Latest news with #ArnoldRobertHaro
WIRED
20-03-2025
- WIRED
A Livestreamed Tragedy on X Sparks a Memecoin Frenzy
Mar 20, 2025 10:35 AM When a young man from California broadcast his death on X, profit-hungry traders piled into a cryptocurrency created in his image. PHOTO-ILLUSTRATION: WIRED STAFF; GETTY IMAGES This story contains mentions of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline . Twenty-three-year-old Arnold Robert Haro addressed his final words to the phone in his hand. 'If I die, I hope you guys turn this into a memecoin,' he said. Then Haro took his own life. Haro died on February 21 at his family home in Madera County, California, a death certificate obtained by WIRED shows. His suicide was broadcast live to his followers on X, where he went by the handle @MistaFuccYou. Footage of Haro's death has since been removed from the platform, but the incident was briefly listed in its trending tab. In the hours after Haro's death, people created dozens of memecoins—a type of highly volatile crypto coin used as a vector for financial speculation—modeled after him. Sensing an opportunity to profit, traders piled into one of the coins in particular, driving its value to $2.1 million in aggregate. (The coin has since lost 96 percent of its value.) On X, some tried to argue that whoever was behind the MistaFuccYou coin had duly granted Haro's final wish. But most denounced the impulse among traders to try to profit by his death. 'If you're trading this, you're sick af,' wrote one user. Speculation ran rampant on X that Haro had ended his life because he had lost money to a memecoin rugpull—a maneuver whereby somebody creates a new coin, promotes it online, then sells off their holdings in one swoop, devaluing everyone else's stake. WIRED was unable to confirm whether this had happened to Haro, but his friends have disputed the narrative. 'It had nothing to do with crypto … It's not what all these crypto nerds seem to think,' one of Haro's friends, who goes by j nova on social media, told WIRED. Haro's family, meanwhile, has described his death as the result of 'his battle with depression.' The incident captures in microcosm the race to the bottom in memecoin trading circles, where only the most heinous and morally bankrupt ideas are now rewarded with attention, says Azeem Khan, cofounder of the Morph blockchain and venture partner at crypto VC firm Foresight Ventures. 'We've reached the point where the most potentially exciting launch that people are looking at is Kanye trying to launch a Swastika coin,' says Khan, in reference to now-deleted X posts made by an account associated with the artist Kanye West. 'That's how terrible this space is.' Until last year, launching a memecoin was relatively expensive and technically burdensome, which meant few came to market. Only Dogecoin—the original memecoin—and a handful of derivatives had any sort of longevity. That equation was reversed with the arrival of a platform that makes it simple for anyone to launch a memecoin at no cost. Since launched in January 2024, many millions of memecoins have flooded the market, among them the coins modeled after Haro. In a statement provided to WIRED, spokesperson Troy Gravitt described Haro's death as a 'tragedy,' but explained that the coins made in his image, though 'clearly in poor taste,' do not violate the platform's terms of use. 'There was no content associated with the token that would have identified it as either illicit or explicit,' says Gravitt. Betting on memecoins is lionized in certain online crypto circles, where traders are euphemistically described as charging headlong into 'the trenches.' But behind the combat metaphor is an implicit recognition that the odds are stacked against the individual 'trencher,' particularly given the prevalence of rug pulls and alleged collusion between the insiders behind certain high-profile memecoin launches. 'Everyone assumes that crypto is where you come to become rich, no matter how dumb you are. I think it's the exact opposite,' says Khan. 'There are these layers of insiders … retail traders are always exit liquidity.' In other words, regular people buying into coins allows insiders to cash out at a profit. The new cultural prominence of highly volatile memecoins, which offer the prospect both of outsized gains and losses, is also likely to have compounded the risk for people predisposed to problem gambling or trading, researchers say. 'People have enormous capacity to make money very quickly. The appeal of making money rings so much louder than calls of danger,' says Benjamin Johnson, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland specializing in the public health implications of digital technologies. 'Adding to the attraction with memecoins is that you've got these online communities where people really congregate. It becomes an emotional attachment to these assets … It creates a perfect storm.' Though academics have not identified a direct association between crypto trading and heightened psychological distress, the externalities of crypto trading—namely, the likelihood of losing money—are shown to have a negative impact on mental wellbeing. And the vast majority of memecoins released on wind up practically worthless. 'If you are really into day trading … it is definitely something that is likely to cause people mental stress or psychological distress,' says Atte Oksanen, a professor of psychology at Tampere University, who has conducted multiple studies on the mental health implications of crypto trading. 'Financial problems cause a lot of stress, which can escalate.' Meanwhile, the glut of memecoins entering the market through them coins issued by celebrities like rapper Iggy Azelea—has led coin creators to take increasingly elaborate, sexually degrading, and sometimes dangerous measures to attract attention to their coins. One guy ended up catching on fire after a memecoin promotional stunt went awry, leaving him with serious burns. The launch of US president Donald Trump's memecoin in January pushed the fight for attention to new extremes. The inevitable effect has been that only the most depraved and provocative concepts—like the MistaFuccYou coin, based on a suicide—so much as register in the hive mind of memecoin traders. And even then, only briefly. 'The president of one of the most powerful countries in the world launches a coin. How much further is there to go?' says Khan. 'Then if you hit the top of the market, how quickly will all of this vaporware actually end up nosediving?' The calculus among memecoin traders is captured on in the comment section for the MistaFuccYou coin. 'This token shows how fucked the trenches are rn, and is highly unethical,' wrote one user, before implying that others should invest. In the process, people like Haro—whose X feed is a kaleidoscope of memes, practical jokes, guns, women, weed, and crypto—are effectively erased; quite literally commodified into an incomplete and cartoonish version of themselves. A fundraising page set up by Haro's family to help cover the funeral costs paints a more three-dimensional picture: 'Arnold was a bright, kind, and hilarious soul who brought light to those around him,' reads a description written by a family member. 'He had a gift for making people laugh, spreading joy, and offering unwavering support, even when he was struggling himself.' If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. Outside the US, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for crisis centers around the world.
The Independent
09-03-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Are meme coins killing crypto?
If I die, I hope you guys turn this into a meme coin.' Shortly after speaking these words, 23-year-old crypto trader Arnold Robert Haro, who had reportedly lost $500 on a crypto scam, started a game of Russian roulette, which was livestreamed on X on 21 February. After repeating his wish to be turned into a meme coin, he took his own life. Within hours of Haro's death, known online as @MistaFuccYou, several meme coins based on his MistaFuccYou alias launched on a cryptocurrency platform. 'The meme coin community is pure evil,' wrote X user @destroynectar, who shared an image of one of the new cryptocurrencies being traded while Haro's live stream was still active on X. These tokens form part of a massive influx of new cryptocurrencies to the market, which analysts are referring to as a 'meme coin frenzy'. Often based on internet jokes, the digital coins hold no inherent value as a currency but can shoot up in price through speculation alone. They can mint millionaires in minutes, but almost always crash to zero, leaving latecomers with heavy losses. There are now tens of thousands of coins being created every day. 'Meme coins are mostly hot air and are notorious for their extreme price fluctuations,' Seamus Rocca, chief executive of Xapo Bank, says. 'These sudden surges and subsequent crashes in meme coin values often trigger a ripple effect of damage across the wider cryptocurrency industry as public trust and perception deteriorate.' It took four years for the first ever meme coin to emerge after the creation of the world's first cryptocurrency, bitcoin. Launched by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer in 2013, Dogecoin started as a joke that poked fun at the speculation and hysteria surrounding the crypto space at the time. But the token provided real utility, with the speed of transactions and low fees meaning that some even claimed it could one day be the currency of the internet. (The founders notoriously made no money from the venture, with one of them revealing that he sold his entire stake years ago for a giant jar of Nutella). Dogecoin has since established itself as one of the world's top 10 most valuable cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of around $30bn at the time of writing. In the years following its release, other meme coins trickled into the market, but it took skilled developers who knew the complexities of forking blockchains or building new protocols to produce them. All this has changed with the arrival of platforms that help to create coins, with millions of new tokens now being released every month. With such a massive volume, the vast majority fail to make any impact on the market. The Russian roulette incident is the latest in a string of increasingly elaborate and dangerous stunts that developers are resorting to in order to gain attention and pump the value of their tokens. Last year, a someone user suffered third-degree burns after setting himself on fire as part of a dare to promote his TruthOrDare cryptocurrency. Another sexualised his own mother on a live stream in order to pump his LIVEMOM token to a $835,000 market cap. The trend has drawn in celebrities, influencers and even presidents. Donald Trump, who has promised to make the US the 'crypto capital of the world', launched his own meme coin, along with his wife Melania and son Barron, just days before his inauguration. The $TRUMP, $MELANIA and $BARRON coins generated enormous profits for some – estimates suggest the projects netted them more than $350m – but when the price collapsed, more than 800,000 investors suffered a cumulative $2bn in losses. It has been argued that Trump's involvement, along with other world leaders like Argentina's Javier Milei, has complicated regulation in the space and helped legitimise the phenomenon. Eddy Lazarin, who serves as the chief technology officer at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz's crypto division, warned that the trend was fundamentally changing how the public, regulators and entrepreneurs view crypto. 'At best, it looks like a risky casino. Or a series of false promises masking a casino,' he says. 'This deeply affects adoption, regulation/laws, and builder behaviour. I see the damage every day.' The vast majority of meme coins exemplify the worst traits of cryptocurrency. They are volatile, confusing, and a haven for gamblers and scammers who prey on the naive and vulnerable. There is hope from some that Haro's death could bring about the death of the meme coin frenzy. 'These events have heightened skepticism toward meme coins,' says Maria Carola, chief executive of StealthEx. 'The golden age of meme coins may be coming to an end as investors grow increasingly cautious, recognising the dangers of investing in highly volatile assets.' One sign that it could be coming to an end is the emergence in recent days of meme coins based on rug pulls – referring to a scenario where crypto creators abandon a token and cash out, leaving investors with worthless tokens. These meme coins have themselves become rug pulls, suggesting that the industry is turning into an ouroboros snake, eating itself. The creator of one of the meme coins that spawned in the wake of Haro's death included one of the most pertinent messages, despite the opportunistic nature of the coin. 'Crypto is becoming a casino, and people are paying the ultimate price,' wrote the creator of the MistaFuccYou (RP) meme coin. 'Crypto should be about real utility and long-term value. Wake up. This has to change. Our deepest condolences to his family.' If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@ or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch. If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call or text 988, or visit to access online chat from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week. If you are in another country, you can go to to find a helpline near you
