Confessions of a ‘millionaire’ memecoin

In 2021, the world erupted in a series of digital currency trends, including memecoin. This cryptocurrency is made up of jokes, offers nothing but inflated value and used for speculation. Many people get caught up in the trend, accepting trade-offs in the hope of getting rich quick.

An unnamed 20-year-old student told New York Magazine about his experience of becoming a memecoin millionaire through the name “Excursion to the Memecoin Casino”.

Journey to memecoin

I started this journey with Bitcoin. In 2019, I first bought Bitcoins for about 500 USD, but seem to have forgotten them. It wasn’t until the end of 2020, upon retesting, that this Bitcoin increased in value to $2,000. So from then on, I bought more digital money, accepted to live frugally, doing boring jobs just to have money to buy coins.

It went on like that until August 2021 when I heard that Visa company bought NFT CryptoPunk. This is an NFT that is classified as a “bluechip”, ie with a reputation and high profit potential. I started looking into this asset class and also had good luck finding a rare NFT. At its peak, my NFT was worth $200,000.

I decided to put all my cash in NFT. That $75,000 includes all of my previous electronic savings, money in my dad’s retirement fund. I plan to share the profits with him when it is profitable. However, the plan failed after only two weeks. In mid-October of last year, the NFT dropped in price and my NFT almost died.

I decided to switch to another branch – memecoin. This cryptocurrency does not inherently create anything, typically Shiba Inu or Dogecoin. People trade simply because they like memes and jokes.

I remember then, during a US congressional hearing on cryptocurrencies, politician Brad Sherman jokingly said, “Will a mongoose coin kill crypto?”. Mongoose coin is just a coin he made up, but it sounds funny and makes people enjoy. Just two hours later, the Mongoose coin appeared on the market. People in the crypto industry have always hated memecoins because they think this digital currency has no principles and only increases in price when people buy them. I am not. I don’t love cryptocurrencies. I join to make money and memecoin is how I do it.

Experience memecoin

When I was playing NFT, I didn’t get much sleep because I had to spend 12-16 hours a day “laying around” on the Discord group to not miss anything. When switching to memecoin, things become more pleasant. I just need to follow influencers in the memecoin world.

As a rule, you don’t want others to know who you are. I don’t know the identities of those influential people either, but believe they have experience and may have owned coins like the Shiba Inu long before it became big. They are complacent even though they may not know about mainstream cryptocurrencies. But it doesn’t matter, they just need to be good at memecoins because that’s why people like me care.

I follow Twitter, turning on notifications to know every time they post. When they switched to creating groups on Telegram, I joined them. On it, they post something like “Buy this” or “Have this for 10x the price”.

I also use another tactic to find and track the wallets of influencers. When they buy or sell something, I get a notification and from there review my investments. Every day, I buy 3-5 different memecoins and the time to buy – sell is always very fast. Once, I bought a coin and it doubled in two hours. Spending $2,000 and earning $5,000 became the norm.

However, things don’t always go so smoothly.

In early November 2021, the market appeared a memecoin called GM, which stands for Good Morning – the phrase people in the cryptocurrency world often use to greet each other on Twitter. Someone used this word and created a memecoin.

I bought GM coin when it was new and the cap was “super low”, only 300,000 USD. With my experience, I think this is a potential memecoin. Indeed, after an hour, the market capitalization of this cryptocurrency jumped to 4 million USD. An hour later, it dropped to $2 million, but that was my chance to buy again. In total, I invested $7,500 in GM. When the number of people holding this coin was only a few thousand, I was in the top 30. I really thought I had become a GM “whale”.

Two days later, my GM number was worth over a million dollars. It was an extremely exhilarating feeling. The first thing I did was give my friends about $1,000 each, including my acquaintances on Discord that I only know their wallet addresses. A friend who owed $10,000 in credit at 25% interest was also helped by me.

For a moment, I thought I was a millionaire and rewarded myself with an $8 smoothie. Besides, I don’t buy anything for myself. I texted my parents boasting that I was “really a millionaire on paper” but they weren’t too excited.

Lessons from memecoin

One day after becoming a “millionaire”, bad news hit. A celebrity who specializes in investigating crypto projects tweeted that the people behind GM have a shady past. Regardless of authenticity, GM copper was hit hard and fell 50% in three hours. People sell out of fear and so do I. I gradually sold my GM coins, each time more than the last, and always regretted not being able to sell when the price peaked.

That’s also when I learned my lesson: a well-developed memecoin can collapse tomorrow. My GM coin account sometimes reached 2.5 million USD, dropped to 1 million USD and finally 500,000 USD when I withdrew. The sell-off of a “whale” like me even caused this coin to lose another 10% right after I executed the order.

Now, I have a different way of playing the game than when I first entered the cryptocurrency field. If an influencer recommends buying a certain coin, I evaluate it for potential scams. If not, I buy but with the maximum amount of 1,000 USD.

However, I also have no intention of participating in the long term. I want to return to normal life. I had a few months of neglecting my studies and now it’s relatively difficult to come back. I used to not see my friends very often because in one such event, I missed many market movements. I’ll slowly get out of here before it all falls apart again.

Luu Quy (follow New York Magazine)