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Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREERepair Windows errors before they cause bigger problemsFix Now →According to WIRED’s December 6, 2024 report, a California teenager made more than $50,000 in one evening by launching three memecoins on Pump.Fun and selling his holdings. Traders who felt burned responded with online abuse and doxing targeting his family. The story is a vivid example of how quickly a thinly traded token can move—and why the label “soft rug pull” is not, by itself, a legal verdict.
How the teenager reportedly made more than $50,000
WIRED reported that on the evening of November 19, 2024, the teenager—described as an early-teen boy—launched Gen Z Quant on Pump.Fun. The token had a supply of one billion units. He reportedly spent about $350 to buy 51 million tokens, roughly 5% of the supply, and livestreamed on the platform.
About eight minutes after launch, at 7:56 p.m. Pacific Time, his holdings were reportedly worth nearly $30,000. He sold them, and the large sale sharply reduced the token’s price. He then launched two more coins, “im sorry” and “my dog lucy.” WIRED attributed more than $50,000 in total proceeds that evening to the three launches and sales.
Those figures describe what WIRED reported about the transactions; they are not an independently verified accounting of blockchain activity. The nearly $30,000 figure is the reported value of his first-token holdings before the sale, not his total earnings.
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Why the backlash followed
Buyers who purchased Gen Z Quant and saw its price fall after the teenager sold reacted angrily. WIRED reported that users posted abuse in Pump.Fun chat and that family members’ names and photographs circulated on X. The boy’s father, Adam Biesk, described repeated calls and a frightening experience. He told WIRED: “The online backlash became so frighteningly scary that the realization that he made money was kind of tempered down with the fact that people became angry and started bullying.”
The reaction illustrates a sharp distinction in speculative token markets: a creator’s sale may be profitable for the seller while leaving buyers with a rapidly declining asset. Anger among traders does not establish that the creator committed a crime, and harassment or doxing of family members is not a legitimate remedy for a perceived financial loss.
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What “soft rug pull” means—and what it does not prove
WIRED used “soft rug pull” to describe the teenager’s conduct. In the article’s usage, a creator promotes a new token and then sells some or all of their holdings, putting downward pressure on its price. The term describes a pattern of conduct; it is not a court finding or a precise legal category.
WIRED contrasted that with a “hard rug pull,” in which malicious mechanisms built into token code are used to steal funds. A sharp sell-off alone does not show that a token’s code contained such a mechanism or establish that a crime occurred.
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The article also reported that Pump.Fun said its platform aimed to standardize token code and give users information about token holders. An anonymous cofounder, Sapijiju, said technical prevention was difficult: “Truthfully, all of this is very easy to manipulate.” These were statements reported in 2024, not an independent guarantee that a token or platform is safe.
The later $72 million figure was a theoretical valuation
WIRED reported that traders later bought Gen Z Quant again, pushing its theoretical total valuation to a reported peak of $72 million around 3 a.m. Pacific Time the following morning. At that point, the teen’s original holdings were valued at more than $3 million, according to the article. Neither number means he sold tokens for that amount or had that sum in cash: a market valuation applies a token price to a supply, and it can change quickly, especially in a speculative market.
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WIRED also reported that he returned to Pump.Fun on December 1 and launched five more memecoins, making another $5,000. The platform’s current age rules and the details of those later transactions are not established by the reporting cited here.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was the conduct illegal?
The available reporting does not support a yes-or-no legal conclusion about this case. In 2024, WIRED quoted lawyers and experts discussing how duties, promises, and possible misrepresentations could matter. Those were opinions about a developing area of law, not a court ruling on the teenager’s conduct. WIRED said the family declined to discuss whether law enforcement had been contacted or what happened to the funds.
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One expert quoted in the article, Ronghui Gu, a CertiK cofounder and Columbia University associate professor of computer science, said: “These actions exploit the gaps in existing regulatory frameworks, where unethical behavior—like developers hyping a project and later abandoning it—might not explicitly violate laws if no fraudulent misrepresentation, contractual breach, or other violations occur.” Andrew Gordon, a partner at Gordon Law, described the situation in the 2024 feature as: “We are in a legal vacuum where there are no clear laws.” Those statements reflect their assessments at the time; neither determines whether this specific conduct was unlawful.
California’s current digital-asset rules
California’s regulatory context has since changed. The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) says that, beginning July 1, 2026, a person engaging in covered “digital financial asset business activity” with or on behalf of a California resident must satisfy the law’s conditions. Depending on the circumstances, that means holding a license, having submitted a timely application that is awaiting a decision, or qualifying for an exemption. The DFPI lists final regulations under the Digital Financial Assets Law as effective June 29, 2026. See the DFPI Digital Financial Assets Law FAQ and its Digital Financial Assets Law regulations page.
These rules apply to activity that falls within the law’s defined scope. The cited DFPI materials do not establish that this teenager’s particular token issuance or sale necessarily counts as covered business activity.
What the story can—and cannot—tell buyers
The story shows why buying a newly launched memecoin can carry substantial risk: a creator or other large holder may sell, the price can fall sharply, and a quoted peak valuation may be impossible to realize through a sale. It does not establish that every token launch is a rug pull or that the reported figures describe typical returns.
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WIRED quoted Blockaid as saying the “overwhelming majority” of new tokens entering the market were scams of one form or another. The feature gave no percentage, so that claim should not be treated as a quantified rate or as a current measure of Pump.Fun tokens. It also reported more than $250 million in Pump.Fun revenue in less than a year, describing that as a one-percent cut of trades; that is a historical figure from the 2024 article, not a current revenue total. The same article said millions of unique memecoins had entered the platform by the time of publication, also a historical count rather than a current one.
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