatility.
Written by: BUBBLE
LAUNCHCOIN broke through a market value of $200 million today, and the long-unseen liquidity and such a high market value of "Memecoin" almost drew half of the on-chain crypto circle into participation. The community is frantically discussing this token, with half FOMO and half FUD, a token originally issued under the personal identity of Believe founder Ben Pasternak, which has now transformed into a new platform token after renaming.
What happened from being nearly zeroed to a $200 million market value?
PASTERNAK's Vigor
On January 8, 2025, Ben Pasternak, a 25-year-old Australian young entrepreneur, posted a tweet "Buy me on Clout APP" on social media X. At that time, few people in the Crypto circle knew him. Two weeks later, on January 24, the token met the fundraising conditions on the Clout platform, becoming the first token launched and suddenly reaching an $80 million market value.
We then learned that Ben had developed the popular game 'Impossible Rush' at 15, founded the social platform Monkey at 17 with over 20 million users, and launched plant-based chicken nuggets NUGGS at 20, successfully entering Walmart markets. When he turned his attention to the crypto field, he introduced the "SocialFi" concept of Clout.
At that time, Clout's core concept was to convert "personal influence" into tradable digital assets. When a social media account's followers reach a certain threshold, the system automatically generates a corresponding token contract, making influence a quantifiable and tradable asset. Ben compared Clout to the "Wall Street and Hollywood of the Web3 era".
As the first token on the Clout platform, $PASTERNAK broke through an $80 million market value within 5 hours, largely due to investors with multiple influences and Solana community members, notably Imran Khan from AllianceDAO. Not only did AllianceDAO publicly support the project, but Imran's token also became the second token launched on the Clout platform. Referencing AllianceDAO's previous investment or support history in "dYdX, Pumpfun, etc.", the market was extremely FOMO about this.
Mobile APP Front-end Crashes, Disappears
Unfortunately, the good times didn't last. Besides $PASTERNAK, the community's impression of the platform was that the possibility of making money was extremely low, and almost the entire market was "doused" when participating in all celebrity tokens. The situation worsened when the mobile App front-end crashed, and tokens that should have been launched externally were not launched, while internal participants were in an awkward situation of being unable to trade or receive tokens.
$PASTERNAK created a trading volume of $250 million within 24 hours, but the token price began to decline the next day, and within a week, its market value shrank to 1/30 of its peak. By March, it had fallen to an $180,000 market value, and everyone believed the platform would fall like many previous SocialFi projects, a scenario the market had long been accustomed to.
Believe in the Power of Belief
On April 28, Clout announced renaming to Believe with the text "Believe in someone → Believe in something", deleting all previous tweets, representing a new beginning. The platform's concept shifted from a "Nasdaq of celebrity social traffic economy" to a "Silicon Valley tech independent investment Silicon land" value investment-driven approach.
The next day, $PASTERNAK was renamed $LAUNCHCOIN, matching Believe's launcher on X, confirming the community's speculation that PASTERNAK would become the official platform token.
Nikita Bier, a former Solana, xAI, and Coinbase product growth and advisor, extensively praised Believe, calling it a "killer viral spread APP" and listing a series of data to prove this point. Nikita, also a super entrepreneur whose previous products were acquired by social tech companies like Meta and Discord, made his words more convincing. Due to Nikita's community presence, the token's market value quickly rose from $1 million to $22 million within 24 hours.
In the following two weeks, new projects continued to appear on LaunchCoin without significant impact. However, around May 12, with entrepreneurs like $GOON, $BUDDY, $NOODLE appearing in the market and achieving good market values, market attention gradually returned. By the time of writing, the token's market value had exceeded $260 million. Thus, LaunchCoin completed its comeback.
Community Reaction
Well-known on-chain player James recently shared on social media X his experience of losing $340,000 on LaunchCoin, a sentiment shared by many players who participated in the ecosystem during the Clout period. After being severely "hurt" last time, the distrust caused many to miss this genuine surge.
Trading is such an "anti-human" behavior. The famous "leader" Gake, better known as "DNF", demonstrated her trading philosophy on this token. From on-chain data, after LaunchCoin's first heat dissipated, she chose to "buy the dips" $20,000 at the 70% dropped point of $25 million market value.
However, the price did not rebound as expected but continued to fall to an $280,000 market value. At this point, DNF chose to "buy the dips" again with $3,500. The buying price dropped 90% from the last dip, and the position size was only 17.5% of the previous one. She then exited at 50%, 400%, and 800% price increases, reducing her position cost.
After two months of patient waiting, she batch "sold" after Clout renamed to Believe, with the address now holding only about 13% of the position, generating a total profit of $1.3 million. This may not be DNF's most profitable trade, but it represents how to judge holding targets, when to hold long-term, and when to buy the dips - considerations all traders must make.
This 100X retrospective of LaunchCoin is not a particularly "glorious" project but a previously problematic hundred-fold coin. However, it's a microcosm of the "zero-sum game" in tens of thousands of token trades. From "influence Clout" to "trust Believe", this represents BEN's transformation in understanding the first principles of currency after the last failure, and what is currently happening in the market.
Our market doesn't lack influence, but trust.
