In a Monday livestream, Beni, wearing a wig, fake beard, and black clothes, appeared under a noose.

He threatened to kill himself unless traders bought his cryptocurrency on Pump.fun — a website that lets users create, launch and promote their own memecoins.

The outlandish video triggered outrage and calls to shut the website down.

“This is out of control,” Beau, a pseudonymous safety programme manager for the NFT collection Pudgy Penguins, wrote in a viral post.

“Shut Pump.fun down,” said another.

Later that day, Beni seemingly committed suicide. Pump.fun quickly disabled livestreaming on its site.

Only Beni never died. “It’s a fake,” a memecoin promoter behind the stunt told DL News. “We took down Pump.fun livestreams with a fake stunt.”

Dark side

Since its launch in January, Pump.fun has become one of crypto’s buzziest projects and generated more than $220 million in revenue, according to DefiLlama.

Part of its success stems from users’ ability — up until Monday — to livestream to promote their memecoins.

In a race to the bottom, many have resorted to more and more shocking stunts: A memecoin creator purportedly threatened to kill a cat, another apparently fired a gun on camera, and a child purportedly threatened his family with a shotgun.

Beni’s purported suicide is no different. It shines a light on the dark side of memecoins, where the more outrageous a stunt is, the more likely it is to grab traders’ attention — regardless of its authenticity.

‘There is no Beni’

Beau, the safety programme manager whose post calling out Pump.fun went viral, said he first became aware of the apparent suicide threat when an account named “Beni The Henry” messaged him on X.

The X account, which was promoting the memecoin linked to the suicide attempt, sent an apparent screen recording of a man on Pump.fun trying to hang himself.

DL News found a Telegram user named Musk Guy who was associated with the “Beni The Henry” X account.

Musk Guy sent a screenshot of DL News’ chat with the X account to his chat with DL News on Telegram to verify that he had control over “Beni The Harry,”

After Beni’s purported death, Musk Guy weaved a complicated and hard-to-believe tale in a series of messages with DL News.

He said that he was Beni’s friend and that he was operating his late comrade’s accounts to “honour” his last wish: to become a meme.

He first said he and Beni were from Israel. Later, he told DL News that he was lying. “I am from Canada,” he said.

He declined to give his real name. When asked where in Canada, he seemed unsure. “We live in the British province,” he responded, referring to British Columbia.

He refused to connect DL News with Beni’s supposedly grieving family. Although he said he had lawyers who were helping him with the fallout of the suicide, he wouldn’t reveal their names.

“They bill me like pigs,” he said, when asked to see if they would be available to chat. “Not gonna waste [money] on that.”

Musk Guy then sent DL News Beni’s supposed death certificate. It said Beni had died 20 years ago on May 4, 2002.

Eventually, Musk Guy stopped beating around the bush. “There is no Beni lol,” he said.

‘Distasteful’

No one died, but that still doesn’t excuse the hoax, Beau, the safety programme manager, told DL News.

“They could have accidentally injured or killed themselves during the ‘stunt,’” he said. “And finally just the general disrespect towards the concept of suicide is also distasteful.”

Musk Guy didn’t respond to a message asking for a response to Beau’s criticisms and didn’t respond to other follow-up questions. Alon, the pseudonymous founder of Pump.fun, also did not respond to a request for comment.

“It’s certainly more harmful if he had committed suicide,” said Beau, in reference to Beni. “But it is still extremely harmful because of what it could inspire.”

Ben Weiss is DL News’ Dubai Correspondent. Got a tip? Email him at bweiss@dlnews.com.