In summary
- Mark Longo launched the JUSTICE token on Solana to honor Peanut and Fred, after accusing the crypto community of profiting from their tragedy.
- The JUSTICE token reached a market capitalization of $53.8 million with more than 14,000 holders, according to Solscan.
- The deaths of Peanut and Fred generated public outrage, influenced political speeches and the rise of meme cryptocurrencies.
Less than a month after the story of Peanut the squirrel and Fred the raccoon broke headlines, Mark Longo, the owner of the two pets whose tragic deaths caused public outrage and sparked a movement, has launched his own token.
Longo spoke in a Twitter video about how he came to process Peanut and Fred’s story and has decided to launch a new token on Solana for Pnut and Fred called JUSTICE, to honor the memory of their pets.
“The government will not get its way,” Longo said. “Justice will be done, not just for Fred and Peanut (…) We will show the world that it is not okay to overstep the limits.”
He has also accused the crypto community of profiting from his personal trauma.
“The Cryptocurrency world has taken my tragedy and profited in every way possible,” Longo said, describing the experience as “one of the most devastating things” of his life.
“The fact that people want to make money from this is just despicable,” he said.
After lamenting how the crypto community allegedly benefited from the incident, Longo announced that he is launching a new token.
“This is the only coin I will be affiliated with forever,” Longo said. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Members of the PNUT community have fought back, pointing to approximately $50,000 in donations made to Longo, which they claim he sold immediately.
At the time of writing, JUSTICE has over $53.8 million in market cap with over 14,000 holders, according to Solscan data. The token was minted using the memecoin platform, Pump.fun.
Where the story began
Peanut the squirrel (stylized as P’Nut) and Fred the raccoon lived with Mark Longo at his animal sanctuary in Pine City, New York. P’Nut had become an internet sensation with more than 500,000 followers on social media platforms.
New York state environmental officers raided Longo’s home on October 30, citing laws against keeping wildlife as pets. Both animals were euthanized on Nov. 1 after P’Nut allegedly bit someone during the seizure.
The incident sparked widespread outrage and became a politically charged issue in the run-up to the US presidential election.
Days after the story went viral, Vice President-elect JD Vance said at a rally in Sanford, North Carolina, that Trump was “excited” about euthanasia, criticizing what they viewed as “government meddling.”
Elon Musk, who supported Trump during the election campaign, described the situation as disastrous before following up with a flurry of tweets about P’Nut. This led crypto Twitter degens to push and promote the Solana-based meme cryptocurrency created based on this, following Musk’s comments and associating it with PNUT.
Lawsuits and cryptocurrency meme
The case behind PNUT is not the first time that a cryptocurrency meme has resulted in actual lawsuits or threats.
On November 21, Philip Banks, the artist behind the viral “Chill Guy” meme, said he is taking legal action against meme cryptocurrencies that use his art. Banks’ work was used in several meme cryptocurrencies, notably another Solana-based token called CHILLGUY, whose market capitalization increased from $13 million on November 19 to more than $517 million by November 22, according to data from CoinGecko.
Edited by Sebastian Sinclair
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