PUMP token reclaims ICO price as high-profile whales become active

Pump.fun’s native token PUMP has recovered its ICO level, trading close to $0.005. The token drew attention in the past week with strong growth, as whales returned. 

Pump.fun is drawing the attention of whales, both on the spot market and on Hyperliquid. After an initial round of selling, PUMP is now interesting again, with 110% growth from its local lows. 

PUMP recovered to $0.0048, with a growing share of activity on Hyperliquid, surpassing even the Bybit trading pairs. The expanded open interest and spot trades revived PUMP, which initially was considered a token at risk of failing. 

In the past months, Pump.fun itself acquired more than 5.84% of the supply, using most of its daily fees to re-acquire the token and reimburse creators. 

Whales bet on PUMP

High-profile whales are shifting the narrative on PUMP. However, the recent market moves are trying to challenge the predominant bearish position. 

On Hyperliquid, over 51% of whales still hold short positions, putting the token among the less bullish assets. Recently, one large-scale trader started opening leveraged long positions, getting exposed to risk on the narrative change. 

One of the closely watched whales holds three positions with varied levels of unrealized profit and loss. 

A whale created 3 wallets to go long on $PUMP with 5x leverage in the past 8 hours, with a total position of 1.31B $PUMP($6.3M).https://t.co/mp5FUivNwfhttps://t.co/SzSkzVZW9ahttps://t.co/Nn04wAu49x pic.twitter.com/BvHbs15cu0

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) September 8, 2025

The whale opened up to $6.3M in long positions. Currently, PUMP still has a skew toward short trading, much more bearish than overall assets on Hyperliquid. 

While Hyperliquid still has a relatively small market share, the public positions of whales are used as a signal for conviction. PUMP is still seen as potentially undervalued and pressured by sellers. 

PUMP ICO chose a slow season for Pump.fun

The Pump.fun ICO happened at a relatively weak moment for the platform. The token was sold at record speed, placing $500M in just 12 minutes. However, in the days after the token unlock, PUMP was sold quickly, while the meme platform noted slower activity. 

Since the ICO token launch, most metrics for Pump.fun have improved. In August, the platform habitually carried 16K to 24K daily token launches. 

Since the beginning of August, Pump.fun also saw a robust fee recovery. At one point, fees fell as low as $500K daily.

Recently, the platform logged over $5.7M in daily fees, a level not seen since February. The platform is capable of producing $1B in daily fees, which is seen as a favorable metric compared to the PUMP market value of $4B. Compared to other networks, PUMP is considered undervalued, especially if selling stops and Pump.fun buys back more tokens. 

PUMP may also rally during another SOL season. SOL already expanded to $213.37, breaking out in the new week. 

For Pump.fun, however, the trenches are not back as during previous launches. Most of the new tokens are still made by a handful of top creator wallets, currently competing for rewards. Token creation picked up after Project Ascend boosted compensations by 10X.

On-chain data, however, shows that some of the new token projects are still at risk of rug pulls, crashing soon after reaching peak valuation. Pump.fun has also attempted to create more sustainable projects by paying early token startups for marketing and social media presence.

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