Central African Republic’s Memecoin Tanks Over 96%. Another Pump and Dump?

On February 10th, the Central African Republic made headlines with the launch of its memecoin, $CAR, on the Solana network. Faustin-Archange Touadéra, the country’s president, introduced the meme token as an experiment to unite people and promote national development.

However, the meme token’s value plummeted just 24 hours after launch, leaving current token holders in losses.

$CAR: From Hero to Zero

While launching $CAR, the country’s president tweeted that he believed the token would help the country creatively gain global recognition.

The launch of $CAR caused quite a stir in the crypto market. In just three hours, a trader turned a $5,000 investment into an estimated $12 million, a return of about 2,450 times the original amount. The token’s price soared to $0.7927, attracting many new investors ready to capitalize on the hype.

Bad actors even harnessed the virality to deploy fake websites loaded with viruses to trick investors looking for the official platform. In addition, the project’s official X (formerly Twitter) account was suspended, raising further doubts about the legitimacy of $CAR and leaving investors without clear information.

Unfortunately, the excitement was short-lived. As of this writing, $CAR’s value had dropped to $0.02917, representing more than a 96% price drop from its all-time high of $0.79. This dramatic decline sparked fears that the project might be a classic “pump and dump” scheme, where the price artificially inflates before crashing.

Source: CoinMarketCap

More Government-Backed Memecoins

Memecoins have transcended their narrative as being purely speculative and fun-driven to becoming established digital assets, so much so that governments in different countries have embraced them. Central African Republic’s $CAR token is an example of such.

Another example is the Solana-based memecoin, $TRUMP, backed by the United States president, Donald Trump. Launched shortly before his inauguration last month, $TRUMP quickly rose to become one of the leading meme tokens in the market. However, the $TRUMP token has now lost as much as 75% of its value, highlighting the speculative nature of the memecoin market.