Less than 24 hours after Martin Shkreli joined Solana memecoin launchpad Pump Fun, the two tokens most closely associated with him had already lost at least 94% from their highs, according to Protos.
The report said CITRINI, a token created by Shkreli, and MARTIN, a namesake coin that appeared at the top of his trading history before his CITRINI transactions, both collapsed sharply after spiking on Monday.
Launch-day hype faded fast
On Monday, Shkreli said he would join the Solana memecoin platform and livestream his trades. That announcement drew more than 700,000 views. Pump Fun’s official account welcomed him and said he had already recorded a 6,263% gain and held $1.6 million in his wallet within one day.
By the time Protos published its report, both flagship tokens tied to him had already unwound most of those gains. MARTIN reached $0.0031 on Monday, the same day it launched, then dropped to $0.00016 by Tuesday morning. Its market capitalization fell to roughly $150,000. CITRINI traced a similar path, falling from $0.0031 to $0.000087, a 97% decline.
Livestream trading drew complaints from followers
Protos said Shkreli launched CITRINI live on air. Some viewers described the token as a joke, even though buyers lost real money on it. Over yesterday and today, he spent hours livestreaming trades through X and his Pump Fun profile, drawing tens of thousands of cumulative viewers.
According to the report, the wallets taking the other side of those trades were mostly anonymous accounts trying to capitalize on the temporary price jump tied to his endorsements.
Under the reply thread to his announcement, one user posted a screenshot showing a 95% loss and accused Shkreli of promoting a scam. Protos described his social-media replies as cagey, often limited to single words, symbols, quips, or questions that admitted nothing. When one follower complained about losses, he responded with a rhetorical question: 「How are you down 97%?」
Moderna short call also moved against him
Protos said traders had been watching Shkreli closely after he made headlines earlier this month discussing a short sale of Moderna. He said he 「was playing around shorting this thing at 80 bucks」 before the drugmaker rallied on positive FDA Phase 3 results.
Moderna now trades exactly 100% above Shkreli’s cited $80 per share, the report said. Protos also referenced a TradingView chart for Moderna dated August 2026.
MSI and DJT followed similar paths
Protos argued that a steeply declining chart is a familiar pattern for Shkreli-linked tokens. It pointed to two earlier examples, Ethereum-based MSI and Solana-based DJT.
In July 2022, Shkreli launched Martin Shkreli Inu, or MSI, which reached an all-time high near $0.0000343. On August 12 that year, a wallet linked to Shkreli dumped more than 160 billion MSI in a single session. Bloomberg reported that the token fell more than 90% in one day. Shkreli later told Futurism that he had been hacked and was not the seller. Even so, MSI now trades more than 95% below that peak.
In June 2024, Shkreli was identified as the figure behind DJT, another memecoin on Solana. The token surged on rumors that Barron Trump was involved, though the president’s son never publicly joined the project. On August 6, 2024, a wallet tied to the deployer dumped roughly $2 million in DJT. Protos said that sale erased most of the token’s $55 million market capitalization within minutes. DJT now trades below $0.000033, down more than 98% from its all-time high.
Repeated losses above 90%
Protos grouped MARTIN, CITRINI, DJT, and MSI together as part of a recurring pattern in which traders following Shkreli end up with losses exceeding 90%.
At publication, CITRINI and MARTIN had each fallen at least 94% from their highs in under a day.