The token survived after Catwifhat’s first and second development teams vanished and dumped all of their tokens.

Catwifhat (CIF), a meme coin based in Solana, survived two exit scams and rug pulls, even though most of these schemes cause projects to fail. This shows how the decentralized structure of cryptocurrencies can sometimes allow a project to continue even after its developer vanishes.

Catwifhat investor NFT_Sloth asserted in an interview with Cointelegraph that the project has a committed community supporting it even after enduring two rug pulls in 12 days.

First, on December 12, 2023, just a few hours after the project’s introduction, the founder allegedly sold their tokens for $388, taking 20% of WIF’s supply.

(at the time, valued at about $265) and removing the majority of its liquidity. Despite this setback, the remaining investors swiftly assumed control of the project and established a new development team to advance the token. Consequently, CIF bounced back, reaching a market capitalization of almost $4 million on December 23, just 11 days following its turbulent start.

On December 24, however, the biggest liquidity source for the token abandoned the project once more, wiping out 92% of its liquidity and plunging the price by about 76%. The token’s development team reorganized once more and carried on with the project despite more losses. Its market capitalization as of April 3 is roughly $1.4 million. If the founder had held the 200 million tokens she sold on opening day, they would be worth more than $250,000.

The precursor to Catwifhat had a $3 billion market capitalization.

NFT_Sloth claims that Catwifhat was developed to be similar to the November 2023 Solana meme coin Dogwifhat (WIF) launch. This previous coin was designed to capitalize on the “Dogwifhat” meme, which became well-known on the X platform in 2019.

The Dogwifhat meme originated on November 6, 2019, when professional Fortnite player Issa momentarily changed his profile picture on X to a picture of a Shiba Inu dog sporting a beanie hat, according to meme history website Know Your Memes. Shortly after, other Fortnite players claimed to be starting a Dogwifhat “gang” or “movement” and altered their profile pictures to the same picture.

The meme swiftly gained popularity on the network the following month as X users started altering the image in different ways and reposting it to X.

A group of cryptocurrency developers attempted to profit from this occurrence in November 2023 by developing a coin linked to it. NFT_Sloth claims that Dogwifhat users emailed pictures to several meme coin influencers on X. They altered the influencer’s profile photo by incorporating the Dogwifhat meme’s beanie.

“Joji” was one of these influencers, and their profile image was an Azuki nonfungible token. They received a photo of this Azuki with the beanie on its head, which they could use to change their profile picture and show support for the coin. The token became well-known as soon as Joji started advertising Dogwifhat on their X and Telegram channels.

When Catwifhat starts, the token developer dumps

Catwifhat was among the first meme coins to try to emulate Dogwifhat, according to NFT_Sloth.

On December 12, 2023, at the time of inception, the creator of Catwifhat created one billion tokens, all of which were transmitted to the deployer account, according to the Solscan block explorer. From there, 10% of the supply (100 million CIF) was sent to an account that started with Fm1w, and the remaining 10% was sent to an account that began with AUKt. Eight hundred million CIF, or the remaining 80%, was placed into a liquidity pool on the decentralized Raydium exchange. Each of these 800 million tokens was valued at 0.00000000125 SOL ($0.000000085675) upon launch. Each token was associated with one SOL.

On launch day, the token was not marketed, though. The developer put CIF on DEX Screener and deployed the token’s contract, but they did not pursue any more efforts to draw in customers. Despite this lack of promotion, NFT_Sloth said that the token’s resemblance to Dogwifhat drew several buyers who saw it on DEXScreener.

According to blockchain records, the account starting with Fm1w sold all 100 million of its tokens into the liquidity pool on December 12 at 9:41 am UTC. In return, the account received 1.24 SOL or almost $85 at the time. After selling its coins, the account started with AUKt and received 2.62 SOL ($180) after two minutes.

The deployer account withdrew its portion of the liquidity pool at 9:56 am. By the time it accomplished this, the deployer was left with only SOL from its withdrawal because all of the CIF in the pool had already been sold. Furthermore, the deployer only received 0.00203928 SOL ($0.14) from its withdrawal because the price had collapsed after the prior two transactions.

The developer allegedly received $265 in SOL from this exit fraud.

The Catwifhat group seizes control.

Investors were left with worthless tokens after the original developer eliminated liquidity and sold them. Nevertheless, NFT_Sloth reports that some significant backers chose to continue with the project. They banded together to assume control of its marketing. According to him, Joji joined the team during this period and started pushing Catwifhat to his audiences on X and Telegram. As a result, some “alpha callers,” or traders who openly wager on meme coins, started to advocate for Catwifhat more, eventually attracting more investors to the platform.

Following the original developer’s departure, traders experienced significant slippage. However, in the first ten days following the debut, one CIF investor acquired almost 55 million tokens and placed them in the Raydium liquidity pool, ensuring there was an adequate supply for traders to continue trading. Around 92% of the liquidity pool’s entire value was locked at the moment in this investor’s portion. They also got access to the official X account of the new squad and took on the role of social media manager. According to NFT_Sloth, this liquidity centralization ultimately caused the second “rug pull.”

The project is “rugged” once more

NFT_Sloth claims that on December 24, the social media manager deleted his liquidity and withdrew his access to the team’s X account. The outcome was a steep decline in the token’s value. Since the individual acted as a team member and had undue power over the liquidity in the pool, the current development team claims that this was a “liquidity rug pull,” he said.

NFT_Sloth asserted that the team’s Telegram channel provided additional proof of an exit scam, and the website admin went silent following this incident.

According to blockchain data, two transactions from an account starting with CWSy were confirmed on December 24 at 7:57 pm UTC. The first took 1,630 SOL and around 102 million CIF out of the Raydium liquidity pool. 869 SOL and over 55 million CIF were taken out in the second.

This period’s data reveals a sharp decline in CIF’s pricing. The coin’s price was recorded at midnight on December 23 and reached $0.00431771, according to CoinGecko. This suggests that at the start of that day, the token’s market cap was more than $4.3 million. The price dropped to $0.00261692 at the beginning of December 24, and the market value was $2.6 million—a 40% decrease. The supposed rug pull had not yet happened at this point.

Four hours after the purported rug pull, the following pricing point is noted at the beginning of the next day. CoinGecko data at that time indicates a CIF price of $0.00098130, a market cap of $981,300, and a decline of 76%.

Catwifat reassembles once more

Despite this second “rug pull,” the team got back together. While another investor, whom he refers to as “Sam B,” started a new Telegram group, NFT_Sloth claimed to have created a new website for the project. Eventually, the outdated website was removed for unclear reasons.

Additionally, NFT_Sloth appreciated X user Cryptochristo for revitalizing the CIF community. After joining the organization, they worked “ten hours a day” to market the coin, which helped raise awareness among the general population.

According to him, some community members are developing an NFT marketplace that will employ CIF as its native token, giving CIF some use. NFT_Sloth countered that meme coins shouldn’t only be evaluated for their usefulness. He said, “To be honest, the unsexy side of meme tokens is like the utility side.” “Mostly, people are in it for the LOLs.” According to him, Catwifhat wants to “transcend out of the memecoin little bubble” and acquire “mainstream” adoption, similar to Dogecoin DOGE $0.18.

CIF’s market cap is $1,451,116, and its price has been $0.0014551 as of April 2. According to CoinGecko data, the developer allegedly sold 200 million tokens for $265 on launch day; these tokens are currently valued at about $290,000.

Rug pull victims can find solace in the Catwifhat scenario since investors were allegedly able to recuperate from the losses incurred by these incidents. The majority of those harmed by other projects have been unable to move past these setbacks. More victims lost over $45 million to rug pulls in May 2023 than to decentralized financial exploits combined. Rug pulls have stolen more than $35 million from over 42,000 victims since April 2023, according to security platform Blockfence.

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