Launch Coin on Believe founder faces a class action after the coins collapsed 99.9%

A class action lawsuit filed March 23, 2026, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York accuses Ben Pasternak, B24 Inc. and the Believe Foundation of misleading cryptocurrency investors through a series of alleged false statements tied to multiple digital tokens.

The case was brought by plaintiffs Joshua Lee, a California resident, and Pierre Montmeas, a French citizen, on behalf of all people who purchased, acquired or held $PASTERNAK, $LAUNCHCOIN or $BELIEVE tokens from Jan. 8, 2025, through March 23, 2026, and suffered financial losses as a result.

The defendants also include 10 unnamed individuals or entities referred to as Does 1 through 10. Consumer damages are conservatively estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the complaint.

Pasternak and the Believe platform

Ben Pasternak is a 26-year-old serial entrepreneur who resides in Manhattan, New York. Before entering the cryptocurrency industry, he co-founded Monkey, a social networking app that allowed teenagers to video chat with other users. He later co-founded Simulate, a plant-based food technology company known for its NUGGS product, a vegan alternative to chicken nuggets. According to the complaint, Simulate raised over $50 million from institutional investors at a $250 million valuation before being acquired in October 2024.

In January 2025, Pasternak launched a new cryptocurrency venture: a Solana-based token launchpad initially called Clout. The platform was designed, according to the complaint, to eliminate every practical barrier to creating and trading digital tokens.

The complaint notes that the platform accepted credit card payments and required no cryptocurrency wallet, no technical knowledge and no investor accreditation. That design made it accessible to a broad pool of everyday people, including many with little or no prior experience in digital assets.

B24 Inc., developed and maintained the platform. The Believe Foundation separately controlled the token treasury and the buyback wallet, allegedly giving the defendants collective influence over large portions of the token supply.

By the time the lawsuit was filed, the platform had processed over $6 billion in cumulative trading volume. The complaint estimates that defendants extracted approximately $54 million in total platform fees over that period. Pasternak personally earned creator fees on every transaction involving tokens he created, according to the lawsuit.

Alleged misrepresentations and a series of token collapses

According to the complaint, the deceptions began with the platform's very first token. On Jan. 24, 2025, Pasternak launched the $PASTERNAK token and publicly announced on X that he had "0 ownership in the token." The lawsuit alleges that statement was false and was intended to build consumer trust by suggesting insiders had no financial stake in the token's price movements.

The token initially surged to $80 million in market capitalization within a single day, drawing widespread attention to the platform and attracting a large base of retail investors. The token then collapsed over 99.7%, falling to approximately $190,000 by March 2025. Pasternak described that collapse publicly as a "public experiment," the complaint states.

Despite the dramatic failure of his first token, the lawsuit describes how Pasternak returned under a new brand. On April 28, 2025, he rebranded Clout as Believe. Four days later, on May 2, 2025, he renamed the platform's primary token $LAUNCHCOIN. The token saw a sharp run-up between May 12 and May 15, 2025, reaching an all-time high of $0.3647 and a peak market capitalization of over $240 million.

What followed, the complaint alleges, was a sustained pattern of broken promises. From May through October 2025, $LAUNCHCOIN's price declined over 99% while Pasternak made at least 12 separate public statements about a "flywheel" buyback mechanism. As described in the complaint, that mechanism was supposed to channel platform fees back into the open market to purchase tokens and theoretically support their price.

The buybacks never materialized, according to the lawsuit. Instead, the team urged investors to hold their positions through the steep decline. The complaint cites statements including "Short term price action is irrelevant. Trust the process" and "Stop Trading. Believe in something." The lawsuit characterizes that messaging as designed to prevent retail investors from exiting their positions.

Crypto.news separately reported additional accusations against Pasternak, including claims from the chief executive of an AI firm called Kled that Pasternak transferred the majority of its allocated tokens to an undisclosed third party, reportedly in violation of an agreement not to sell on the open market.

Forced migration

On Oct. 15, 2025, rather than delivering the promised buybacks, Pasternak announced a forced migration from $LAUNCHCOIN to a new token called $BELIEVE. The complaint describes the event as an undisclosed and harmful dilution that benefited insiders at the expense of retail investors.

The total token supply grew from 1 billion to 1,333,333,284 tokens, a 33.3% increase. The defendants publicly characterized it as only a "25% increase," a description the complaint calls materially misleading. The new tokens were allegedly distributed to insiders: approximately 17% to contributors with four-year vesting schedules, 5% to early investors subject to a one-year lockup and 3%, roughly 40 million tokens, to the Believe Foundation with no lockup or vesting restrictions of any kind.

Existing holders received no additional tokens to offset the dilution. Pasternak publicly stated that "no individual or entity is getting coins for the next year at minimum." The complaint alleges that statement was materially false because the Believe Foundation's allocation was immediately unlocked and available with no restrictions.

Investors who did not complete the migration by Oct. 29, 2025, lost their entire investment. Their unmigrated tokens were permanently destroyed through a process known in cryptocurrency as "burning." The migration announcement alone triggered an immediate 30% price drop, and the complaint alleges that $LAUNCHCOIN ultimately declined 99.98% from its all-time high.

After Oct. 29, 2025, Pasternak and the official Believe account largely fell silent. According to the complaint, Pasternak had not made an original post on X since Oct. 29, 2025, and the @believeapp account had not posted since Jan. 13, 2026. In January 2026, Pasternak briefly resurfaced to announce an entirely different product called Believe v2, without addressing the losses suffered by existing holders.

What does this mean for the crypto investors?

The complaint asserts six legal claims against the defendants, including deceptive business practices and false advertising under New York General Business Law sections 349 and 350, violations of California's Unfair Competition Law, violations of California's False Advertising Law, negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment.

The plaintiffs, Lee and Montmeas, each reported individual losses of several thousand dollars. As class representatives, they seek to include any person who purchased, acquired or held the three tokens during the class period and suffered losses tied to the defendants' alleged conduct.

The lawsuit seeks actual damages, statutory damages, disgorgement of all profits allegedly obtained through improper means and restitution. It also requests injunctive relief, the imposition of a constructive trust over identifiable digital assets, attorney fees and prejudgment interest. Disgorgement would require the defendants to surrender any profits gained through conduct the court finds unlawful. A constructive trust would place specific assets under court supervision to ensure they are returned to harmed investors.