A teenager has created his own crypto coin and earned thousands of euros. Just a few hours later, his shares were worth several million.
How did the 13-year-old earn the money? A 13-year-old American has created his own crypto coin called “Gen Z Quant” and earned $30,000 (about €28,000) in just 8 minutes, according to the boy’s father, who spoke to the online magazine Wired.
The 13-year-old created 1 billion units of the coin and invested $350 of his own money to buy 51 million tokens of the cryptocurrency. Afterwards, he started a livestream on the website where he offered the coin and showed himself on camera.
Within the next 8 minutes, the cryptocurrency was purchased by various people, reaching a total value of $30,000 for the 13-year-old’s coins. He then cashed out his coins and cheered into the camera: “Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit! Thanks for the twenty bandos.” He reportedly held up two middle fingers to the camera and stuck out his tongue.
Why could he be a millionaire now? After the 13-year-old sold his tokens, the price of the cryptocurrency dropped significantly, as he held such a large share of the coin. This process is also known as a “rug pull.”
A rug pull is considered a type of crypto scam that founders of such coins hope to use to make quick money. According to Wired, it is a legal gray area but ethically rather questionable in the crypto community.
The investors in the coin were angry and wanted revenge, leading to the 13-year-old and his parents facing insults, as the boy’s father recounted. Shortly thereafter, images and names of family members were also spread online.
However, according to Wired, the revenge of the angry investors was not over yet. They allegedly continued to invest in the coin as a form of revenge, causing the value of the currency to rise to $72 million. The 13-year-old’s shares would then have been worth about $3 million the next morning.
As the father of the 13-year-old reports, the family could not really rejoice about their son earning thousands of dollars due to the intimidating online presence of the angry investors:
“In the end, many people made money with his coin. But for us, who were caught in the middle, it was very emotional. The online backlash became so frightening that the realization that he made money was somehow undermined by the fact that people got angry and started to harass him.”
Investing in cryptocurrencies always carries a certain risk, which is why you should think carefully before putting your money into such a token. The head of the text AI “ChatGPT” recently advised against investing in the currently most well-known cryptocurrency as of October 2024: The head of the AI bot ChatGPT explicitly warns why you shouldn’t buy Bitcoin right now.
