Eye-watering crypto raises are back. On Saturday, Pump.fun, a popular website that lets anyone launch and buy memecoins, raised $600 million in 12 minutes through a public sale of its cryptocurrency. And it drummed up $720 million through private sales of the company’s tokens, according to a spokesperson. In total, Pump.fun is sitting on a stash of about $1.3 billion.
That’s big money, and arguably the largest crypto fundraise of 2025. But how Pump.fun raised money was also extraordinary. Any small-time trader—though not those in the U.S., U.K, and countries like Iran—could get in on the action through the public sale after verifying their identity. That’s a far cry from the last five years of crypto, when a harsher regulatory climate restricted the first-time sale of tokens almost exclusively to wealthy investors.
