What Is Leopardus tilcayo (TILCAYO)? The Wild Cat Meme Coin 87% Below Its First Close

Leopardus tilcayo (TILCAYO) is a Solana meme coin named after a newly described Bolivian wild cat, and its 4 October 2026 close sat 87.13% below its first daily close. It began trading on 17 September, the day the study naming the cat came out, and it has no product or tie to the researchers.

Its PumpSwap pool opened at 15:12 UTC that afternoon and traded $6.6 million before the first day closed at $0.0020839312. On 4 October the same pool traded $50,179, under 1% of day one, and closed at $0.00026818986 on GeckoTerminal's day bars. Copies had opened pools on at least six chains by 19 September.

What Is Leopardus tilcayo (TILCAYO)?

Leopardus tilcayo is a Token-2022 token on Solana with the mint address AyYNfPtftg2zDP4ZbgcoQMggQtwLh4zpfVVmUJs2thto. That address is the only reliable way to tell it apart from the copies trading under the same name. The metadata file the mint points to describes the TILCAYO token in one word, "memecoin", and its website field holds no web address.

Nearly all of its liquidity sits in one PumpSwap pool that pairs TILCAYO with SOL, so its price is whatever ratio that pool holds after the last swap. If you're new to that setup, Phemex's guide to what a liquidity pool is covers how those ratios set a price.

Why Is Leopardus tilcayo Trending?

The name belongs to a real cat, a small spotted feline from the Yungas cloud forest of Bolivia. The Current Biology study "Phylogenomics and museomics reveal five distinct species of tiger cats in South America" described it as a new species. The Smithsonian's report on the new species dates the study to 17 September and calls the animal "the first brand-new feline species identified since the pampas cat in 1923".

Crossref, the agency that registers the paper's DOI, created its record at 15:10 UTC on 17 September. The TILCAYO pool opened 84 seconds later, and it traded $18.6 million over its first three day bars.

The token's metadata names no team and links no study, so the shared name is the whole connection.

How Does Leopardus tilcayo Work?

It changes hands in a pool, and that's all it does. A buyer sends SOL into the PumpSwap pool and takes tokens out, a seller does the reverse, and every swap moves the price along the pool's constant-product curve. The mint carries only two Token-2022 extensions, both for its name and metadata, so no transfer fee or transfer hook sits in the code. With nothing paying holders, the only thing that can lift the price is more SOL coming in than going out.

Leopardus tilcayo Tokenomics

A Solana RPC read at 13:26 UTC on 5 October shows 976,115,720 TILCAYO in supply, with the mint authority and the freeze authority both set to null. Nobody can print more tokens or freeze a holder's wallet. The metadata's update authority is null too, so the name and symbol can't be changed either. Revoked controls remove two classic traps, though Phemex's piece on why an ownerless token can still fail shows they don't make a coin safe.

GeckoTerminal counts 3,108 holders, with the ten largest holding 38.16% of supply in its snapshot of 16:26 UTC on 4 October. The pool's own vault is one of those ten. It held 139.3 million tokens, 14.27% of supply, at 13:26 UTC on 5 October. That's more than a tenth of 38.16%, too large a share to rank outside the top ten.

Which TILCAYO Contract Is the Real One?

The real one is the Solana mint ending in thto, traded in the pool that opened on 17 September. DexScreener's search, read at 13:28 UTC on 5 October, returns five copies on five chains. TIGRINO tokens named "Leopardus Tilcayo" have pools on Ethereum, Solana and Arc. A TILCAYO token has one on Cronos and a "Leopardus tilcayo" token another on BNB Chain. GeckoTerminal also lists a sixth, a "Leopardus tilcayo" token on Robinhood Chain whose first pool opened at 15:09 UTC on 17 September.

The Ethereum TIGRINO pool shows $380,027 of liquidity in that read, more than five times the real pool's. GeckoTerminal's day bars for it record $2.56 of volume on 27 September and no bar at all from 28 September to 4 October. A big liquidity number with no trades behind it misleads anyone who picks a pool by size.

How to Buy Leopardus tilcayo Safely

Phemex's product list holds no TILCAYO spot or futures market in a read at 13:26 UTC on 5 October. Phemex Onchain, its on-chain trading section, carries a buy-and-sell page for the real mint in a read at 13:34 UTC the same day. That read also found a second Onchain page for the Solana TIGRINO copy named "Leopardus Tilcayo", so the address check matters there as much as anywhere.

To buy Leopardus tilcayo anywhere, run the three checks below before you sign a swap. They follow Phemex's guide on how to audit new crypto contracts, applied to this token.

- The mint. Match AyYNfPtftg2zDP4ZbgcoQMggQtwLh4zpfVVmUJs2thto character by character before you approve anything in your wallet. A copy can carry the same name and picture.

- The pool. The real PumpSwap pool opened at 15:12 UTC on 17 September, and its address begins ASgoadVE. Any pool built on a mint other than the one ending in thto trades a copy, whatever its name.

- The lock. GeckoTerminal's pool data, read at 13:26 UTC on 5 October, reports 100% of the pool's liquidity as locked.

What Are the Risks of Leopardus tilcayo?

The fade came fast. The 23 September close was 55.38% below the first and the 28 September close 82.79% below, so most of the damage landed inside the first 11 days.

A thin pool. With $69,822 in the pool at 13:26 UTC on 5 October, about $34,900 sits on each side. A $1,000 buy lifts the pool price by roughly 6% before fees. A sale of the same size knocks it down by about as much, so you pay that cost going in and again coming out.

Holder concentration. GeckoTerminal's 4 October snapshot puts the 40 largest holders, the pool included, at 66.64% of supply. A handful of those wallets can move this price on their own.

An anonymous deployer. The token's metadata names no team and links no audit or roadmap. Locked liquidity and revoked authorities shut the usual exits, but a big holder selling into a $69,822 pool works much like a rug pull for whoever bought last.

Is Leopardus tilcayo a Good Investment?

The data gives no reason to call it one. As a Leopardus tilcayo crypto bet, it lives on fresh attention to the cat's name. Its first close is still the highest of its 18 settled day bars. For the trade to work, a second news cycle would have to arrive and pull buyers into a pool holding about $70,000.

Some cat coins do give holders something besides a name. Phemex's breakdown of the Solana cat coin that paid holders in Zcash shows what a payout mechanism looks like, and TILCAYO has none. It suits a trader making a small bet on a meme with money they can lose in full. It doesn't suit you if you want income, a product or a team to hold accountable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is TIGRINO the same coin as Leopardus tilcayo?

No. Tigrino was the nickname of a male cat at Bolivia's Senda Verde Wildlife Sanctuary, according to the Smithsonian's report, and it was through that animal that a co-author of the study first met the species. The TIGRINO copies borrowed that nickname, and none of them uses the real mint ending in thto.

What is the TILCAYO price?

GeckoTerminal's pool bars put the 4 October close at $0.00026818986. CoinGecko's daily series puts the same day's close at $0.00025796, 3.81% below that, so name the feed when you quote a price. CoinGecko's record of $0.00292793 at 01:45 UTC on 22 September is an intraday tick, never a daily close.

Who created Leopardus tilcayo?

The deployer is anonymous, and neither the token's metadata nor its CoinGecko listing names a team. The X link inside its metadata points to a single post by an account that isn't the token's own X account.

Where can I buy Leopardus tilcayo?

The PumpSwap pool holds nearly all the liquidity. Two Meteora pools for the same mint held $3,494 between them in DexScreener's read at 13:29 UTC on 5 October, too thin for any order of size.

Final Thoughts

The cat will keep its name for as long as taxonomy lasts, and the token only rented it. Holding TILCAYO is a bet on the next headline about a small Bolivian cat. Nothing in the token, its pool or its anonymous deployer can make that headline happen.

Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and is not financial advice. Cryptocurrency trading involves substantial risk. Always do your own research before making investment decisions.