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Twenty -three -year -old Arnold Robert Haro took his last words to the phone in his hand. “If I die, I hope you turn it into Memecoin,” he said. Then Haro took his life.
Haro died on February 21 in his family home in Madeira, California, a death certificate obtained by wired concerts. His suicide was broadcast live to his followers on X, where he followed the handle @mistafuck. The film material about Haro’s death has been removed from the platform since then, but the incident was briefly replaced with her Trends tab.
In hours after the death of Haro people created dozens of memecoins– a kind of highly unstable cryptographic coin used as a vector for financial speculation – modeled after it. Sensing the opportunity for profit, traders in particular in one of the coins, Conducting its value up to $ 2.1 million in the aggregate. (The coin has lost 96 percent of its value since then.)
Some tried on x to argue The fact that anyone was behind the Mistafucko coin duly fulfilled Haro’s last wish. But most condemned the impulse among traders to try to profit from death. “If you trade it, you are sick AF” wrote One user.
Speculation rushed to X that Haro ended his life because he lost money on Memecoin Rugpull – a maneuver in which someone creates a up-to-date coin, promotes it online, and then sells his resources in one assassination, devaluating the participation of all others. Wired was not able to confirm whether it happened Haro, but his friends questioned the narrative. “It had nothing to do with Crypto … They don’t seem to think all these cryptographic nerds,” said Wired one of Haro’s friends who are going through J Nova in social media. Meanwhile, the Haro family described their death as a “fight against depression.”
The incident in the microcosmus is a race to the bottom in Memecoin commercial circles, where only the most shameful and morally bankrupt ideas are now rewarded with attention, says Azeem Khan, co -founder of Morph Blockchain and Warych partner at Foresight van Crypto VC.
“We got to the point where the most potentially exciting premiere, which people look at, is Kanye tries to launch a swastika coin,” says Khan in relation to Now removed posts x Made by an account related to the artist Kanye West. “This is so terrible this space.”
Until last year, the launch of Memecoin was relatively pricey and technically burdensome, which meant that it did not come to the market. Only Dogecoin – original memecoin – and a handful derivative He had any longevity.
This equation has been reversed with the arrival of FUN pumps, a platform that makes it easier for everyone to launch Memecoin without any costs. Since Pump.Fun, many millions of memecoins have been launched in January 2024, including coins modeled on Haro.