Transcript
Capital One Ad (0:00)
This message comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. What's in your wallet terms apply. See capitalone.combank for details. Capital One NA Member FDIC just a quick warning.
Nick Nevis (0:17)
This episode includes a kid cursing.
Alexi Horowitz Ghazi (0:20)
This is Planet Money from npr.
Nick Nevis (0:26)
A few months ago, I came across this livestream video clip that had started going viral online that I think captures something essential about the absurdity of the current financial moment we're living through. Here's the backstory. On the night of November 19, 2024, this baby faced kid, he looks around 13 years old, used a new online platform to launch a brand new cryptocurrency into the world. We're not using his name because he did all this anonymously. The cryptocurrency he created is what's known as a meme coin, which is a kind of joke currency. Something that doesn't hold any inherent value besides what other people on the Internet are willing to pay for it. The kid named his coin Gen Z Quant. He spent a few hundred dollars to buy up about 5% of the total supply of his new coin, and then he also started livestreaming on the platform. Somebody else recorded the livestream, which is why in the video you can hear the kid and a couple other voices.
Unknown Speaker (1:20)
Are we bonded yet or what's good?
Nick Nevis (1:22)
In the video, you can both see the kid's face and a chart showing the coin's price. Within seconds, the list of people buying the coin starts to stream in and the little green price line on the chart starts shooting upward like a rocket ship trying to reach escape velocity on its way to the moon. At first the kid seems surprised. Wait, what?
Unknown Speaker (1:42)
He said, wait.
Nick Nevis (1:43)
What? I'm so confused. But then he gets this kind of devious grin on his face. His cheeks start to get a little flushed. He. He moves his cursor over to a sell button on the website and with one click he cashes out the entirety of his holdings in GenZquant, some 51 million tokens for a cool $20,000 or so. There's a murmur of surprise from other people watching the livestream in the chat, a little burst of fire emojis starts popping off and the price of Gen Zquant then immediately collapses. The green line on the price chart turns red and takes a nosedive. And for a moment, the kid again seems shocked at what he's been able to do. Holy fuck. Holy fuck. And then the kid makes it clear he is not in Fact. So confused, he seems to know exactly what's happening. He extends both of his middle fingers to the camera and utters a line that's become kind of infamous in the crypto world. Thanks for the 20 bandos. Thanks for the 20 bandos. Thanks, in other words, for the $20,000 or so that this group of total strangers on the Internet had just transferred right into his account. The kid then stands up, starts tugging at his hair, and just takes a moment to revel in what he's pulled off. Yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. What the fuck? And I think maybe the most absurd part of all this is that the kid then goes on to pull this exact same move to two more times with two other meme coins he created that very same evening, netting over $50,000 in total. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, bro. And when you take a step back and just think about what's happening here, it's kind of wild, right? We're living at a time where a 13 year old can create his own cryptocurrency, successfully hawk it to a bunch of strangers on the Internet over livestream video, and then rip them off for tens of thousands of dollars, not once, not all from the comfort of his own home, and all before bedtime. If someone pulled this move on a market like the New York Stock Exchange, they might have had government regulators knocking on the door. But meme coins are kind of a wild west. And the thing is, what this one kid did is just a tiny glimpse into this much bigger economic story. Just one example of a transformation rippling across the Internet. There are thousands of these meme coins being launched every single day now involving everyone from literal children to social media. Sensational like Hoktua or Mu Dang the Pygmy Hippo to the President of the United States. It's the kind of thing that makes you wonder, how in the world did we get here? Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Alexi Horowitz Ghazi, and I'm joined by freelance reporter Nick Nevis.