Crypto’s $MIRA Christmas Magic 🪄
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Hello y’all … Christmas hangover? 👋
Let us shake you out with a heartwarming Christmas story today.
Tech CEO's Christmas tweet about daughter's brain tumour sparked a million-dollar crypto fundraising phenomenon
Anonymous dev created a memecoin named after Chen's daughter, and crypto's chaos engine delivered millions for rare disease research
$MIRA token turned memecoin madness into medical funding — proving crypto can occasionally cure more than portfolios
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Yesterday we wrote about meme coins - The Memecoin Takeover of 2024 💥
Today we were touched by Vitalik Buterin’s generosity - adopting Moo Deng.
This story is about crypto pouring it’s heart and wallet ... ft Pump.fun and Solana.
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A Father's Christmas Post that Started it all.
On December 25th, 2024, Siqi Chen, co-founder of Runway Financial (a non-crypto fintech backed by a16z), shared a gut-wrenching thought experiment.
His daughter, Mira, has craniopharyngioma — the kind of medical term that sends parents down late-night Google rabbit holes.
Chen posted something that would resonate deeply with the crypto community.
What emerged instead was perhaps the most remarkable demonstration of crypto community mobilisation we've seen this year.
Twenty Minutes That Changed Everything
Chen wasn't asking for crypto.
He wasn't even particularly crypto-native, he'd later confess — "I literally didn't have a personal SOL address until yesterday."
He'd set up a modest GoFundMe targeting $100,000 for Dr. Todd Hankinson's lab at the University of Colorado, the only facility worldwide focusing on this specific type of tumour. They'd raised $75,000.
But crypto has a funny way of moving at lightning speed when it wants to.
An anonymous Solana developer — in what might be the most crypto Christmas gift ever — created $MIRA on Pump.fun, memecoin named after Chen's daughter.
Instead of the usual pump-and-dump scheme, the creator sent 50% of the total supply directly to Chen's wallet.
The token started pumping, with Chen holding 50% of the tokens. He started liquidating with caution.
In The Numbers 🔢
$70 million
The market cap $MIRA shot up to. The scale of what happened next is properly mind-bending.
The numbers are dynamic and the charts are crazy. It follows the Christmas tree trajectory.
It doesn’t equate to half of it going to the fundraiser, but at least more than $1 million already secured for rare disease research.
Chen continues his structured selling approach ($1,000 every 10 minutes, like clockwork), and Dr. Hankinson's lab receives a funding boost they never imagined possible.
In days, when things cool down and the token settles, we might get the actual number that Chen managed to secure for the medical research.
We also know the person who kickstarted the $MIRA magic.
🎙 Block That Quote
Siqi Chen, reflects on the Christmas magic night (read the post)
"magic internet money is magic internet money"
Excerpts from the post.
When we originally started our GoFundMe, we were hoping to contribute maybe $2-300K or so beyond what we donated early this year to Hankinson Lab for Christmas.
Now, even if we don't sell a single token more, we're going to send them at least $1 million this Christmas. That's INCREDIBLE - and it makes such a huge difference.
The reality is if those early people didn't make these moves, the lab would be worse off. Providing more funding for research is the only thing that matters to me here, full stop.
How much degens make or lose money in the pvp trenches of Pump is not something that is any of my business. If you made a lot of money, I'm genuinely happy for you - but please consider donating some of your profits to Hankinson Lab. If you lost a lot of money, I’m very sorry - but magic internet money is magic internet money.
—
I have a day job and it is not degening magic internet money. I run a company funded by a16z called Runway, and we work on non-crypto finance software for CFOs. Nowadays, by night i do deep research into craniopharyngiomas and related brain tumours. I literally didn’t have a personal SOL address until yesterday.
Crypto wasn’t even a payment option outside of GoFundMe until folks asked me for one, and when I gave them one it was my ENS. The idea that I would have the time and even know how to do something like this is wildly unbelievable.
—
I am not Elon - between running a growing startup, dealing with my daughter’s medical condition, and other obligations, I simply don’t have the bandwidth to manage a crypto anything.
So my constraints on a path forward are:
1) To maximise support to rare disease research by providing predictability / trust
2) To do so in the most transparent way possible that helps me sleep well at night
3) To do it in a way that doesn’t take very much of my time to manage.
So here’s the plan: Starting in about 12 hours, i will be liquidating $1,000 worth of $MIRA every 10 minutes, perpetually. No more and no less than that.
If I change this schedule, I commit to announcing it 24 hours in advance.
If you want to rug it to $0, go for it - at the end of the day we set out to raise $200K and we will end up with at least $1M towards rare disease research.
No matter what, this has been a win for the world. But if it moons, then Hankinson Lab will get the SOL’s community support for much longer, and that really makes a big difference.
So that’s it! Hope that's all pretty simple and reasonable.
Yi, Mira and I are so unbelievably grateful to you all - each and every one of you. Christmas magic was made real this year thanks to all of you. Forever grateful.
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A New Model for Crypto Philanthropy?
Beyond the hype cycle, the fascinating bit isn't just the money — it's how this whole saga challenges our assumptions about what crypto communities can achieve when properly motivated.
Traditional fundraising through GoFundMe: $75,000 in three hours
Crypto response: Millions in under 24 hours
That's the difference between taking the stairs and catching a rocket ship.
The $MIRA phenomenon — it's probably not repeatable, at least not exactly.
Christmas day timing
A genuine cause
A respected tech figure
An anonymous dev's kindness
A crypto community's collective heart
You can't manufacture it. Perhaps that's missing the point entirely.
What's fascinating is the methodology.
Chen's response to the unexpected windfall offers a masterclass in transparent crypto philanthropy.
Immediate commitment to use 100% of proceeds for research
Structured selling approach ($1,000 every 10 minutes)
Public commitment to 24-hour advance notice of any strategy changes
Full transparency about wallet addresses and transactions
It's like watching someone bring corporate governance to a meme fight — and somehow making it work.
As Chen wrote in his update: "I run a company funded by a16z called Runway, and we work on non-crypto finance software for CFOs. I literally didn't have a personal SOL address until yesterday."
The Inevitable Dark Side
Of course, this being crypto, there's always a catch.
Within hours, copycat tokens emerged, some brazenly using Chen's family photos to lure unsuspecting investors.
Reminder that even the most heartwarming crypto stories come with inherent risks.
The real $MIRA community held strong.
In a space where "community" usually means "people waiting to dump on each other," that's rather remarkable.
As Chen put it: "If you made a lot of money, I'm genuinely happy for you — but please consider donating some of your profits to Hankinson lab. If you lost a lot of money, I'm very sorry — but magic internet money is magic internet money."
The Broader Implications
What about crypto's potential as a rapid-response fundraising mechanism?
Through this lens, memecoins become less about speculation and more about social coordination — a way to rapidly pool resources for causes that resonate with the community.
While $MIRA's success is heartening, this may not be easily replicable.
The real legacy of $MIRA might not be as a fundraising template, but as a proof of concept for three crucial ideas.
Speed of coordination: Crypto communities can mobilise faster than traditional fundraising mechanisms — when they want to.
Trust through transparency: Chen's methodical approach — selling $1,000 worth every 10 minutes, with 24-hour notice for any changes — showed how to handle unexpected crypto windfalls responsibly.
Purpose beyond profit: Even in the often cynical world of memecoins, genuine causes can still cut through the noise.
Read: What else could memecoins be?
Token Dispatch View 🔍
This was a perfect storm: It demonstrated what's possible when crypto's chaotic energy aligns with actual human needs.
Crypto's occasional tendency to do something absolutely bonkers but wonderful.
Will this become a template for future crypto philanthropy?
Could this model be adapted for other medical research funding?
How do we balance the speculative nature of crypto with philanthropic goals?
What happens when the initial excitement fades?
Read: Web3's Answer to Science Woes 🧬
The $MIRA story isn't just about a memecoin that did good (though it did).
It's about the possibility that crypto's "move fast and break things" energy could actually help fix things that matter.
As Chen himself put it, with the kind of perspective you get from watching your child battle a rare disease: "Magic internet money is magic internet money."
Sometimes that magic works in mysterious ways.
In this case, it worked to connect a father's desperate plea with a community's collective power, creating something that might just help change lives.
And isn't that what Christmas miracles are supposed to be about?
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