Peter Todd’s Solana Memecoin Scam Highlights Pattern of Suspicious Paid Actions

Peter Todd, a veteran Bitcoin developer, has once again found himself at the center of controversy within the crypto community, this time for promoting a Solana based memecoin in a move that many have labeled a pump-and-dump scam.

On August 17, 2025, Peter Todd disclosed that he was paid $5,000 in SOL by an anonymous person to promote the Joker-themed $HAHA memecoin, which sparked a 1,500% token price surge followed by a 95% crash within minutes, effectively dumping on all investors and scamming anyone who was trying to buy the memecoin Peter Todd was promoting.

This incident, while recent, is not an isolated event in Todd’s career. Over the years, his acceptance of payments for various projects, from the R3 blockchain consortium consultancy to the CoinJoin bounty dispute, has drawn accusations of prioritizing personal gain over Bitcoin’s decentralized ethos, painting a picture of an unscrupulous figure whose actions have repeatedly stirred debate, with many saying that Todd is just a paid mercenary instead of a developer.

A History of Controversial Engagements

The $HAHA memecoin promotion in August 2025 stands as the latest chapter in Todd’s contentious history. Todd’s X post, which read, “One bad day… one good pump. Laugh your way to the moon. #HAHA,” triggered immediate market volatility, with the token’s price soaring before plummeting 95%. Todd voluntarily disclosed the $5,000 payment, noting that no non-disclosure agreement was in place and that marking paid advertisements is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions.

Critics, however, were quick to condemn the move, arguing that endorsing a token with no clear utility or roadmap was a betrayal of trust, especially given reports that 98.6% of Pump.fun tokens, like $HAHA, exhibit signs of fraudulent activity such as rug pulls or pump-and-dump schemes. Some speculated Todd created the token himself, though no clear evidence supports or disputes this claim, and he framed the promotion as a satirical lesson on market manipulation, in typical fashion, twisting and shifting the blame away from himself.

This incident echoes earlier controversies, such as Peter Todd’s consultancy with the R3 blockchain consortium from the years 2015 to 2016, a period marked by the divisive Block Size Wars. R3, backed by major banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, aimed to develop the Corda platform, a distributed ledger technology for financial institutions. Todd was paid approximately 3 BTC per month for 7–8 months, totaling 21–24 BTC, or roughly $25,000–$43,000 at the time, to contribute his expertise in Bitcoin and blockchains, drawing from his prior Proofchains work.

At the time, many Bitcoiners who saw banks as adversaries to Bitcoin’s disruptive potential, accused Todd of “selling out” by aligning with traditional finance while advocating for small blocks, which critics argued limited Bitcoin’s scalability as peer-to-peer cash in favor of bank-friendly off-chain solutions. His tenure ended in late 2016, through contract non-renewal, amid disagreements over R3’s delay in open-sourcing Corda and restrictions on third-party code audits. Todd later criticized R3 for threatening journalists and blocking a member bank from hiring him for an independent audit, further fueling perceptions of ideological misalignment. The subsequent hiring of Mike Hearn, another ex-Bitcoin developer, as R3’s lead platform engineer intensified speculation that Todd’s outspokenness led to his exit, with some alleging Hearn’s Corda whitepaper borrowed heavily from Todd’s ideas.

To further add to Todd’s checkered past, the CoinJoin bounty dispute of 2013–2014 further illustrates Todd’s pattern of controversial paid engagements. Proposed by former Bitcoin Core developer and Blockstream founder Greg Maxwell, CoinJoin aimed to enhance transaction privacy by allowing multiple users to combine transactions, making them harder to trace. A crowdfunded bounty, controlled by Maxwell, Theymos, and Pieter Wuille, was set up to reward implementations, with Dark Wallet, led by Amir Taaki, emerging as an early contender with its May 2014 alpha release. However, allegations surfaced that Todd, Maxwell, and an anonymous donor named John Dillon conspired to block Dark Wallet from receiving the funds. Leaked emails revealed Dillon, who was a self-proclaimed NSA or CIA agent, borrowed 5.11 BTC from Todd to donate to the bounty, explicitly to counter Taaki’s “ridiculous attempt to grab” it.

Taaki later accused Todd of dishonesty, claiming he rerouted funds to himself and others, undermining privacy-focused projects. Todd’s public criticism of Dark Wallet’s technical approach, coupled with Dillon’s mysterious background, deepened suspicions of favoritism within Bitcoin’s development circles. Critics like Taaki have since labeled Todd an “intel-collaborating scumbag,” pointing to this as evidence of a broader agenda to suppress radical, anarchist-leaning initiatives. If anything, it continues to show a pattern where Todd will do anything for a pay day.

Todd’s work on Replace-by-Fee (RBF) from 2013 to 2015 also drew significant backlash. Funded by a 0.5–1 BTC bounty from the same intelligence agent John Dillon, RBF allowed users to replace unconfirmed transactions with higher-fee ones, a feature merged to Bitcoin Core in 2015. Big-block advocates argued it undermined zero-confirmation transactions, prioritizing Bitcoin as a settlement layer over its use as cash, and Dillon’s intelligence connections fueled conspiracy theories about external influence. Todd dismissed these claims as “ludicrous,” but the controversy reinforced perceptions of him as a paid actor advancing contentious agendas.

Similarly, in April–May 2025, Peter Todd’s Bitcoin Core pull request #32359, requested by Chaincode Labs, proposed removing OP_RETURN limits to support non-financial data like Ordinals. Though the pull request remains unmerged and lacks confirmed payment details, it sparked significant backlash. Prominent Bitcoin figures like Samson Mow accused Todd of “PR money laundering” to enable blockchain spam. This controversy has reignited debates about the motivations behind Todd’s contributions.

A Reputation as a Paid Mercenary

These events have further cemented Todd’s reputation as a paid mercenary figure in the crypto space. His willingness to take on paid work that clashes with Bitcoin’s ethos and community values has drawn sharp criticism. This perception casts Todd as a developer who will accept any paid gig, regardless of its ethical implications, prioritizing personal gain over the principles that define Bitcoin.