Why Doesn't “73% of Traders in Profit” on a Memecoin Platform Mean It Is Easy to Make Money?

“73% of traders in profit” describes only wallets that sold tokens and stayed active that month. It ignores holders who never sold tokens that went to zero, hides how many people quit after losses, and masks the fact that most “profitable” wallets made less than $500. To judge your own odds, the distribution of outcomes matters more than the share of wallets in the green.

Where does the 73% figure come from?#

CoinGecko Research used Dune data to measure the share of active pump.fun wallets that ended each month with a profit. From April 2024 through late 2025 most were in the red, bottoming at 30.08% profitable in June 2025. Then the share climbed: 50.08% in January 2026, 56.83% in February, 70% in March and 73.28% in April. The April sample covered 3,142,559 wallets.

Why are “stuck” holders missing from the stats?#

The study counts realized results only: the difference between a wallet's buys and sells in a month. The authors say explicitly that holders who never sold, even if the token crashed to zero, are excluded. For memecoins this matters: a large share of losses happens exactly this way — the token collapses, liquidity vanishes, and there is nothing left to sell into. Such a wallet does not show up as a loser; it simply drops out.

How does the exit of losing traders affect the number?#

Active wallets fell from 5.2 million in May 2025 to 1.8 million in December, according to the same data. CoinGecko attributes the rising profitable share to an exodus of unprofitable traders and a more experienced user base. That is textbook survivorship: when losers stop trading, the share of winners among those who remain rises, even if nothing got easier for a newcomer.

How much did the “profitable” wallets actually make?#

The April 2026 distribution:

• 65.14% of all wallets made $1 to $500;
• 2.77% made $500 to $1,000;
• 5.37% made more than $1,000;
• 25.23% lost $1 to $500;
• 0.71% lost $500 to $1,000, and 0.78% lost more than $1,000.

Most “profits” are small sums that network fees, slippage or one bad trade next month can wipe out. The methodology also does not filter out bots or wash trading, and prices for illiquid tokens may be stale.

Who earns regardless of outcome?#

The platform takes a fee on every trade, winning or losing. Per DefiLlama, the Pump ecosystem (pump.fun itself plus the PumpSwap exchange) collected about $160 million in fees over the 30 days to September 25, 2026, of which about $53.6 million was protocol revenue. Platform income swings a lot: The Motley Fool noted sharp daily drops and rebounds in September. Trading between users is zero-sum before fees and negative-sum after them: for someone to profit, someone else must sell lower or buy higher. For how a token launch itself works, see “Bonding Curves in Memecoins”.

What are the limits of this analysis?#

It rests on one study and one methodology: a wallet is not a person, one trader can run dozens of wallets and a bot thousands. April data says nothing about September. Monthly realized PnL does not show a full-year result. Above all, even an honest profitable share says nothing about the next trade — memecoins remain among the most volatile corners of the market, where losing the entire stake is a common outcome.