A boy got excited about the US$30,000 he made after dumping his memecoin and causing the price to plummet; but investors didn't let it go cheap.

A child created a Solana-based memecoin to scam investors on Tuesday (19) after its token hit a market value of $1 million.

Excited about the $30,000 he had just pocketed, the boy took one look at everyone watching his live stream and shouted, “Thanks for the money,” as he jumped around the room.

But Crypto Twitter took this personally and quickly exacted revenge.

Over the next four hours, the token the boy launched on Pump.fun, called GenZ Quant (QUANT), skyrocketed to a peak market value of $85 million. If the kid had held onto his coins until that point, his $30,000 would have been worth more than $4 million. That’s a huge loss of wealth.

It all started when a photo of the boy behind QUANT went viral on Monday (18). “I just made $2,000 before going to school,” read the post on X, from an account claiming to be the boy’s. “Closed.”

Crypto Twitter apparently found this hilarious, with the initial post reaching over 3 million views as other accounts reposted the image with their own captions. High-risk crypto investors were amazed at the idea that a kid who looks to be in his early teens could generate so much money from cryptocurrencies.

So when this same kid launched a token on Pump.fun just two days later, he quickly gained the attention of high-risk crypto investors. Within 10 minutes of the launch, the developer promoted the project on a live stream, as viewers and traders gathered to watch the spectacle.

“I believe everyone who invested in QUANT and watched the livestream, including myself, genuinely thought it could be a promising coin,” pseudonymous trader Nocci, who bought the token, told Decrypt. “After all, it’s not every day you see a 12-year-old kid who made $2,000 launching his own token. The excitement was high.”

But when the token hit a market cap of $1 million, the boy promptly sold and dumped his wallet, causing the token’s price to drop 54% in a matter of seconds. This was called a rug pull by on-chain data visualization company Bubblemaps.

He initially seemed surprised by the token's sharp drop before turning around and enjoying his newfound wealth, jumping into the air, giving his viewers a look and reveling in his winnings.

This is a variation on the livestreaming strategy that spawned some of the most viral memecoins of 2024, which quickly went extinct. But QUANT was different. This time, it was so funny and viral that high-risk investors started buying it.

“Initially I wasn’t [invested], but after it shut down steam I bought some coins,” Beezy, a pseudonymous memecoin trader, told Decrypt, “just because the whole thing was funny and because I saw the traction my tweet [about it] was getting.”

As investors began to pour in, posts about the situation went increasingly viral, prompting popular Twitch streamer xQc to react to the incident with a total of 181,000 viewers. This led to the recently dumped memecoin reaching a market cap of $85 million.

“It was almost like an appreciation for revenge that led people to come together, driven by the desire to do something about the situation,” Nocci explained. “They started buying, creating a buzz and spreading the word to show that the community could turn things around after being deceived by the boy.”

While the developer may be upset about potentially wasting $1.5 million, those who invested in the project believe the token would not have been launched without the boy's antics.

“The fact that he dumped it was crucial because it set the narrative,” Beezy said. “Certainly, crypto got its revenge.”

The fact that the boy had lost generational wealth was revenge enough for most people, but others went much further. Disgruntled traders discovered the boy’s real identity, leaked his address and school, and spammed his apparent mother’s Instagram with hateful comments.

After the scam, the boy created another token called I’m Sorry (SORRY), which reached a market cap of $4.5 million after being sold at the $400,000 level for just over $13,000.

Then another token based on his dog (LUCY) reached a market cap of $3.8 million after he split his supply, selling for around $20,300 when the token was around $700,000 in market cap.

“The kid has done nothing wrong. He never promised a long-term roadmap or the future of finance. It’s a memecoin. This is all insanely speculative,” said pseudonymous SaaS trader Wiz — who bought the token at a market cap of $20,000. “This is great for crypto. It’s going to bring a lot of new people into the bull run.”