From PASTERNAK to LaunchCoin, Believe has evolved from the concept of influence to the concept of trust, and has been reborn from the ruins of skyrocketing and plummeting.

Written by BUBBLE

LAUNCHCOIN has exceeded the market value of 200 million US dollars today. The long-lost liquidity and such a high market value of "Memecoin" have almost attracted half of the on-chain crypto circle CT to participate. The community is discussing this token crazily, half of which is FOMO and half of which is FUD. Pasternak, a token that was once issued by the personal identity of Believe founder Ben Pasternak, has transformed into a new platform coin after changing its name.

From zero to a market value of 200 million US dollars, what happened in between?

PASTERNAK's high spirits

On January 8, 2025, Ben Pasternak, a 25-year-old young Australian entrepreneur, posted a tweet on the social media X, "Buy me on Clout APP". At that time, not many people in the Crypto circle knew him. Two weeks later, on January 24, the token met the Clout platform's fundraising conditions and reached 100%, becoming the first token launched by the platform and reaching a market value of 80 million US dollars in one fell swoop.

It was then that we learned that Ben had developed the popular game "Impossible Rush" at the age of 15, founded the social platform Monkey at the age of 17, with more than 20 million users, and launched plant-based chicken nuggets NUGGS at the age of 20, successfully entering the Walmart market. When he set his sights on the encryption field, he launched Clout with the concept of "SocialFi".

At that time, Clout's core concept was to transform "personal influence" into tradable digital assets. When the number of followers of a social media account reaches a certain threshold, the system will automatically generate a corresponding token contract, making influence a quantifiable and tradable asset. At this time, Ben compared Clout to "Wall Street and Hollywood in the Web3 era."

As the first token of the Clout platform, $PASTERNAK’s market value exceeded 80 million US dollars within 5 hours of its launch. A large part of the reason for this is from multiple influential investors and members of the Solana community, among whom is Imran Khan of AllianceDAO. Not only did AllianceDAO publicly support the project, Imran’s token also became the second token launched by the Clout platform. Referring to the glorious history of AllianceDAO’s investment or support of "dYdX, Pumpfun, etc.", the market is also extremely FOMO about this.

The front end of the mobile app crashed and disappeared

Unfortunately, the good times didn’t last long. Except for $PASTERNAK, the community’s impression of the platform at that time was that the possibility of making money was extremely low. Almost all the celebrity tokens on the platform were “poured” when the market participated. To make matters worse, after the mobile app was launched, the front end of the app crashed and all the tokens that were supposed to be launched on the external market were not launched. Participants in the internal market were in an awkward situation where they could not trade and could not receive tokens.

After $PASTERNAK created a trading volume of $250 million in 24 hours, the token price began to fall on the second day, and the market value shrank to 1/30 of its peak just one week later. In March, it fell to a market value of $180,000. Everyone thought that this platform would fall like many SocialFis in the past, and the market had long been accustomed to it.

Believe Believe the power of belief

On April 28, Clout announced that it would change its name to Believe and posted the text "Believe in someone → Believe in something". The official deleted all previous tweets, representing a new beginning. The concept of the platform has also changed from the traffic economy-dominated "Nasdaq of celebrity social networking" to the value investment-dominated "Silicon Valley technology independent investment in Silicon Valley".

On the second day, $PASTERNAK was renamed $LAUNCHCOIN, the same name as Believe’s launcher on X, which also confirmed the community’s speculation that PASTERNAK would become the official platform coin.

Nikita Bier, former product growth and consultant for Solana, xAI, and Coinbase, praised Believe, calling it a "killer viral app," and cited a series of data to prove it. Nikita, also a super entrepreneur, had previously made several products that were acquired by social technology companies such as Meta and Discord, which made his words more convincing. At the same time, because of Nikita's voice in the community, the token's market value rose again from $1 million to $22 million within 24 hours.

In the following two weeks, new projects continued to appear on LaunchCoin, but they did not have a big impact. However, around May 12, as a group of entrepreneurs such as $GOON, $BUDDY, and $NOODLE appeared in the market with their products and gained a good market value, the market's attention gradually returned. As of the time of writing, the market value of the token has exceeded 260 million US dollars. Since then, LaunchCoin has completed its counterattack.

Community Response

Well-known on-chain player James recently shared his experience of losing $340,000 on LaunchCoin on social media X. I believe this is the voice of many players who have participated in this ecosystem since the Clout period. After being severely "hurt" last time, the distrust of this made many people miss this real surge.

Trading is such an "anti-human" behavior. Among them, the famous "head" Gake, more familiar with her other name "DNF", showed her trading philosophy on the token. From the on-chain data, she chose to "bottom-fish" at the market value of 25 million US dollars after the initial popularity of LaunchCoin faded, which fell 70% from the high point.

However, the price did not rebound as expected, but fell all the way to a market value of $280,000. At this time, DNF chose to "bottom-fish" again at $3,500. The price fell by 90% from the last bottom-fishing, and the bottom-fishing position became 17.5% of the last time. Then, the price rose by 50%, 400%, and 800% three times, reducing part of the position cost.

After that, I waited patiently for 2 months. After Clout changed its name to Believe, I “shipped” in batches. Now the address only has about 13% of the position, and the total profit is as high as 1.3 million US dollars. This is not the most profitable or multiplied battle for DNF, but how to judge the holding target, when to hold for a long time, and when to buy at the bottom is very representative, which is what all traders need to consider.

The LaunchCoin reviewed at 100X is not a very "glorious" project, but a 100X coin with a dark history. But this is also a microcosm of the "zero-sum game" of tens of thousands of token transactions. From "Clout of Influence" to "Believe", this is the change in BEN's understanding of the first principles of currency after the last failure, and it is also what is happening in the market now.

There is no lack of influence in our market; there is a lack of trust.