Pump.fun token trades at a premium in pre-market as whales appear to hedge before ICO

Whales appear eager to trade Pump.fun’s token as wallets deposited millions to interact with a frothy pre-sale market offered by decentralized perpetual futures exchange Hyperliquid and Binance.

Three large traders have deposited a combined $11 million in  USDC stablecoin on Hyperliquid to short the newly listed PUMP perpetual contract with minimal leverage, likely a hedge against the token allocation they expect to receive in Pump.fun’s public sale on July 12.

Wallet “0xAc72” placed $4 million in margin and opened a 2x leveraged short worth $1.07 million at an entry of $0.00504. The liquidation price sits at $0.02138, giving the trader a wide buffer if PUMP’s price spikes.

Two other wallets, which posted a combined $7 million, are running 1x leverage, Lookonchain noted, citing data from explorer Hypurrscan. Together, the trio’s open interest totals about $2.39 million, a fraction of their collateral, signaling a defensive stance rather than a directional bet.

PUMP open interest on Hyperliquid has surged over $43 million since the platform listed the pre-market token in early European hours on Thursday. Binance also listed a PUMP perpetual contract, which quickly reached north of $12 billion in trading volume. Some market watchers say whales are using Hyperliquid and other pre-market trading contracts to lock in current valuations before the Pump.fun token generation event, either to arbitrage their expected airdrop or book short-term profit if retail demand drives prices higher.

Pump.fun ICO

The Pump.fun token initially traded at a 40% premium to its announced sale price, but the market has since seen a decline. PUMP, which soared as high as $0.0056 on Hyperliquid, before slumping to around $0.0048 at the time of writing, much closer to its initial coin offering price of $0.004.

Pump.fun, a Solana-based meme-coin launchpad, announced the token in June alongside plans for revenue sharing. The public sale begins July 12 on Bybit and runs till July 15, with 33% of PUMP’s total 1 trillion supply split across a fully allocated private sale (18%) and a public sale (15%).

The current pricing would value Pump.fun at $4 billion, higher than the initial $1 billion target set by the platform. Fever around the sale has attracted speculation on prediction markets. Polymarket shows brisk trading on whether the fully diluted valuation will exceed $4 billion to $10 billion within 24 hours of launch, with the former holding the highest chances at 76%.