Author: Frank, PANews

Although the market has been performing poorly recently, some people are still crazy about MEME coins and making a lot of money.

On June 21st, a MEME coin called WATER Coin raised over $41 million in its presale phase. Within 1 minute of the presale launch, the project raised 200,000 SOL tokens, and within 5 minutes, it raised 300,000 SOL tokens, with a value of approximately $41 million. This makes it the largest MEME coin presale case to date, with over 26,000 wallet addresses participating in the presale. On June 24th, the WATER token was listed on Solana, and its market cap briefly surpassed $1 billion. This dramatic fundraising achievement is remarkable for a newly launched project without a clear endorsement. PANews conducted an in-depth analysis of this project and found that the popularity of the WATER token is not accidental.

The infamous 'German Prince' is the mastermind behind the scenes

According to PANews investigation, the team behind WATER is exactly the team that previously operated the hot MEME token BEER on Solana.

The BEER token is a MEME token with a beer theme, which reached a pre-sale of 30,000 SOL tokens worth nearly $5 million on May 20th. After going live, the price of the BEER token skyrocketed, with a maximum increase of 30 times, and the market capitalization reached a peak of $500 million. According to netizens, the team behind BEER token is Marcus Prinz von Anhalt, a beer manufacturer from Germany (commonly known as Prinz Markus). Prinz Markus is a well-known German businessman who also operates multiple nightclubs and brothels. His extravagant lifestyle has gained public attention. In 2006, he spent millions of dollars to purchase his new name, Marcus Prinz von Anhalt, through adoption by a princess. Since then, Prinz Markus has liked to refer to himself as the 'German Prince' in the media. In 2014, Prinz Markus was sentenced to 4 years in prison for tax evasion and fraud, and he has also been accused of money laundering, tax fraud, and human trafficking.

From Prinz Markus's social media information, it can be seen that he has been enthusiastic about investing in the cryptocurrency field in recent years. After the launch of the BEER token, he has actively endorsed BEER multiple times. Currently, Prinz Markus has 7.74 million followers on Instagram, and the prizes in the BEER holding activity, such as CYBERTRUCK and private jet trips, free beer supply, etc., have also been displayed on Prinz Markus's social media. However, Prinz Markus's reputation is not good. Some people directly call him a fraud on social media.

According to netizens, another co-founder of BEER is German entrepreneur Ben Bilski. Ben Bilski was previously a professional swimmer and has won the German championship several times. After retiring, he started multiple businesses in the technology field, including founding NAGA Group AG (one of the highest valued fintech companies in Europe). In March of this year, Ben Bilski resigned from the position of CEO at NAGA Group AG. From publicly available information, it appears that Ben Bilski is also enthusiastic about cryptocurrency investments.

In addition to two German entrepreneurs, there is also a Gotbit Hedging Fund behind BEER, which has explicitly stated on Twitter that it has reached a cooperation with BEER and helped BEER manage its market capitalization. Gotbit is a hedging fund specialized in helping tokens increase their market capitalization. Previously, on the X platform, on-chain detective ZachXBT stated, 'I will be cautious about any project that collaborates with market maker Gotbit Hedge Fund, as a leaked report shows significant issues with the services they provide.' In this document, Gotbit claims that their strategy is to push the price up to 10 times during the initial few minutes of the price discovery phase to create FOMO and accumulate as much purchasing power as possible, reaching the limit, and then selling all the tokens at the subsequent peak. Looking at the price curve of BEER, it seems to align with this manipulation strategy.

Unique Marketing Tactics

Unlike many MEME, the marketing base of BEER tokens is not on Twitter, but on Instagram and Telegram. Its main user group comes from Germany and Dubai. In addition, BEER has made more designs in gameplay, in addition to normal presales. BEER also launched various holding rewards activities and rewards after breaking through certain market cap ranges. The rewards include a two-person private plane trip to the Munich Oktoberfest, annual beer supply, a Tesla Cyber​​truck, and personally customized brewed beer.

After its launch, WATER adopted the same marketing strategy. The holding rewards of WATER include cruises, trips to the Maldives, and other content. In addition, the design of the WATER token simulates the characteristics of water, naming stake and token burn as freeze and evaporate.

In addition, the BEER team fully utilized its influence on Instagram to promote to many users who are unfamiliar with cryptocurrencies, including creating tutorials on how to register a wallet from scratch and purchase BEER tokens. A sportsman named absolut_lukas has commented on the project multiple times and shared it. The blogger has 66,000 followers on Instagram. A Twitter user named @Shayaniii revealed, 'They have contacted many influential people (not just cryptocurrency enthusiasts) and spread it like wildfire, even including famous rappers like Luciano.' Of course, the biggest support comes from Prinz Markus himself, who has posted videos promoting the token on Instagram multiple times.

In addition, the BEER community also has 2 million subscription users in the Telegram channel.

The team continues to dump, on-chain snipers suffer heavy losses

Although the initial increase in the BEER token was quite exaggerated, the price has plummeted with the frequent sales of the team. As of June 25th, the price of BEER tokens has fallen by more than 90% from the highest point, and the market capitalization has also fallen to about $50 million. According to LookonChain monitoring, the BEER team's associated addresses have dumped multiple times after the price surged, with a total sales of more than $3 million. In response, the BEER team said in the Telegram community: "On-chain analysis shows that 95% of the quota has been sold out in the recent panic. This is a very good signal for the project, and we expect that the sales pressure will be greatly reduced in the future."

Perhaps seeing the powerful wealth creation potential of MEME coin, WATER achieved unexpected results during its issuance. It raised a presale amount of $41 million within 5 minutes, far exceeding its projected hard cap of 55,000 SOL. In the end, WATER increased the hard cap to 250,000 SOL (approximately $32.5 million) and refunded 11,000 SOL from participating robot accounts.

After the WATER token went online, it rose nearly 10 times in a short period of time, and then fell all the way within a few hours. As of June 25th, its price dropped to as low as $0.00097, which is lower than the opening price of $0.0016 and below the issuing price.

In addition, the development team seems to have replicated the rat trading operation on BEER. According to lookonchain, the development team has transferred 844 million WATER tokens to 11 wallets that did not participate in the presale. According to PANews investigation, these 11 wallets have sold WATER tokens worth $2.36 million and are still gradually selling tokens worth $1.75 million.

An on-chain sniper suffered heavy losses in this opening. The sniper with the address starting with 63KCv bought 15,000 SOL (worth about $1.9 million) after the opening of WATER, but only recovered 9,306 SOL (worth $1.2 million) in less than 10 minutes, resulting in a loss of $710,000.

For the BEER team, the result of this presale far exceeded expectations. But it seems difficult to replicate BEER's path in the market, and the team's usual rat trading strategy has already been exposed. I wonder how many people will be willing to buy in the next beverage MEME coin issuance.