Price manipulation is not new in the meme coin world, but if you are a large company…
Meteora, a decentralized exchange built on the Solana blockchain, and Kelsier Labs, a business firm, are named in a class-action lawsuit in the Southern District of New York for allegedly manipulating the M3M3 memecoin to their benefit at the cost of investors and generating a loss of $69 million. The suit claims a collaborative scheme that duped the blockchain community and is another setback to both firms’ reputations that have already been tarnished by earlier scandals.
Plaintiffs’ complaint is that Meteora and its co-conspirators marketed a sophisticated marketing scheme, hyping M3M3 as a “high-quality memecoin” backed by legitimate members of the Solana community. Most notable of these was ex-Meteora chief Ben Chow, touted by the project as a disclosure stickler to build credibility. Investors say this was a fraud, however, and that the rollout of M3M3 was rigged to artificially pump up the price, luring buyers at the top before the crash. The complaint claims, “After M3M3 was issued, its price surged, leading investors to believe that it was of value and low-risk when, in fact, this turned out to be the result of manipulation.” Investors claim to have lost $69 million between December 2024 and February 2025, and that M3M3 was created to benefit insiders at the cost of retail investors.
M3M3 went on to be launched on December 4, 2024, and its market cap ballooned to more than $216 million before falling to just $3 million by Apr 2025, data by DEX Screener shows. Prior to the lawsuit, DefiTuna creator Moty directly accused Kelsier Ventures and Meteora of operating a massive memecoin manipulation syndicate behind the M3M3 launching pad. Moty, to whom a $30,000 investment was returned to, presented evidence that implicated top players like Chow of colluding with KOLs to create FOMO, before secretly taking collaterals of the companies with tactics like NFT LP to conceal online activities. The alleged scam had allegedly absorbed more than $200 million in projects like MELANIA, LIBRA, AIAI, MATES, and ENRON, and M3M3 was a “draining machine” by pre-flowing tokens to insiders.
The case followed a March 2025 class-action suit against the LIBRA memecoin collapse, which had previously sullied the reputations of both Kelsier and Meteora. The escalating scandals have attracted further community ire, leading to the resignation of Ben Chow as public face of Meteora under public pressure. The case of M3M3 is to show the seedy side of memecoin speculation with community members questioning accountability in the cryptocurrency community.
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