After Siqi Chen shared a post about his daughter’s brain tumor diagnosis, the crypto community created the meme coin MIRA to raise money for research funding. The token surged more than 700%, accumulating a market cap of $72 million.
The Solana (SOL) -based meme coin MIRA, named after Chen’s daughter, has formed a ‘god-candle’ mere minutes after it was launched on pump.fun.
According to data from DEX screener, the token has accumulated a market cap of $72 million and a liquidity of $7.2 million since it launch on Dec. 26 at 03:00 AM UTC. At the time of writing, the meme coin rose by 710% and is currently trading hands at $$0.0768 and holds a trading volume of $16.4 million.
The token was created after co-founder and CEO of Runway, Siqi Chen posted a thread about his four-year old daughter Mira being diagnosed with a rare brain tumor called craniopharyngioma.
At the end of his thread, he asked X users to help send donations to fund Dr. Todd Hankinson’s research. Hankinson is a professors of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics from the University of Colorado, who Chen claimed “runs the only lab in the world focusing on this tumor.”
“Though there is still no cure, with the help of our research team, we have already helped dr. Hankinson’s lab identify promising new drugs for Mira’s tumor. But we need your help,” wrote Chen in his post.
The thread reached more than 133,000 users, with many asking Chen to share his crypto wallet addresses, including Ethereum, Solana, and Bitcoin. Not long after, Chen stated that someone launched a meme coin named after his daughter on the Solana network to help raise money for the brain tumor research.
The token developer sent Chen half of its entire supply, which is worth $400,000 at the time. Though, he expressed he was hesitant in selling the tokens because he does not want to rug pull the people who invested in the meme coin. Despite people in the comments saying they donated their funds to MIRA willingly.
In the end, Chen declared that he plans to sell 10% of the supply and use 5% of the tokens for Hankinson Lab research, which is worth $49,263. He intends to hold onto the other 5%, adding that he will not be selling more than that without a 24-hour prior notice.
He also clarifies that all proceeds will go to funding research for the rare brain tumor at Hankinson Lab and that his family will not receive a single cent from the token.
“I just want to say that whoever said crypto has no legitimate use cases, you can tell them that funding for rare disease research is a pretty legitimate use case,” said Chen.
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