A Kid Made $50,000 Dumping Crypto He'd Created. Then Came the Backlash

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Joel Khalili Business Dec 6, 2024 5:00 AM

A Kid Made $50,000 Dumping Crypto He’d Created. Then Came the Backlash

In less than 10 minutes, a US teen made a small fortune selling off a memecoin he’d made on a lark. Traders, feeling swindled, sought revenge.

On the evening of November 19, art adviser Adam Biesk was finishing work at his California home when he overheard a conversation between his wife and son, who had just come downstairs. The son, a kid in his early teens, was saying he had made a ton of money on a cryptocurrency that he himself had created. ... Initially, Biesk ignored it. He knew that his son played around with crypto, but to have turned a small fortune before bedtime was too far-fetched. “We didn’t really believe it,” says Biesk. But when the phone started to ring off the hook and his wife was flooded with angry messages on Instagram, Biesk realized that his son was telling the truth—if not quite the full story.

Earlier that evening, at 7:48 pm PT, Biesk’s son had released into the wild 1 billion units of a new crypto coin, which he named Gen Z Quant. Simultaneously, he spent about $350 to purchase 51 million tokens, about 5 percent of the total supply, for himself. ... Then he started to livestream himself on Pump.Fun, the website he had used to launch the coin. As people tuned in to see what he was doing, they started to buy into Gen Z Quant, leading the price to pitch sharply upwards.

By 7:56 pm PT, a whirlwind eight minutes later, Biesk's son’s tokens were worth almost $30,000—and he cashed out. “No way. Holy fuck! Holy fuck!” he said, flipping two middle fingers to the webcam, with tongue sticking out of his mouth. “Holy fuck! Thanks for the twenty bandos.” After he dumped the tokens, the price of the coin plummeted, so large was his single trade. ... To the normie ear, all this might sound impossible. But in the realm of memecoins, a type of cryptocurrency with no purpose or utility beyond financial speculation, it’s relatively routine. Although many people lose money, a few have been known to make a lot—and fast.

{snip}

[Baitball Blogger]

1. And this currency is what they want to tie to our social security?

[bucolic_frolic]

2. Yes, your new payment is 1.7 Gen Z Quant monthly

See your bank for approved conversion rules to $US. Remember to use a secure password.

[erronis]

12. Careful. I wrote a post yesterday about that and it was deleted.

Dear erronis,

One of your posts has been removed:

Are you ready to have your Social Security payments in crypto-currencies?

It was judged to have broken this forum rule:

No kooky, extremist, or hate content

Don't worry -- other than the removal, there are rarely repercussions for a single rule violation (if we need to talk to you about this rule violation, we'll contact you again). We're sending you this notice simply to let you know that the removal occurred, and give you the opportunity to appeal if you believe the post did not break the rule.

I did get quite a few Recs and some interesting replies but it was ruled out-of-bounds.

[Celerity]

14. The whole 'Social Security will be paid in crypto' thing is ridiculous. Same for paying off the national debt with it.

If the US government did actually obtain the crypto bros' target of 1 million bitcopin (BTC), and even IF BTC increased TEN-FOLD IN value, to one million USD per BTC, that yields only 1 trillion usd, which is fuckall compared to what SS payouts would be. In 2024 alone, the Social Security Administration will pay out $1.51 trillion combined between all its obligations.

Not only that, but the US could never sell the 1 million bitcoin without crushing the price (as that 1 million BTC is around 7 to 10 per cent of all actually available bitcoins that will ever exist and can actually be redeemed, as out of the 21 million BTC that can ever exist, 20 million have already been mined and between 4 or 5 on up to almost 8 million are already lost forever via lost wallets, damaged hardware, lost private keys, etc etc).

It is simply impossible to pay Social Security with BTC, same as it is impossible to pay off the US national debt with it.

It is all fantasyland silliness.

[Midnight Writer]

3. If a kid with no resources can do this, think what a narcistic billionaire could do.

Cryptocurrency is an online computer game, and its only value is the faith of its investors.

[getagrip_already]

5. Its the bigger idiot theory....

The theory states that as long as there is a bigger idiot than you to buy back your shares, you will not lose your shirt and may make a small gain.

[marble falls]

4. Good for him. I don't trust the bit coiners as far as I can spit. If they can get away with it, he should get away ...

... it, too. Screw US law enforcement who seem interested in only low hanging fruit.

[stopdiggin]

15. kid is a loser and scumbag (read also predator)

the bigger problem here, by far - is in the fact that we are normalizing at least two things here. 1) the 'crypto' currency carnival - and 2) the grifters and scam artists that readily inhabit ... (as per Bankman-Fried and this 18 year old 'misguided youth' and wannabe con)

neither has anything of value to offer our society.

[getagrip_already]

6. Just hope he added all the right legal disclaimers....

About trading being for entertainment purposes only, blah, blah.

Chat gpt probably set up the coinop for him, and could have added the disclaimers.

[cynical_idealist]

7. key phrase "The "overwhelming majority" of new crypto tokens entering the market are scams of one form or another..."

from article

[70sEraVet]

8. Its definitely time.....

for an upgrade to our legal system.
You can't legally print money in your basement, but you can fabricate money on your computer? Kind of like creating shares of stock in a company, except that there is no company represented? How can this be legal?

[keithbvadu2]

9. The big money return in crypto is:::

The big money return in crypto is:::

1. Starting it, hyping it, selling it, and getting out, leaving the
suckers holding the bag.
2. Handling/storing it for others.
...a. Not your own money/crypto. Someone else's money/crypto.
...b. Lots of fraud/money manipulation/theft/lack of regulation.
3. Backed by trust/faith/great promises/optimism... but no
real assets.
4. It can literally disappear and good luck with lawsuits.
------------------
A few have profited by 'investing' but not the majority.

BTW... You're buying it with your 'real' money.
Will they let you buy it with your old broken crypto?

[TBF]

10. College business schools are probably already recruiting him -

although it looks like he will handle his future just fine on his own.

[OldBaldy1701E]

11. Yet another example of how far we have to go to remove the programming.

We were taught for decades that the rich know best, and that the television (computers and phones nowadays) never lied. They spent trillions and trillions convincing us of this. It worked. Now, we have to deprogram those who cannot stop being Pavlovian when it comes to these and many other soundbites that have been burned into our brains until we believe it to be true and are willing to kill ourselves and everything around us to comply. (Of course, our delusional nature is going to kill us long before anything else will. I stand by this statement. It already got that orange gibbon re-elected when his fifteen minutes should have been LONG gone.)

Remember, elephants are not afraid of mice.

[NoMoreRepugs]

13. Crypto - the quintessential example of the Greater Fool Theory.

[Probatim]

16. Crypto is perfect for scammer, gamblers, or those who have no faith in government issued currencies because

they have no understanding of how government functions.

However, they'll turn over their fortunes to those who are operating algorithms and social media scams - of which they have no understanding of how it works. But it ain't the gubmint!

[keithbvadu2]

17. Did he learn his lesson from all this?... OH, YEAH!

(the last paragraph)

On December 1, after a two-week hiatus, Biesk’s son returned to Pump.Fun to launch five new memecoins, apparently undeterred by the abuse. Disregarding the warnings built into the very names of some of the new coins—one was named test and another dontbuy—people bought in. Biesk’s son made another $5,000.