Machi Big Brother raises the bid to $1 million, with $FRIEND surging more than 1,350% in a single day

Friend.tech, a SocialFi project that once faded from the market spotlight, has once again become the focus of the crypto market after “Machi Big Brother” Huang Licheng (Jeffrey Huang) abruptly proposed an acquisition plan. On August 27, Huang Licheng publicly said he is willing to offer $1 million to buy Friend.tech and plans to relaunch the project via a Community Takeover (CTO) approach through the community.

Image source: X/@machibigbrother Huang Licheng publicly stated on August 27 that he is willing to bid $1 million to acquire Friend.tech

Huang Licheng said that at the time, Friend.tech’s native token $FRIEND market cap had already fallen below $300,000. Therefore, he submitted a $1 million acquisition offer to co-founder Racer and early investment firm Paradigm. He later added that his main goal was to obtain Friend.tech’s X account and official website, and to redevelop the project using the existing $FRIEND token contract on Base.

The news quickly boosted trading heat for $FRIEND. Market data shows that $FRIEND surged more than 1,350% at one point within 24 hours, and the highest percentage increase measured at different time points even exceeded 1,500%. $FRIEND briefly reached about $0.051, with market cap jumping from under $300,000 to roughly $4.89 million, while 24-hour trading volume also spiked to about $5.63 million. As of the time of writing, $FRIEND’s price is $0.0152.

Source: CoinGecko. The $FRIEND price is $0.0152.

As of now, Friend.tech, Racer, and Paradigm have not publicly confirmed whether they will accept Huang Licheng’s proposal, and they have not announced that formal acquisition talks have begun. Therefore, at this stage it still remains an open acquisition proposal.

He spent $16.7 million to buy FRIEND, and at one point was down by more than $16 million on paper.

Huang Licheng’s relationship with $FRIEND dates back to 2024. According to historical on-chain data, between May and August 2024 he invested about 5,200 ETH ($ETH). At the time, that was worth about $16.7 million, and he accumulated roughly 11 million $FRIEND.

As the hype around Friend.tech quickly faded, the $FRIEND price kept falling. The token hit an all-time high of about $3.26 on May 3, 2024, and by July 2026 its low had slipped to as little as $0.00002225. Based on on-chain data estimates, after the crash, the $FRIEND position held by Huang Licheng briefly shrank to about $500,000, with an unrealized loss of more than $16 million.

• Related news: Friend.Tech abandons control! After losing tens of millions of dollars, “Big Bro” called out: I’ll handle it.

On-chain data also shows that about 5 days before Huang Licheng publicly proposed an acquisition plan, he transferred all 11 million $FRIEND he held to another wallet, and additionally bought about 125,000 FRIEND. Huang Licheng stated that the relevant addresses were his new wallets and that he did not sell the original position.

The proposed acquisition price of $1 million is also higher than the market cap of less than $300,000 before the $FRIEND news was made public. Huang Licheng is also simultaneously a potential acquirer and a large holder of $FRIEND, so the market has paid close attention to his subsequent moves.

Friend.tech was once all the rage; in 2024 the team gave up contract control.

Friend.tech launched in August 2023 on Base, an Ethereum Layer 2 network supported by Coinbase. It was one of the most representative applications of that year’s SocialFi boom. The platform lets users purchase “Keys” linked to specific X accounts to access social features such as private chat rooms, and each transaction charges a certain percentage fee.

After Friend.tech launched, it quickly became a breakout hit and was once one of the most closely watched applications in the Base ecosystem; even its daily fee revenue at one point surpassed Ethereum. The project also received investment from well-known crypto VC Paradigm, becoming an important representative of the 2023 SocialFi market.

However, platform activity dropped rapidly in 2024. After Friend.tech launched V2 in May of that year and conducted a $FRIEND token airdrop, the token price continued to face selling pressure. By September 2024, the development team transferred smart contract admin permissions to a new empty address, effectively giving up the ability to modify contract fee structures and some functions.

This move also increases the technical difficulty of restarting Friend.tech. Since the original smart contract admin permissions had already been relinquished, even if Huang Licheng successfully obtained the brand, official website, and community accounts, he would not be able to directly restore full control over the existing contracts. As a result, the CTO model he proposed is closer to rebuilding a community and products by leveraging the existing $FRIEND token and the brand.

Further reading
From institutional investment to a soft Rug! The rise and fall history of Friend.Tech—why has everyone stopped caring now?
Seize the early lead! Break down Friend.tech’s three key success factors and find the next viral Web3 social app

A $1 million acquisition is still awaiting a response; Friend.tech’s restart faces a test.

Huang Licheng’s new concept for Friend.tech has begun to extend to other financial applications. He mentioned that after a restart, Friend.tech could be brought onto Robinhood, and he also proposed linking “Friends” on the platform to real-world assets (RWA). However, a complete product blueprint and development timeline have not been announced yet.

This remarkable surge in $FRIEND is also related to the previously extremely low market cap and liquidity. When the coin’s market value dropped to the scale of a few hundred thousand USD, a sudden acquisition offer multiple times higher than the original market cap would easily lure short-term funds in, further amplifying price volatility.

Even after experiencing a single-day rally of more than 1,350%, $FRIEND still has a long way to go from its historical high of about $3.26 in 2024. Friend.tech previously generated more than $80 million in total fee revenue, but the platform’s active user base, development teams, and the SocialFi market environment are all different from the peak period.

The biggest variable still lies in whether Racer and Paradigm will respond to Huang Licheng’s $1 million acquisition proposal, and whether the brand, website, and social community accounts can be transferred smoothly. Friend.tech will need to rebuild its product, community, and user demand going forward. Whether this spike in $FRIEND can continue will also depend on the actual progress of the acquisition plan and the project restart.

“FRIEND coin skyrockets by over 1,350%! Big Bro Mingchi spends a million bucks to propose an acquisition, aiming to restart Friend.tech”—this article was first published on “Crypto City”