'Binance Effect': Peanut the Squirrel, Act I: The AI Prophecy Meme Coins Skyrocket

Two rising Solana meme coins created via the Pump.fun launchpad have skyrocketed in price after Binance announced that it will list the tokens for spot trading. With this, one of the token's apparent co-founders has spoken out about the creation of the meme coin, asking for it to be rebranded.

Act I: The AI Prophecy (ACT) and Peanut the Squirrel (PNUT) were both listed on leading cryptocurrency exchange Binance for spot trading, albeit tagged as highly volatile assets. This caused both tokens to see parabolic gains, in what many call the "Binance Effect."

PNUT jumped from a market cap of $129 million to $447.5 million—an increase of 247%—in a matter of hours, though it has settled since to a cap of about $422 million at a current price above $0.41.

The meme coin was inspired by a popular pet squirrel called Peanut that was euthanized by New York state authorities against the owner's wishes, causing a social media frenzy that unexpected got whipped up into the election cycle.

Meanwhile, ACT has soared by over 2,000% in the approximately 10 hours since the listing announcement, from a market cap of just $21 million to about $460 million at present.

According to its official site, ACT stands for AI Community Token and claims to be focused on the “advance of AI research, education, and collaboration.” The meme coin's site says that it was co-founded by pseudonymous Twitter user Amplifiedamp (also known as Amp), who soon decided to sell all their tokens and leave the community after feeling "betrayed."

But this isn’t the story that Amp tells.

“I have never been comfortable with the ACT currency and they have always been [using] my branding without my permission,” Amp posted on Twitter. “I distributed, burnt, or sold all of the ACT tokens that were given to me. I wish it to be listed on no further centralized exchanges.”

They added that holding the coin was “stressful,” and claimed that the community constantly misgendered them, ignoring requests to avoid doing so. Amp publicly asked for the token to be rebranded, proposing that a new smart contract be made. Smart contracts contain the code that power things like decentralized apps (dapps), tokens, and NFTs.

Act I was originally created by Amp in August, months before the meme coin was launched. It was a fundraising project to help fund researchers and AI agents, as Amp was looking to be less reliant on a small number of big-money individuals. Others in the space then created the token via Pump.fun, donating a portion of the token supply as a way to contribute to this goal.

This is the second wave of Pump.fun tokens to be listed on the largest centralized exchange in the world First it was Goatse Maximus (GOAT), another AI meme coin, and a coin based on the viral pygmy hippopotamus Moo Deng (MOODENG)—both of which were listed for futures trading on Binance in late October.

Interestingly, both PNUT and ACT were listed for spot trading instead. Futures trading requires users to buy or sell an asset at a specific time, quantity, and price—this is done to limit volatility. Meanwhile, spot trading enables much more freedom, allowing traders to buy or sell an asset as they see fit.

Now, four of the top five Pump.fun tokens by market cap are listed on Binance in some respect, with the surging Fwog (FWOG) being the only one from that batch to not be listed on the exchange.

Edited by Andrew Hayward