They Went After the Hawk Tuah Crypto Promoters. Now They’re Suing Pump.Fun

A crypto investor has brought a class action lawsuit against Pump.Fun, a platform for launching and investing in meme-inspired cryptocurrencies, after suffering trading losses.

Representing the plaintiffs are Wolf Popper and Burwick Law, the two firms handling a separate class action brought by investors in December over a memecoin launched by web personality Haliey Welch, better known as the Hawk Tuah girl, which collapsed in value soon after trading began. (Welch was not named as a defendant in that suit.)

“These ‘emperor’s new clothes’ crypto schemes can’t keep masquerading as legitimate finance, leaving the vulnerable in the lurch,” says Max Burwick, founding partner at Burwick Law.

Pump.Fun was a hit when launched in January 2024, giving people a way to launch memecoins—highly volatile cryptocurrencies that typically have no inherent purpose beyond speculation—instantly and at no cost. The new lawsuit, filed Thursday in the Southern District of New York, alleges that Pump.Fun has operated as an unregistered securities issuer and seller. In making marketing claims that downplay the likelihood of losing money trading memecoins, the complaint alleges, the platform also put investors at heightened financial risk.

Separately, the lawsuit alleges that these memecoin platforms, like Pump.Fun, are designed in such a way as to incentivize pump-and-dump activity. “Early investors or insiders artificially inflate token prices through coordinated buying and promotional campaigns, then sell their holdings at peak prices, causing the token’s value to collapse and leaving later investors with substantial losses,” the complaint claims.

The complaint points to the circumstances around the launch of a particular Pump.Fun memecoin—PNUT, which references the celebrity squirrel euthanized last year in New York—to evidence its claims.

Pump.Fun did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But in an interview with WIRED last year, Noah Tweedale, one of the three Pump.Fun cofounders named in the suit, refuted the idea that the platform stands to benefit from regular investors losing money. “The idea with Pump was to build something where everyone was on the same playing field,” Tweedale said. “I want to stress, we don’t want people to lose money on our platform. It doesn’t benefit us by any means.”

More than 6 million unique memecoins have been launched through Pump.Fun, the most successful of which are valued at hundreds of millions of dollars. The memecoin market is now worth in excess of $100 billion in aggregate, market data shows.

In its first 12 months in operation, Pump.Fun is reported by third parties to have generated more than $350 million in revenue, taking a 1 percent cut of trades. The platform is on pace to make more than $1 billion in revenue in 2025.

However, the lawsuit brought by the crypto investor—which follows reports of unethical trading activity, criticism relating to content moderation, and a warning issued against Pump.Fun by the UK financial regulator—could threaten to put a dampener on the runaway growth.

The lawsuit hinges on the idea that memecoins should in some circumstances be classified as securities, a particular type of investment instrument. The complaint claims that by failing to register token sales with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the relevant US financial regulator, Pump.Fun allegedly violated securities laws and denied investors the disclosures required of regulated entities.