Ccancer lab to receive over $1 million in donations after charity memecoin MIRA soars

"I’ve had a lot of very memorable days on the internet over the past 30 years, but this one tops them all," wrote Siqi Chen, CEO and CFO of startup finance platform Runway, in an X post on Thursday. 

On Tuesday night, Chen posted a heartfelt plea on X, asking for donations to support the Hankinson Lab at the University of Colorado. The lab in the only one in North America to research children's craniopharyngiomas, a rare type of brain tumor that affects Chen's young daughter, Mira. Following signal boosts from prominent X users, including X CEO Linda Yaccarino , Chen's GoFundMe raised over $230,000 as of the time of writing. 

However, it was a charity memecoin named MIRA created by an apparent Pump.Fun beginner  that stunned Chen, who posted shocked updates as the coin rocketed to an all-time high market capitalization of $80 million. Thanks to X user Waddles, who purchased and then sent Chen 50% of the memecoin soon after launch, Chen's stake in the project was suddenly worth millions. 

"When I saw the story about Mira and her illness, I thought it would be good to buy and send supply to you with the hopes of getting the SOL community behind a good cause on Christmas," Waddles wrote on X . "I'm really glad that it worked out the way that it has and I hope that the money helps to find a cure both for Mira and anyone else with her condition."

After liquidating some of his supply, Chen posted an update on Thursday describing his plan to manage the funds moving forward.

"Starting in about 12 hours [roughly 3 AM on December 27, UTC], I will be liquidating $1,000 worth of $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. No more and no less than that," wrote Chen on X . "If i change this schedule, I commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance."

Chen acknowledged that some traders may have profited off of the coin with no intent to distribute the funds to charity but described the overall situation as a net positive.

"At the end of the day we set out to raise $200K and we will end up with at least $1M towards rare disease research," Chen wrote. "No matter what, this has been a win for the world." 

MIRA fell in value following the announcement, settling at a market capitalization of around $20 million at the time of writing. A related memecoin with the ticker "kitkat," named after Mira's dog, also briefly eclipsed a $3 million market cap before declining to a market cap of about $150,000. 

"100% of every penny we've made from this, across every kitkat/memecoin, including LP fees will be going directly to rare disease research (minus any tax obligations)," Chen wrote. 

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had previously identified charity coins as a "positive-sum" spin on the memecoin craze, though he called previous efforts "far from perfect."

"It feels like there is an unclaimed opportunity here to try to create something more positive-sum and long-lasting," Buterin wrote in his blog post .