It was a Tuesday night, somewhere around 4AM. I couldn’t sleep, which happens more often than I’d like to admit since I started trading Solana memecoins. I was half-watching a show on my second monitor and half-scrolling through my token tracker when something caught my eye.
A token had just graduated from PumpFun to Raydium about twelve minutes earlier. Market cap was around $38K. Nothing crazy. But three things stood out to me immediately: the holder count was climbing steadily (not spiking all at once), the top wallet only held 4.2% of supply, and the name was tied to a meme format I’d seen gaining traction on Twitter earlier that day.
I put in 0.8 SOL. Not a life-changing amount, but enough that I’d actually pay attention to it. By the time I woke up five hours later, the token was at a $4.6M market cap. I sold 70% of my position and kept the rest as a free ride. Final result on the portion I sold: roughly 87x. The remaining bag eventually hit around 120x before the token started its decline.
This isn’t a brag post. Honestly, a huge part of it was luck. But there were specific things I did right that I want to break down, because the process behind the trade matters way more than the outcome.
Why the Middle of the Night Is Actually Prime Time
This is something that took me months to figure out. The Solana memecoin market doesn’t sleep, but most traders do. Between roughly 1AM and 6AM EST, the number of active traders drops significantly. But token launches don’t stop. PumpFun keeps pumping out new tokens 24/7.
What this means in practice:
- Less competition on new launches. During peak hours, a promising token gets swarmed by hundreds of traders within seconds. At 4AM, you might have minutes instead of seconds to evaluate and enter.
- Sniper bot activity decreases. Not by a huge amount, but enough that you’re more likely to get a fair entry rather than buying above a wall of bot-sniped positions.
- The tokens that pump at night often pump harder at morning. If a token builds a solid base during the quiet hours, it gets a second wave of attention when US and European traders wake up and check their feeds.
I’m not saying you need to become a nocturnal creature. But if you happen to be up late, having your token tracker open and filtered for recent graduations is one of the highest-value uses of insomnia I’ve found.
What My Screen Actually Looked Like
Let me walk you through what I was looking at when I found this token, because I think the setup matters.
I had TokenRadar open with a pretty specific filter: tokens that had graduated to Raydium in the last 30 minutes, sorted by holder growth rate. I wasn’t looking at every new PumpFun launch — that’s thousands per day and most of them die instantly. I was specifically watching tokens that had already cleared the bonding curve, which is a natural filter. If a token makes it to Raydium, at minimum someone believed in it enough to push it through graduation.
The specific things I checked before buying:
1. Holder distribution
I clicked into the token detail and looked at the top holders. The largest wallet held 4.2%, second was 3.8%, third was 2.1%. That’s a really healthy distribution for a token that’s only 12 minutes post-graduation. Compare that to the typical rug setup where one wallet (or a cluster of linked wallets) holds 15-30% of supply. Even just glancing at holder concentration takes five seconds and eliminates a huge percentage of scams.
2. Holder growth trajectory
The holder count wasn’t just high — it was growing at a steady rate. When I first looked, there were about 180 holders. Over the next two minutes while I was evaluating, it climbed to 210. That’s organic discovery in action. People were finding this token independently, not all buying in at the same moment from a coordinated pump group.
3. The meme itself
This is the part that’s hardest to systematize. The token’s name and image were tied to a meme that I’d noticed trending on Twitter earlier that day. Not a massive viral moment, but the kind of meme that was clearly building momentum. I’d been tracking meme trends casually as part of my daily routine, and recognizing that connection gave me additional confidence that this token had narrative fuel behind it.
4. Safety check
Quick safety scan: no mint authority, no freeze authority, liquidity was healthy relative to the market cap. None of these checks guarantee safety, but they rule out the most common scam vectors. This part took maybe ten seconds.
The Decision to Buy
So here’s the thing about finding a potential winner at 4AM. Your brain is foggy. You’re tired. The temptation is either to ape in without thinking (bad) or to overthink it until the opportunity passes (also bad). I’ve done both plenty of times.
What worked this time was having a pre-set checklist that I run through mechanically. I didn’t need to be at peak mental performance because the checklist doesn’t require creativity — it requires checking boxes. Holder distribution? Check. Growing holder count? Check. No authority red flags? Check. Narrative connection? Check. Reasonable market cap for entry? Check.
Five checks, about 60 seconds total. Then I bought.
I put in 0.8 SOL, which at the time was about $120. That’s roughly my standard “this looks interesting but I’m not certain” position size. I have a larger size for higher-conviction plays, but at 4AM, I don’t trust myself to accurately gauge conviction. So I default to the smaller amount.
What Happened After I Bought
For the first 30 minutes, not much. The price drifted up slowly, maybe 2x from my entry. The holder count continued climbing steadily. A few people started talking about the token on Twitter, but nothing explosive. I set a price alert on my phone and went to bed.
When I woke up at 9AM, my phone had a stack of notifications. The token had caught the morning wave I mentioned earlier — US traders woke up, spotted it on their screeners, and piled in. By 9AM the market cap had gone from $38K to over $2M. By noon it peaked around $4.6M.
I sold 70% of my bag when the market cap hit $3M. My reasoning was simple: it had done an 80x from my entry, volume was still strong but the rate of new holders was starting to slow. That slowdown in holder growth is one of my most reliable exit signals. When fewer new people are discovering the token, you’re approaching the top.
The remaining 30% I let ride. It eventually touched around $5.5M market cap (roughly 120x from my entry) before beginning a slow decline. I sold the rest when it pulled back to about $3.5M. Still a great exit.
What I Actually Learned
The specific token doesn’t matter. What matters are the patterns and principles that made this trade work, because they’re repeatable even if the exact outcome isn’t.
Lesson 1: Be where other traders aren’t
Trading off-hours gave me a time advantage. Not a huge one, maybe 5-10 minutes of earlier discovery. But in memecoin trading, 5 minutes can be the difference between a 100x and a 5x, or between a profit and a loss. You don’t have to trade at 4AM specifically. Just be aware that the most crowded trading hours (roughly 9AM-5PM EST) are also the most competitive.
Lesson 2: Use graduation as a natural filter
I didn’t waste time scrolling through raw PumpFun launches. Focusing on recently graduated tokens cut the noise dramatically. Not every graduated token is good, but the graduation event itself means the token cleared a meaningful threshold of early buyer interest. It’s a free filter that eliminates thousands of dead tokens.
Lesson 3: Holder growth rate beats holder count
I don’t care as much about how many holders a token has right now. I care about how fast that number is growing and whether the growth is steady or spiking. Steady growth suggests organic discovery. A sudden spike followed by a flatline suggests a coordinated pump that’s already exhausted its audience.
Lesson 4: Have a checklist, not a gut feeling
At 4AM, my gut feeling is basically “I should be sleeping.” The checklist works regardless of how alert I am. It’s the same five questions every time. This consistency is what prevents me from making impulsive decisions during tired, emotional, or FOMO-driven moments.
Lesson 5: Size your position for uncertainty
I didn’t go all-in. 0.8 SOL was a meaningful but not devastating amount. If the token had gone to zero immediately — which happens plenty — I would’ve lost $120 and moved on. The key to catching occasional big winners is staying in the game long enough for them to show up. That means no single trade should be able to knock you out.
Could I Do This Again?
Not this exact trade. Finding a 120x is rare, and anyone who claims they do it consistently is either lying or taking risks that will eventually blow up their account.
But finding 5-10x trades using the same process? That happens pretty regularly. Maybe once or twice a week when I’m actively trading. The approach is the same every time: filter for recently graduated tokens, check holder distribution, look for organic growth patterns, verify no safety red flags, and enter with a reasonable position size.
The tool I use for this is TokenRadar because it puts all of these data points on one screen. But honestly, the specific tool matters less than the process. You could do the same checks manually across multiple sites — it just takes longer and you’ll miss more opportunities because speed matters in this market.
The 120x was the outlier. The system that found it is the actual value. Build a system, follow it consistently, and the outlier results take care of themselves.