Crypto traders are willing to pay high fees to gain early access to newly issued meme tokens, according to on-chain data.
On Monday, a trader spent over 64 ETH in fees to acquire 84 ETH worth of FOUR, a newly issued meme token likely based on the “4” Crypto Twitter meme.
The trader paid over $120,000 to purchase $156,000 worth of FOUR tokens, becoming only the second entity to buy them. However, the trader is now sitting on an unrealized profit of nearly $240,000.
Data from DEXTools indicates that FOUR tokens have already generated $136 million in trading volumes on the first day of trading, and as of Tuesday, the token has a market capitalization of $30 million.
Early buyers of FOUR tokens are now sitting on profits ranging from $240,000 to $2 million, which explains why traders are willing to pay such high fees to acquire these tokens.
The current trend in crypto is to hunt for jokes instead of fundamental plays, leading to exorbitant gas fees on the Ethereum blockchain.
Gas refers to the ether paid by Ethereum users to ensure that their transactions are included in the earliest block by network validators.
Validators are incentivized to include transactions that pay the highest fees, resulting in high fees on popular tokens that can often run to thousands of dollars.
