In December 2024, the meme coin MIRA launched on the Solana blockchain, inspired by the story of four-year-old Mira Chen, who was diagnosed with a rare benign brain tumor. The token, created by an X user known as Waddles, became a way to gather funds for researching rare diseases.
Waddles got the idea for MIRA after learning about the Chen family’s situation. Half of the tokens were sent to Mira’s father, entrepreneur Si Qi Chen, to encourage the crypto community to support this crucial cause. Chen, in turn, pledged to allocate 100% of the proceeds to researching pediatric brain tumors.
Chen sold 1% of his tokens daily, publishing reports on those sales. Rather than causing the coin’s price to drop, it began climbing quickly. MIRA’s market cap reached $80 million, with trading volume surpassing $100 million. At the time of writing, those figures had declined to $15.5 million and $68 million, respectively. Thanks to community support, Chen raised over $14 million for charity.
