The latest memecoin narrative in the crypto market is extracting several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of gas fees from opportunistic traders. A trader recently paid a whopping $120,000 in fees to get 84 ETH worth of the newly launched FOUR tokens. The tokens were worth $156,000 at the time of purchase. 

The recent popularity of meme tokens like PEPE and WallStreetBets’ WSB Coin has led to a revival of the memecoin narrative. As the narrative gained momentum, a crypto project called FourCoin launched a namesake crypto token. The token was inspired by Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao’s “4” tweet, which he uses to signal FUD regarding negative news. 

An on-chain analyst who goes by MinisterofNFTs on Twitter tweeted earlier today that a trader had recently purchased $156,000 worth of $FOUR tokens. Surprisingly, the trader shelled out gas fees equivalent to nearly 77% of the original transaction, indicating the current hype around memecoins. 

The trader paid 64 ETH in transaction fees to speed up and prioritize his transaction to acquire 13.7 billion FOUR, making him the second buyer of the newly launched token. The latest numbers prove that the expensive trade worked eventually paid off, given that his stash of FOUR tokens was worth over a million dollars at the time of writing. 

FOUR was recently listed on CoinMarketCap. The memecoin is currently trading at $0.00007398, with a 24-hour trading volume of more than $100 million. As per the current price, the trader spent $120,000 in transaction fees to make a profit of over $700,000.

Crypto influencer Crypto Tony took to Twitter earlier today to share his take on the skyrocketing ETH gas fees amid the ongoing memecoin frenzy:

According to him, the surge in gas fees highlighted the importance of layer 2 scaling solutions in onboarding the masses and making the network more accessible.