Bald memecoin whipsaws in wild trading session as developer pulls liquidity

Memecoin trading is not for the faint of heart.

Bald, a popular memecoin, whipsawed during Monday's trading session — falling as much as 90% before paring losses. At the time of writing, the coin was trading up more than 82% over the last five minutes. It is down 49% over the last hour, however. 

The developer behind the Bald memecoin removed 6,800 ETH ($12.5 million) from the token's liquidity pool on LeetSwap, a decentralized exchange on the Base Layer 2 network, on-chain data shows. This move triggered a liquidity crunch, causing the price to drop from $0.09 to $0.01 before rebounding to $0.04.

Memecoin traders flocked to Coinbase's Layer 2 Base, which launched its mainnet for developers on July 13. It wasn’t slated for public launch until early August. However, over the last few days, it has experienced a significant spike in activity and the introduction of several memecoins.

The Layer 2 recorded over 276,000 transactions yesterday, with memecoins like Bald skyrocketing on the network. Bald previously surged more than 20,000-fold in just 24 hours. Its market capitalization approached $90 million earlier today, as per data from DEX Screener.

24-hour volumes on the Layer 2 currently sit at $243.3 million, according to Dex Screener. Over the last day, the blockchain has processed over 600,000 transactions.  

Bald trading volumes have exceeded $95 million across decentralized exchanges on the Base platform, including exchanges like LeetSwap and RocketSwap. This represents 40% of Base’s daily volume.