Middleschooler’s ‘rug pull’ stunt reveals the dark side of memecoins

A middle school student and his family are being targeted by angry traders after the boy pocketed $30,000 by selling a memecoin.

The boy launched a token called Gen Z Quant — or Quant — on the popular memecoin platform pump.fun in the early hours of Wednesday morning.

Quant is short for quantitative trader, a common job on Wall Street. It became a meme because being a “quant” is prestigious and well-paid, and the joke is that the work seems so complicated and arcane that no one really knows what it entails.

As Quant rallied, the boy — while livestreaming to hundreds of people — sold a large portion of the token he had set aside, netting him $30,000 while crashing its price.

“No way, thanks for the 20 bandos” he said after selling his tokens, raising his middle fingers to the camera.

Onlookers quickly slammed the move as a “rug pull.”

A rug pull is where the creator of a token or project sells their stash, usually in a single transaction, crashing the token’s price for a quick profit at the expense of other investors. Rug pulls are not necessarily illegal, but widely condemned in crypto circles.

Some of those burned by the move began posting his and his family’s identities, prompting a barrage of online vitriol. DL News chose not to reveal the minor’s name to avoid contributing to further harassment.

Screenshots viewed by DL News show traders harassing members of the boy’s family on social media site Instagram.

The boy and his family members have since made their social media profiles private. They couldn’t be reached for comment.

The dark side of memecoins

The Quant token debacle is the latest episode to highlight the dark side of memecoin trading, where some are all too willing to throw themselves into the maw in an attempt to get rich quickly.

In May, one memecoin creator livestreamed himself doing increasingly reckless stunts, which culminated in setting himself on fire, to promote a token of his creation.

In another incident, a memecoin creator took drugs, faked his own death, and hung out with a stripper on stream to draw attention to his token.

Some onlookers predict the Quant token creator’s success and virality could encourage others.

“This is the first coin that’ll bring the kids to the chain. Don’t underestimate it,” pseudonymous memecoin trader muzzyvermillion said on X.

A clip of the boy posted on the TikTokInvestors X account went viral.

$82 million

Interest in memecoins moves fast, and unsuccessful tokens are often abandoned when the price crashes.

But instead of abandoning Quant, traders rallied and pushed its value to a high of $82 million.

Since its launch, Quant has registered $288 million worth of trading volume, making it the top traded token onchain over the past 24 hours, according GeckoTerminal data.

The token’s market value has since dropped to around $63 million. At its peak, the Quant creator’s stash, had he held onto it, would have been worth around $3 million.

Still, it’s likely that in the attention economy of memecoins, the incident was the main driver of the rally.

Tim Craig is DL News’ Edinburgh-based DeFi Correspondent. Reach out with tips at tim@dlnews.com.