Apparent 'Insiders’ Make Millions After Grabbing Ethereum Version of Dogwifhat

Many crypto wallets pocketed over $1.3 million over the weekend after picking up an ample supply of the Ethereum version of meme coin dogwifhat (WIF).

As such, the Ethereum version of dogwifhat isn’t connected to Solana-based WIF, which launched in late November and reached a market capitalization of over $350 million.

Over 12 wallets, termed “insiders” by the on-chain analytics tool Lookonchain, purchased 24 million Ethereum WIF tokens for $3,000 in ether. This purchase was in the same block where the deployer opened trading – implying the trader knew precisely when the tokens would be issued and traded, Lookonchain said.

Hype for the tokens caused prices to jump from fractions of a penny to 30 cents before concerns around their ownership caused prices to dump more than 80% since Saturday.

The Ethereum WIF was issued by X user @issa, who claimed to have first posted about the original dog wearing a pink hat meme in 2019.

As many of you know, I originally created the meme you all know as "dogwifhat". It recently gained a ton of traction within the crypto space, most notably through a coin named $WIF that launched on Solana, currently trading at $270M~ market cap.

With so many of you reaching out…

— issa (@issa) February 3, 2024

“I originally created the meme you all know as “dogwifhat,” @issa said on X. “With so many of you reaching out to me and the $WIF team never acknowledging me as the original creator, I wanted to clarify that I have no affiliation with them and never owned or received any allocation.”

Meanwhile, @issa’s direct involvement with Ethereum WIF tokens has created strong demand for the tokens as it garnered some $7.7 million in trading volumes in the past 24 hours from just over 4,500 holders, DEXScreener data shows.

Debates around which is the real WIF meme token continue to rage on in crypto circles.