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The origin of the term “degen” can be linked to sports betting, where it was used as a shortened form of “degenerate”. Typically used as a derogatory term, it refers to bettors who place large sums of money without the necessary knowledge or expertise to support their bets.Mar 16, 2023
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Degens Can’t Stop Sending Millions in Ethereum to Random Wallets on Twitter
The trend was punctuated by what appears to be an influencer's "mass psychological experiment."
By André Beganski
May 31, 2023
5 min read
Notlarvalabs founder and pseudonymous Twitter influencer Pauly has received more than $1 million worth of crypto in exchange for nothing, literally, as meme coin mania takes a new, bizarre turn.
What started out as fervor for PepeCoin, the frog-themed meme coin that leapt to dizzying heights at the start of May, eventually gave way to people trading tokens based on common names, such as Ben or Jeff. Now degens are handing over their hard-earned Ethereum to random Twitter users who post their wallets promising exclusive token "presales"—and even someone who’s promised them no returns or tokens at all.
In a Twitter post on Tuesday, Pauly listed a wallet address and said, “Send ETH here.” The statement was accompanied by a gif captioned, “You Get Nothing.” It was a riff on a fundraising trend that's gripped Crypto Twitter since at least early May.
A day later, the wallet registered as yougetnothing.eth via the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) received more than 626 Ethereum worth over $1.1 million, according to Etherscan. And amid an avalanche of nothing-related memes, Pauly has reiterated the wallet is not related to the launch of a new token.
“There is no presale,” Pauly said, responding to a Twitter user who claimed he was playing with people’s emotions for financial speculation. “Literally nothing is being sold.”
On Wednesday, as funds continued to pour into Pauly’s wallet, he hosted a talk on Twitter Spaces, where he, unsurprisingly, said nothing.
The development comes as Crypto Twitter is deep in the throes of meme coin mania, a wave of speculation sparked by PepeCoin. No matter how nascent or obscure, traders continue to dive headfirst into tokens based on little more than vibes and hopes of lucrative gains. And that’s despite the lack of utility many meme coins offer.
Many of these coins are outright scams. On May 10, a Twitter account called "Milady Coin" raised $116,000 in ETH by posting a wallet address and offering a token presale for what was later discovered to be a non-existent project, as chronicled by on-chain sleuth ZachXBT. Another token called " JARED" followed the same playbook. It claimed to be affiliated with famed MEV bot "jaredfromsubway"—it wasn't.
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Prior, this trend had spawned tokens like BEN and PSYOP, created by a Twitter user named ben.eth. And as recognizable crypto characters like YouTuber Ben “Bitboy” Armstrong have drawn close to the coin, the phenomenon has been captured by established digital artists like Beeple.
“I am not in any way affiliated with any of these dumbass coins or the grifters running them,” he said on Tuesday, showcasing some of his recent work.
The market capitalization of BEN has grown to $46 million since it launched, yet the token has fallen more than 47% over the past week, according to CoinGecko. Another recent meme coin called JEFF has found popularity, but the token plummeted more than 52% over the past 24 hours on Wednesday, as of this writing.
While Pauly’s wallet has turned heads on Twitter for the attention and funds it has received thus far, the influencer described “You Get Nothing” as akin to performance art.
“It is almost as if this is some kind of mass psychological experiment,” Pauly said, describing yougetnothing.eth as “a case study” and “an exercise in futility.”
Ethereum represents over 98% of the funds sent to yougetnothing.eth, but Pauly’s wallet has received a variety of other tokens, such as $12,500 worth of PepeCoin and nearly $4,000 worth of the stablecoin Tether, according to data from Nansen.
People are also sending obscure meme tokens to the address. For example, yougetnothing.eth has received over 203 million BEN tokens worth just over $21, and 333 JEFF tokens worth $0.73, according to Nansen.
On Wednesday, Pauly recognized that his wallet contained a panoply of ??peculiar assets, telling his followers that they should ignore its contents.
“People are desperately trying to push these shitcoins based on nothing,” he said on Twitter. “The way they do this is by sending tokens out to wallets like mine, to make it look like I have bought the tokens. I have not bought any of this crap.”
The smattering of tokens that Pauly has received is reminiscent of Budweiser’s embrace of NFTs in 2021. After it announced it had registered beer.eth as an ENS domain, the beer brand’s wallet was hit with a wave of oddball NFTs—like a “Minimalistic Cock” drawing and an NFT from PeePeeBoy. |
