Pump Not So Fun

Olivia Capozzalo & Squiffs _
September 16, 2025

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

Pumpfun’s streaming platform has seen impressive growth since its new creator fee scheme went live — but not without a new wave of pump and dumps, and scams.

In other news:

Coinbase teases Base token
Hyperliquid chooses USDH issuer
Ethena confirms fee switch proposal
What is Whisk? Exploring the Stellar Network’s latest protocol 23 upgrade [SPONSORED]
Treehouse Finance: Bringing fixed income infrastructure to DeFi [SPONSORED]

Read more below! But first, please give our sponsors some love; they make this newsletter possible.

Stellar Core Upgrades Pave Path to 5000 TPS and 2.5 Second Block Time

The Stellar network has always been one of the cheapest, but now it looks like the network upgrades will halve block time and increase throughput by parallelizing Stellar core. With planned upgrades, the Stellar network will incorporate new core advancement protocols that bring this performance even closer to reality.

🔥 Happening Now: The Real-World Asset Summit

As the worlds of traditional finance and crypto converge, where do we find the next horizon? Today and tomorrow, September 16 & 17, an exclusive group of 350 leaders will gather in Brooklyn to ask this very question at the Real-World Asset Summit.

Under the new leadership of Foster Wright and with insights from speakers like Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, this invite-only event could signal a pivotal moment for the industry. It’s a space where established capital markets meet the boundless potential of decentralized technology. What new pathways will they forge together? Let’s find out.

We’re back! Here’s what you need to know in web3 today

📈 Markets in the Last 24 Hours

TICKER	VALUE	24H
Bitcoin	$116,534	1.15 %
Ethereum	$4,488.79	-0.49 %
XRP	$3.05	1.49 %
BNB	$952.07	3.53 %
Solana	$238.27	2.21 %

Today’s Big Story

Pumpfun Streamer Meta Takes an Ugly Turn

In true degen fashion, right as the trenches started to look good, it all came crashing down.

The PUMP token has been on an incredible run this month, fueled by pumpfun’s revenue boost, thanks to the growth of its streaming platform.

Streamers such as the Bagwork group, as well as a number of former video game streamers, brought increased attention to the platform on the back of pumpfun’s new “Project Ascend” creator program, which boosted creator revenue by 10x.

Pumpfun has paid out $21 million in creator fees over the last week, and $4 million in the last 24 hours. The program was introduced at the beginning of this month, and increases fees shared with creators of smaller cap tokens.

pumpfun creator fee claims

However, shortly after the Bagwork token hit an all-time high of $52 million, new streamers and recognizable faces from the crypto industry raced to join in the fun, bringing greed and deception with them.

Alex Becker, who’s mostly known in the crypto community as a YouTuber who’s been calling for “altseason” on low cap AI tokens for two years, decided to launch his own streaming coin, which almost immediately ran up to a $16 million market capitalization, but has been chopping downwards ever since and currently changes hands at a $6 million valuation.

BAGWORK price chart

While pump and dump style price action is expected on a hyped microcap, due to snipers cornering supply early and relentlessly selling after the top, the ecosystem’s shining light, Bagwork, decided to stealth launch an NFT collection known as “Baggios,” and quickly proceeded to delete the link.

The move is similar to other celebrity scams we’ve seen in the past and, as a result, the BAGWORK token plummeted almost 90% to its current valuation.

Other streamers, such as video game streamer Yskaela, who touts 11 million followers on TikTok, joined pumpfun as a streamer yesterday as well. Her token struggled to take off and first reached a high of $500,000, before falling.

As a result crypto traders began flooding her social media comments with accusations of scamming and rug pulling her coin, simply because the value of the token fell.

The meta, which looked promising just a few days ago, has taken an ugly turn over the last 24 hours, and is searching for some much needed stability at the moment, as yesterday's events proved the crypto cynics right yet again.

Squiffs, resident degen at The Defiant

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