A Solana user paid a $200,000 priority fee to be among the first to buy a new meme coin, only to sell minutes later for an $89,000 loss—and that’s besides eating the hefty fee. 

The user, whose Solana address begins 4MyY, purchased 174 million tokens of the meme coin “AI Deborah” for $96,000 or 495 SOL, but paid an additional priority fee of 1,068 SOL ($207,000) to have the transaction picked up quickly by validators before other interested traders. Three minutes later, the user sold the entire position for just under $8,000. 

The priority fee is an optional feature often utilized by meme coin traders in an attempt to have their transactions recognized by validators of the Solana blockchain before others. While it adds financial risk, it often allows traders to purchase tokens at lower market caps immediately after the launch of a token. Sometimes it pays off.

User 4MyY attempted to do the same thing using Telegram-based trading app Bloom Bot, which allows users to manually set their priority fee and other settings prior to trading. Using the 1,068 SOL priority fee, the user was able to land one of the first 10 purchases of the token, and nabbed more than 17% of the AI Deborah supply, according to data from DexScreener.

Though many users on X (formerly Twitter) suspected this may have been a “fat finger” mistake or an unintentional error, pseudonymous Bloom Bot owner Traian told Decrypt the user manually set the fee and had the max tip set even higher, suggesting it was an intentional pursuit.

The platform’s owner has promoted other high-profile trades using major priority fees on X. For example, one user recently paid a $58,000 priority fee to buy meme coin CATG directly after launch.

Not all meme coin trades require major priority fees. For reference, competing meme coin trading platform Photon defaults its user settings to a 0.001 SOL priority fee, just $0.19. 

While sophisticated traders paying a high priority fee can result in major losses, it can also lead to major gains. The same user that lost more than $200,000 on AI Deborah notched a gain of more than $1.3 million after sniping the launch of token HTERM earlier this week. 

Meme coin trading has become increasingly popular of late, as evidenced by meme coin launchpad Pump.fun being responsible for more than 70% of all token launches on the Solana blockchain last weekend. Several meme coins now sit within the top 100 most valuable cryptocurrencies, ranked by market cap.

Trading meme coins, or tokens typically based on memes or pop culture references, is inherently risky. Such coins are often much more volatile than rival coins that are more established or have utility, and meme coins can just as quickly plunge to zero.

Meme coin traders hope to rack up more wins than losses—as this one apparently did with their recent trades, despite the apparent misplay.

Edited by Andrew Hayward