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Mark*, 31, thought he was done with meme coins after losing over $1,000 in six months. But one random tweet, obscure blockchain, and a $52 gamble pulled him back in, and it paid off big. In this story, he breaks down the wild ride that turned $52 into $2,500 in just three hours.
As told to Aisha Bello
I started trading meme coins in November 2024, during one of crypto’s wildest moments. Donald Trump had just won the US election, Bitcoin was racing toward $100,000, and crypto Twitter was flooded with screenshots of people flipping $10 into $1,000. I was hooked and convinced I could replicate their wins.
I’m a software developer and earn about $3,500 a month working remotely for an international company. That’s decent money, but I’ve always regarded crypto as a side hustle with the potential for outsized returns.
The logic was simple: low-value assets multiply faster than high-value ones. If you buy a high-value crypto token for $2,000, and it jumps to $4,000, that’s just a 2x return. But if you buy a token for $0.001 and the value jumps to $0.01, that’s a 10x return.
In any market, stocks or crypto, high-value assets like Bitcoin (BTC) grow at a slower, more predictable pace. It’s like trying to make a big tree grow taller; it’ll happen, but it’ll take time. Meanwhile, low-value assets are like tiny seedlings: with the right conditions, they can sprout fast and multiply in value.
Meme coins, digital currencies based on internet jokes with no real utility, did this more frequently than any other crypto assets. At the time, it felt like the quickest path to life-changing money.
So, I started putting aside small chunks of my income and converting them to USDT (a digital dollar equivalent) to buy meme coins on pump.fun, a platform built on the Solana blockchain that lets users easily launch and trade meme coins. Solana, for context, is like a super-fast, low-cost digital highway for trading crypto. Pump.fun made it feel like a game, part lottery, part strategy.
I gradually increased my bets — first $50, then $200, and eventually $800 across various meme coins. I didn’t do proper research; I was just chasing hype and following Twitter and Telegram group chat recommendations. I’d buy tokens early, hoping demand would shoot the price up 10x. But I rarely sold at the right time. I kept waiting for the price to hit the moon, and almost always ended up in the mud.
The problem was that Solana was like trying to make money in a big industry without knowing anyone. It’s a massive ecosystem where big players, the “whales,” control most of the profitable opportunities. Before small traders like me heard about good opportunities, the smart money had already moved.
By April 2025, I’d lost over $1,000 on Solana-based meme coins. The final blow came when Pump.fun became flooded with scam projects, and the entire meme coin scene felt unsustainable. I stopped trading and took a long break from actively trading meme coins.
I returned to the markets in June 2025, but this time on a different blockchain called SUI. If Solana was like trading in a massive, chaotic market, SUI was like a small, tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone. It’s newer, smaller, and opportunities don’t move as fast, which means beginners like me have a better chance of spotting them early.
On the day that changed everything, I was scrolling through Twitter when I stumbled on a freshly launched meme coin called CCTOO, running on the SUI blockchain. A founder I trusted and respected in the SUI ecosystem had just posted about it. The coin had been created only four hours earlier.
This is crucial: reputation matters more than technical analysis in crypto, especially with meme coins. When someone with a track record puts their name behind something, it carries weight. I probably wouldn’t have bothered if this same person had posted about a Solana meme coin. There’s too much noise on bigger platforms.
I bought $52 worth of the CCTOO meme coin on NoodlesFi, a trading platform built for tokens on the SUI blockchain, which got me 21 million units. The coin was relatively new, so there were no charts to study or price histories to review. It was a total blind bet. After buying, I went to wash dishes, fully prepared to lose the money.
When I checked my phone later, I nearly dropped my plate. My $52 had become hundreds of dollars and was climbing toward a thousand. My heart pounded as I watched the numbers change in real-time.
I started texting friends in my trading groups. They were all screaming the same thing: “Pull it out, bro! Don’t lose everything!”
This time, experience paid off. Instead of getting greedy, I started taking profits gradually. Every time the price dipped, I sold a portion of my holdings. I wasn’t trying to time the perfect peak. I was just trying to secure gains before they disappeared.
By the time the dust settled, I had made over $2,500 from my $52 investment. That’s a 48x return in less than three hours. If I’d held the token until the absolute peak, I could have walked away with over $4,000. But I’d learned the hard way: it’s better to secure good gains than risk losing everything chasing perfect gains.
Here’s the part that might sound crazy: I didn’t withdraw a single naira. I reinvested 90% back into the SUI ecosystem, buying NFTs (digital collectables that serve as membership cards to exclusive crypto communities). The remaining 10% went into the SUI ecosystem’s native token.
I realised that building connections and reputation in a smaller ecosystem was more valuable in the long term than any single payday. Those NFTs gave me access to private groups, early information, and networking opportunities that money can’t directly buy.
Most people underestimate how hard it is to grow money consistently. It’s way easier to flip $50 into $2,000 than to turn $1 million into $10 million. That’s what meme coin trading is: high risk, high reward, and extremely timing-sensitive.
My victory came from understanding the community and building trust within it. On Solana, I was just another anonymous trader. On SUI, I became part of a smaller, more connected community where individual voices matter.
I still trade meme coins occasionally, but I’ve learned not to fall in love with a sudden price surge. When a coin’s value shoots up quickly, it’s easy to get emotionally attached and think it’ll keep pumping. But that’s often when the crash is around the corner.
I focus more on liquidity providing (LP) within the SUI ecosystem, lending my cryptocurrency to trading platforms so others can buy and sell more easily. In return, I earn a share of the trading fees. It’s less thrilling than trading meme coins but way more predictable.
The key lessons? Never invest money you can’t afford to lose. Start with smaller, growing ecosystems where you can build relationships. Take profits gradually instead of hoping for the perfect peak. And sometimes the best opportunities aren’t where everyone else is looking.
Names* have been changed for anonymity.
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Next Read: Meme Coin Madness: 4 Nigerian Traders on the Wild Profits and Devastating Losses
Source: Zikoko | Continue to Full Story… from Zikoko.com
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