Update Feb. 5, 6 am UTC: This article has been updated with comments from Max Burwick.
The law firm that some believe launched a $23 million token as part of a class-action lawsuit against Solana memecoin creator Pump.fun has denied creating or deploying the memecoin.
Pump.fun was hit with a proposed class-action suit on Jan. 30 by investors alleging every token it helped make is an unregistered security from which it made nearly $500 million in fees. The lawsuit was filed by US law firms Burwick Law and Wolf Popper on behalf of the investors.
However, observers within the crypto community quickly noticed the address shown in Exhibit C of the court documents — used to show how easy and quick it is to create a coin — matches a wallet address associated with Dog Shit Going NoWhere (DOGSHIT2), leading many to believe the law firms are behind the token.
Dog Shit Going NoWhere has seen a big spike in activity and value since the crypto community found out about it. Source: Pump.fun
Exhibit C of the court documents has the creation date of DOGSHIT2 as Oct. 31 last year, while the listing comes with a warning, “Don’t buy this coin.”
Data from Gecko Terminal shows the memecoin has spiked in value since Jan. 31 after the proposed lawsuit was filed as observers made the purported connection.
However, Max Burwick, managing partner of Burwick Law says neither firm has any involvement in the actual creation or deployment of the token.
Burwick said the “token concept” existed only as “memory on the server” — and stayed that way until someone bought the token, which credits the buyer as the creator.
“We had no part in launching the token onchain, we never deployed any tokens,” he said.
“The day after the initial Pump.Fun lawsuit was filed, Pump.fun deployed it onchain which was triggered when an address purchased it. The initial purchasing address is credited as the creator.”
Pumfun has the launch date of DOGSHIT2 listed as Nov. 1, 2024 and the first buyer appears as the token creator.
According to Burwick, the token creator, has also created other tokens, which can be seen on Solscan using his law firm’s name and image, and also that of Wolf Popper, in an “unauthorized use of their intellectual property,”
At its peak on Jan. 31, the DOGSHIT2 market cap exceeded $23 million, according to data on Pump.fun. It has since fallen back down to approximately $2.4 million.
Meanwhile, the token’s price hit its all-time high of $0.003968 on Feb. 2, before tumbling 34%. It’s up 6% in the last 24 hours, per CoinGecko.
Related: How to find new memecoins before they go viral
Last December, Burwick Law also requested that anyone who lost money on viral influencer Haliey Welch’s Hawk Tuah memecoin contact them.
It comes amid a new flurry of memecoin activity. Elon Musk’s father has been the latest figure to discuss a potential memecoin launch, called Musk It (MUSKIT), amid growing interest in celebrity-backed meme tokens.
Pump.fun usage surged over the past week when it recorded an all-time high of $3.3 billion in weekly trading volume following the launch of Trump family memecoins.
Meanwhile, last December, a CoinGecko study found from Jan. 1 to Dec. 21 that memecoins and related categories captured nearly 31% of investor interest.
US President Donald Trump’s recent foray into the memecoin market drove Google search interest for the term “crypto” to its highest level since 2021.