One $135 purchase of an Ethereum (ETH)-based meme coin known as First City in Mars (TERMINUS) has been gaining traction in recent weeks as possibly the most profitable cryptocurrency market trade of 2024.
In fact, the trade executed on Uniswap on September 8 had rocketed nearly 1,000 times by September 21 and rose to a value of $1.2 million just days later, per the data Finbold retrieved in the early morning of September 24 from Lookonchain.
The rise from $135 to $1.2 million means that the trade has multiplied approximately 9,000 times in a little more than 15 days, making it one of the most lucrative buys on record.
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Why is TERMINUS going to Mars?
As is frequently the case with meme coins, TERMINUS cryptocurrency managed its impressive rise thanks to a series of coincidences, including an X post made by DogeDesigner, a prominent crypto influencer, in which he speculated that Elon Musk might indeed name the first city on Mars Terminus.
Though Musk has not yet directly backed TERMINUS, the community association between the billionaire and the meme coin helped propel its value even further when the head of SpaceX stated his intent to found a city on Mars in the coming decades.
Additionally, the incredibly lucrative trade may become even more successful given that TERMINUS has risen another 50.24% in the last 24 hours, and its price today, at press time, stands at $0.387.
September sees massive meme coin resurgence
Though the crypto market had been hit by ‘The September Effect’ early in the month and has only recently started exiting the subsequent lull as investors await the beginning of ‘Uptober,’ the last 30 days have proven fertile for massive meme coin success stories.
While the $135 to $1.2 million TERMINUS story is most likely the most impressive one on record, there has been no shortage of similar maneuvers.
On September 23, Finbold reported that a trader swapped 6 Solana (SOL) – worth approximately $800 at the time of the trade on September 6 – for Moo Deng (MOODENG) and saw the value of their purchase skyrocket to $1.3 million within just two weeks.
Additionally, by mid-September, an investor who purchased $16,550 worth of First Neiro (NEIRO) in early August made approximately $1.8 million in total on the move.
Meme coins have been a hot feature of the 2024 crypto market throughout, as exemplified by a trader who turned $650 into $67,000 in mid-August by trading Sundog (SUNDOG), as well as by the brief but stellar success of the Hawk Tuah (HAWKTUAH) meme coin in late June.
Still, not all such trades have been successful. Perhaps the biggest failure of a meme coin trade – and the biggest cautionary tale of the year – came in the form of a $1 million investment in MBAPPE, which took just one hour to crash to a value of $9,000.
