Pump.fun’s Recent Payouts Spark Debate on Profit and Extraction in the Crypto Space
Pump.fun’s recent payouts have reignited a familiar debate in the crypto space about when profit becomes “skimming” and when it is simply the result of a business model working as planned. The discussion intensified after on-chain data showed that the Solana-based meme coin launchpad transferred funds to centralized exchanges while reporting one of the most profitable quarters of the cycle.
According to Arkham, Pump.fun has deposited approximately $50,000 into Kraken in the last 24 hours. More importantly, analysts tracking historical flows estimate that the platform moved nearly $615 million off-chain in the fourth quarter of 2025 alone. This number quickly circulated on X, where some commentators called it one of the biggest profit-taking events of the cycle.
Data compiled by DefiLlama shows that Pump.fun generated revenue of approximately $74.1 million in the fourth quarter of 2025, contributing to approximately $935.6 million in lifetime revenue since launch. Loshmi, a crypto inventor with nearly 40,000 followers, argued that Pump.fun has now generated nearly $1 billion in total revenue and said expectations of an airdrop have largely faded.
Profitability and Extraction: A Web3 Conundrum
In his post, he suggested that platforms operating at this scale could exit the market with hundreds of millions in profits, comparing Pump.fun and other trading terminals to “shovel sellers” during a gold rush. Jeffreycrypt echoed this view, writing that the cycle drew a clear line between those who built casinos and those who played in them, with fee collectors ultimately emerging as winners.
Others have pushed back against this portrayal, saying that one crypto analyst, in a post under the name TedPillow, called the fourth quarter payouts “the biggest win of this cycle.” OpenSea ambassador and YouTube creator Crypto Gorilla questioned why profitability in Web3 is often referred to as extraction at all. He argued that users are not forced to use Pump.fun and that the platform is not responsible for individual trading losses.
Pump.fun’s Revenue Boom Masks a Relentless Token Failure Rate
The debate has been complicated by previous disputes over Treasury moves. In November, Pump.fun’s pseudonymous co-founder Sapijiju denied claims that the project had sold more than $436 million in USDC, saying that transfers flagged by blockchain trackers were routine treasury management rather than liquidations. He said the funds came from the PUMP token ICO and were redistributed internally to manage runway and operations.
Revenue data provides context for why scrutiny has intensified as Pump.fun has grown rapidly. Quarterly revenue increased from $2.45 million in the first quarter of 2024 to $47.9 million in the second quarter and then to $207.3 million in the fourth quarter of 2024. The platform peaked in the first quarter of 2025 with quarterly revenue of $256.2 million before cooling off later in the year.
Even after the slowdown, quarterly revenue remained above $70 million, well above the original baseline. Since the cost of sales is zero, almost all fees went directly to profits, giving the protocol a gross margin of almost 100%. At the same time, platform usage data highlights the speculative nature of this growth. More than 14.82 million tokens have been created on Pump.fun, but consistently less than 1% have completed.
In November 2025, over 514,000 tokens were launched, of which only 3,220 reached completion. Similar ratios persisted throughout the year, increasing sustainability concerns, although fee generation remained strong. Daily revenue and wallet activity charts from Dune Analytics show that while Pump.fun has weakened as speculative spikes in late 2024 and early 2025 have faded, it has maintained a sizable base of returning users and steady fee generation.
This consistency is why the platform continues to be one of the top-grossing crypto applications of the cycle. For more information, visit https://cryptonews.com/news/pumpfun-615m-q4-profit-extraction-debate/
