RKC Memecoin Plummets Following $729K Developer Exit Tied to Roaring Kitty
The RKC memecoin on Solana experienced a dramatic collapse following a $729,000 withdrawal by its creator, with connections to Roaring Kitty's X profile fueling speculation about potential hacking and market manipulation.
A creator behind a newly launched memecoin on the Solana blockchain withdrew approximately $729,000 following a post from Keith Gill's Roaring Kitty X profile that shared the token's ticker symbol and contract address, which sparked a brief trading surge before being subsequently removed from the platform.
After the X post from Gill's profile was deleted, Red Kitten Crew (RKC) experienced a rapid climb to a market cap of $11 million before plummeting approximately 67% to reach $3.6 million as of press time, data from Dexscreener indicates.
The creator behind the token liquidated roughly $611,000 worth of RKC tokens and earned an additional $118,000 through creator fees via Pump.fun, totaling approximately $729,000 in exits, as reported by blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain. According to Lookonchain's analysis, the developer had initially deployed 10 separate wallets to purchase 395.18 million RKC tokens, accounting for 39.52% of the total token supply, sparking suspicions that creator-controlled wallets dominated the launch phase before regular retail investors could participate.
This X post represented Gill's first online engagement in more than 15 months, prompting the community to question whether his account may have been compromised. The initial distribution pattern of the token points toward a strategic sniping operation in which wallets connected to the creator successfully front-ran community participants to drain liquidity.
This incident demonstrates the inherent dangers surrounding memecoin launches tied to celebrity figures, where a solitary social media update, or potential account breach, can propel thinly-traded tokens dramatically upward before concentrated early stakeholders dump their holdings onto subsequent purchasers.
Cointelegraph reached out to Gill to find out whether he still controls his X account.
Gill rose to prominence as a retail investor and former financial analyst who played a pivotal role in igniting the 2021 GameStop short squeeze phenomenon via viral social media content, motivating retail investors to purchase substantial quantities of GameStop (GME) shares, ultimately compelling short-selling entities like Citron Research to exit their positions at substantial losses.
Memecoin trader loses nearly $190K in 1 hour
Highlighting the severe dangers associated with trading freshly-released memecoins featuring heavily concentrated token distribution, one cryptocurrency investor suffered losses approaching $190,000 in just one hour while trading the RKC memecoin.
This unlucky investor allocated $250,000 to acquire 31.15 million RKC tokens moments before the deletion of Gill's X post, resulting in a loss of $188,600 after liquidating the holdings for only $62,200, data from Lookonchain reveals.
Sniping tactics and comparable coordinated market manipulation have represented a persistent value-extraction problem within the memecoin ecosystem.
On Wednesday, Bubblemaps, a blockchain visualization platform, issued a warning that 90 newly created and funded wallets had acquired 90% of the Mystery (MYSTERY) memecoin supply during its initial launch phase, characterizing the token's ownership concentration as a "textbook scam."
The Mystery token has experienced a collapse exceeding 98% since launch, wiping out the majority of its $7.5 million peak market capitalization, according to information provided by Dexscreener.
In February 2025, one cryptocurrency sniper generated profits approaching $28 million through trading the Broccoli (BROCCOLI) memecoin, immediately following the revelation by Binance co-founder and former CEO Zhangpeng Zhao that his Belgian Malinois dog was named "Broccoli," which triggered a surge of community-created memecoin launches on the Pump.fun launchpad platform.