threadguy: The crypto counterattack of a post-00s dropout

Original author: Kaori, BlockBeats

Original editor: Jack, BlockBeats

Today is the 20th day since threadguy disappeared, and almost every day people on X are talking about when he will return.

Threadguys most recent social media interaction was when he liked a post that read, Business leaders are paying up to $5 million for a one-on-one meeting with President Trump at his Florida estate, while others are paying $1 million to attend a group dinner with him. I have to admire Threadguy, spending $25,000 to meet Trump is really a bargain.

This like is like a time capsule, recording the moment when this 23-year-old crypto youth came closest to the center of power.

Back to September 22, 2024, at the Trump dinner at Mar-a-Lago, Threadguy, wearing a dark-striped suit, a carefully selected eagle-shaped tie clip, and his newly dyed signature blonde hair, raised his hand and asked Trump a question, As someone who pays attention to NFTs, Im curious, if (hopefully not) you dont win the election this time, what do you think the future of cryptocurrency will be like?

Trump spread his hands as usual and said, I think its the future. Facing threadguy, Trump took 30 seconds to answer the question, I think the future of cryptocurrency is very bright, really. Maybe we can use it to pay off the $35 trillion debt, right? I just wrote a little note, 35 trillion cryptocurrencies, so we have no debt, right?

Before going on stage to speak, Trump was making preparations behind the curtain. Threadguy was only two steps away from Trump, and the girl who was filming the video for Threadguy kept urging him to do something.

Threadguy raised his hand to signal Trump, and when Trump leaned in, he asked, Will there be more Trump Cards in the future? Trump said he didnt know, and Threadguy said, Im a top holder, I love them, and Trump immediately stretched out his hand and shook Threadguys hand tightly.

There was another episode about this dinner. Threadguy asked five people in a row, none of them knew they needed to buy NFT to enter, just because they knew someone. Threadguy repeated several times to the video camera, Am I the only one who bought NFT?

Five months later, Threadguy was involved in another presidential controversy. The Argentine currency LIBRA put this young man and his crypto business through a capital meat grinder. This time, without the high-spirited suit and blond hair, Threadguy said in frustration, Most people in this market will eventually be cut to pieces. There are very few people who can really make money, and the ending is usually not very good. No one is willing to actively promote this casino, but I have played this role invisibly.

The rules for breaking the circle of dropouts

In 2021, Michael Jerome, a sophomore at Virginia Business School, stayed in his first Zoom accounting class for less than 10 minutes before decisively leaving the meeting. The next day, he made a bold decision to drop out of school and go all in on the crypto field.

Michael, who dabbled in trading cards and sneaker reselling as a teenager, found himself naturally drawn to the world of NFTs, where he found a familiar feeling – a passionate community, the possibility of making money, and the joy of collecting, all of which reminded him of his past hobbies.

Michael at a basketball game

2021 is known as the first year of NFT. Overseas, the transaction volume around NFT exceeded 19.6 billion US dollars this year, which is 228 times the volume of 2020. NFT digital collections have created a total transaction volume of more than 8.16 million and a total transaction volume of more than 6.5 billion US dollars. In the report released by domestic media, post-00s and post-90s digital collections are the majority of potential collectors. Among NFT potential collectors, post-90s account for about 37% and rank first, and post-00s account for about 27% and rank second.

Michael was not a big player, nor a senior trader, nor a project founder, so he started looking for gaps in the market. At that time, if someone wanted to know about an NFT project, there was almost no reliable source of information. Maybe you could see a few posts on Twitter and find an outdated article. Because of this, Michael decided to start writing long tweets about the projects he was really interested in.

In August 2021, Michael named his newly registered Twitter account DiscoverxNFT, and continued to update long tweets analyzing NFT projects for three consecutive months. These contents have no personal style, no memes, no nonsense, just simply sharing project information, which has increased DiscoverxNFT from zero followers to about 5,000.

Michael mints first NFT project was Jenkins The Valet. In October 2021, Michael wrote a long article about it. At that time, the DiscoverxNFT account was still unknown, and Jenkins was just starting out. In November of the same year, Michael got a Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC). It was also during this period that his social accounts and personal brands really took off.

Since Michaels long-term push has already established a solid brand impression, in 2022, he changed his Twitter name from DiscoverxNFT to threadguy.

As the influence of DiscoverxNFT and Jenkins grew, in April 2022, the Jenkins team took the initiative to approach them, hoping to recruit Michael into the team. However, at the beginning, the Jenkins team did not know what position to give Michael. Michael jokingly proposed to be the Director of Vibes.

Age discrimination is a false proposition

In February 2021, the world was in the midst of COVID lockdowns. Musk and a group of Silicon Valley bigwigs launched Clubhouse, which made the world crazy about this voice social product. Two months later, Twitter also launched the Space feature. As the function gradually improved, hosting Space became an important way for crypto communities and individuals to promote themselves.

At that time, someone invited Threadguy to do a podcast together. Although it did not happen in the end, it planted a seed in his heart. In the summer of 2022, Threadguy began to host the daily Space as a co-host with crypto OG Alex, inviting some people in the NFT or crypto field to have a conversation. At this time, his recording studio was in the basement of his home.

Threadguys way of dealing with people is highly recognized by Alex, who has stood up to support this young guy at many times.

“I only co-host Twitter Space with threadguy because he is the number one influencer in the Ethereum field. He is ridiculously smart and it is definitely not luck that makes him the number one in the industry. This guy has a work ethic that I have never seen before. Not only people in the Web3 field, but also ordinary people can rarely match him. I am really grateful to learn from him. Yes, he is more than a decade younger than me, and I learn something from him every day. Age discrimination is simply a false proposition.”

In November 2022, threadguy decided to host the show independently. At first, the progress was slow. Individual hosting is completely different from co-hosting, and the atmosphere is also completely different.

Ive made up my mind, so I thought – what the hell, even if I have no experience, I want to do it. Threadguy said. I will think about what kind of discussion this guest will trigger and what new opportunities it may bring. This is a complete chess game that requires careful planning.

This post-00s who dropped out of school to join the crypto field full-time once expressed his understanding of what he does: In the social and content fields, the most important principle is to maintain a stable output. Even if you are not the top in the industry now, or have not yet brought about disruptive changes, as long as you continue to output high-quality content, you will eventually find that you have gone further than most people.

Many people enter the market with great momentum and go all out in just two or three months, but this approach is difficult to sustain and often ends in a crash. A more stable and planned pace will allow you to persist longer. Being able to hold out longer than others is often a seriously underestimated competitive advantage.

Threadguy once said that it took me several months to find my voice, and since then, he has insisted on hosting the show six days a week without interruption. This almost paranoid and stable output just confirms his self-described philosophy of survival – in the battlefield of fragmented attention, persistence itself is a moat.

In this age where traffic is paramount, attracting attention and winning the audiences favor have become the goals pursued by many people. However, facing a market where attention is easily distracted, threadguy knows that in order to survive in such an environment and maintain ones influence, one needs not only strong abilities but also a forward-looking vision and the flexibility to adapt to market changes.

The cost of chasing traffic

In April 2023, threadguy and his Space partner Leap moved to Los Angeles. Their goals are not limited to Twitter Space, and the broader community has also allowed them to see more new opportunities and possibilities.

Left: Leap; Right: threadguy

In September of this year, threadguy officially launched his first video podcast interview with Jeff Staple, the founder of the fashion brand. In October, the second video was launched, interviewing the digital artist Beeple.

There is no doubt that these guests are closely related to NFT culture. Threadguy will go to the guests’ location for interviews, whether it is a studio or an exhibition hall. The state presented by this young man in the video is always positive and upbeat.

As NFT and the entire crypto market environment change, threadguys interviewees are gradually becoming more diverse.

In June 2024, the famous rapper Iggy Azalea and her meme coin MOTHER made a lot of noise. Threadguy, who seized this wave of celebrity coin craze, invited Iggy to do a video podcast titled Understanding Attention, Encryption, and Internet Culture.

In July, threadguy flew to Romania for the twelfth podcast interview, and the guest this time was another internet celebrity, Andrew Tate. This extremely controversial and topical guest, who has many fans and opponents, brought threadguy more than 10 million views. On YouTube, this video has 15 times the views of the second place.

Before Andrew Tates interview, threadguys most successful podcast on X had accumulated a million views, and the number of views on YouTube was around 1,000. This interview multiplied these numbers, with the number of views on X reaching nearly nine times the previous number, reaching 8.8 million, and on YouTube it increased hundreds of times to 1.24 million. This podcast allowed threadguy to reach a whole new audience, and he also clearly felt a large influx of new traffic.

But this unexpected peak in traffic put Threadguy in trouble. For a period of time after the interview was sent out, Threadguys mental state gradually declined. On the one hand, Andrew Tates reputation is not good. In addition to his sensational operations, the meme coins related to him are mostly manipulated to rise and fall sharply, which made Threadguy realize the terribleness of this person.

On the other hand, the decline in podcast traffic data after this interview was too severe, and the resulting gap was difficult for threadguy to accept. He reflected on X:

I started Spaces and then podcasts because I just love talking to interesting people and hearing them share interesting stories. But the reality of recording podcasts really wears me out. Due to cost and travel restrictions, I can only interview the top guests. In addition, I have always refused to accept advertising sponsorship (I don’t know why, I just have some resistance), which makes 99% of the guests I really want to talk to become out of reach. As a result, every show is under tremendous pressure to perform well, which completely destroys my enthusiasm for this thing.

So I decided to return to my original intention – to communicate with interesting people anytime, anywhere through live broadcasting, regardless of their influence or the size of their platform, a Twitch live broadcast link was given below the tweet. Since then, threadguy no longer specializes in making video podcasts of live interviews, but mostly conducts interviews online.

Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, Threadguy’s Crypto Lifestyle Matrix

However, this suspicion about the side effects of influence did not last long. The controversy brought by Andrew Tate may be the superficial reason why Threadguy turned to Twitch, which has lower costs, to disseminate content. The deeper driving force is that he realized that the super cycle of meme coins is hitting the cryptocurrency field in an unprecedented way.

The interview with Andrew Tate was also conducted in parallel with the founder of Punm.Fun, the founder of the most exciting crypto application of this cycle, who gave his first public interview. It was also this podcast that started Threadguys journey of what he later called gradually becoming fully committed to and even promoting meme coin casinos.

Start with a poker game

January 16th was threadguys 23rd birthday. He excitedly introduced his new recording studio during the live broadcast, and even rolled around in the empty room. A friend knocked on the door and gave threadguy a basketball, planning to take him to the Lakers game that night, and sit on the sidelines. Threadguy happily turned the basketball in his hand, and he had obviously walked out of Andrew Tates shadow.

Before moving into this new room, threadguys live broadcast background was an open living room, and he often used a whiteboard as a background. Since he no longer has to interview people face to face offline, threadguys interview videos have become more personal, and the entire live broadcast process is interspersed with barrage questions and jokes.

The live broadcast usually lasts two to three hours. In the first half, I will chat casually with the audience in the live broadcast room, then invite guests to discuss issues. After the live broadcast, I will cut the conversation with the guests and upload it to Youtube.

In this way, Twitch is threadguys first channel to convey his values, Twitter is his traffic accumulation pool, and YouTube is his content backyard.

During this period, he interviewed the founders of a series of AI concept meme coins, including GOAT, ai16z, PIPPIN, ZEREBRO, GRIFFAIN, etc. He also interviewed Jesse, head of the Base protocol, Luca Netz, CEO of Pudgy Penguins, Devin Finzer, CEO of Opensea, as well as Internet celebrities such as Raoul Pal and Ansem.

This house is not only used by threadguy for live streaming, but also the residence of him and several other KOLs who also live stream cryptocurrency content on Twitch.

Three months ago, at the end of October, Polymarket sponsored a poker night event, which was initiated by threadguy, and was held at a special poker table that threadguy and his team spent 26 hours building in this house. The complex live broadcast equipment and the table and computer that threadguy used to broadcast live can be seen in a corner of the room.

Throughout October, threadguy was preparing for this poker live broadcast. In addition to going to the casino to practice poker skills, he also had to announce the candidates, warm up the event, and promote Polymarket.

The event invited a number of crypto KOLs, including Ansem, Macdegods, Frankdegods, Based16z, Rasmr, Bitboy and Minh. The game lasted for 7 hours. During the game, the audience was allowed to place bets on Polymarket and interact on Twitter.

After the live broadcast, Twitch had more than 20,000 views and 800 new fans. It was also after this poker game live broadcast that threadguy officially started his Twitch live broadcast career. After the live broadcast ended, threadguy posted on X:

Honestly, I was so moved that I almost cried. You have no idea how much this means to me. This is just the beginning. The live broadcast journey has just begun!

Most of the people involved in this game were also dubbed the LA Vape Cabal by the community.

Of course, it is not just a game of cards that connects them together. They organized an account called Probably Nothing in March 2024. Members include FaZe Banks, co-founder of the e-sports organization FaZe Clan, Frank, founder of the NFT project DeGods, Malcolm, a member of de Labs (DeGods parent company), and crypto KOLs including threadguy, rasmr, and OGshoots.

This group of Los Angeles crypto people, who gathered around NFT culture, live broadcast cryptocurrency-related content on Twitch. In addition to interviews and conversations, threadguy, Frank and others also analyze meme coin opportunities, review transactions, and discuss market conditions during the live broadcast.

In addition to live broadcasts, this group of people has their own small group called LA Vape Cabal. A community member named Mikasa was once pulled into this group chat by a friend. After joining the group, the first opportunity he seized was the meme coin JELLYJELLY launched by former Facebook product vice president Lessin. When it was scanned, the market value was only 2 million US dollars, and it soared to 250 million in just six hours.

The people in the group frantically read Lessins Twitter and social media to confirm whether the account was hacked, and then communicated in the group, as if it was a matter of life and death, and they had to figure out the situation. Once they determined that this was not a runaway project, they would take a large position. Of course, due to the Degen mentality, some people would go directly in at the beginning. Mikasa said that the core of the unity of the people in this group chat was Franks words – know what you have in your hand. Mikasa wrote on his social media:

Anyone in this group can retire now and won’t have to worry about their livelihood in the next 5 to 10 years. But they are still desperately watching the market, looking for coins, and digging for insider information, as if they are still barely making ends meet on their salaries. He didn’t see any signs of insider trading or market crashing, which surprised him, but because of this, he finally understood why so many people stick with Frank.

For threadguy, the first three Twitch live broadcasts were very good, with over 2,000 subscribers. According to data at the time, the top 100 on Twitch had 7,000 subscribers, and the top 25 had 17,000 subscribers. In just three days, threadguy completed 35% of the progress toward becoming the top 100 on Twitch.

Banks, the founder of Probably Nothing, once explained why he wanted to establish such an organization. He said that it is extremely important to record the living conditions of the new generation of day traders and young builders of Web3, and the Probably Nothing platform – especially this team – is the best way to achieve this goal. Obviously, threadguys live broadcast career has brought him one step closer to his encryption ideals.

LA Vape Stream Cabal

threadguys last livestream was on Valentines Day.

At 7pm, he wore a T-shirt with Snoopy the dog on it and shared with his audience the meme coin LIBRA that Argentine President Milei had forwarded two hours ago. Threadguy said in the live broadcast that he bought LIBRA when the market value was 2.5 billion, and followed the market FOMO while watching the football game video until he found that big investors were selling and withdrawing from the pool. After realizing something was wrong, he liquidated his positions and left the market at a loss when the market value was around 1.2 billion.

This live video has been deleted from Twitch. The most widely circulated video on the Internet about this days live broadcast is a clip of threadguy muting the live broadcast and covering his mouth to answer the phone. It was precisely because of this action that he became the target of public criticism in the Argentine Presidents Libragate incident.

When he first started live streaming, threadguy would often publish live streaming data from his account. He believed that there was a serious lack of high-quality encrypted content on the market and hoped to create more content that reflected the industry.

Just talk to the camera, and youll bump into Adin Ross-level traffic unexpectedly one day.

In February 2025, threadguy, Banks, Frank, Rasmr and others actually went to Adin Ross’s live studio, which became their second most viewed interview video, titled “I Taught Adin Ross How to Trade Memecoins.”

Adin Ross is a top live broadcaster in todays streaming era, with more than 20 million followers on platforms such as YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. Ross, who is two years older than threadguy and was born in the 2000s, interviewed Trump in August last year. Two years earlier, Adin Ross had also done a live broadcast with Andrew Tate.

In addition to Adin Ross, threadguy and others also did a video interview with internet celebrity Haliey Welch. Haliey was the protagonist of the once popular Hawk Tuah Girl. She unexpectedly became an internet celebrity in June 2024 due to a street interview video. She imitated Hawk Tuah (the sound of spitting) with a playful Southern accent and gave sexually suggestive answers, which quickly spread on social media. Like Ross, she is the focus of social media attention of Generation Z.

But all this turned into a farce. In threadguys eyes, the release process of this program was full of mistakes and confusion, from the leakage of content to the wrong release of the program that should have been cancelled, to the final decision to go online, the entire team had serious problems in every link, and $HAWK ended up like many celebrity meme coins.

The selection of these guests is not so much a consideration of the depth of the content as it is an accurate capture of Generation Zs focus on social media, or, to put it more bluntly, a naked pursuit of traffic.

The name LA Vape Cabal has gradually turned from a joke to an accusation against them by the community. They were accused of using their fans to withdraw liquidity and manipulate the meme coin market. The anger of the community was finally fully released on LIBRA, and the video of threadguy covering his mouth and talking on the phone with Banks was regarded as ironclad evidence that LA Vape Cabal had insider information about the Argentine currency.

The criticisms were endless, with some even saying that LA Vape Cabal was related to the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group. Even the photo taken by threadguy and his friends during the interview with Adin Ross had Ross photoshopped out and was circulated in the community, saying that this was a conspiracy group that relied solely on insider trading to manipulate the meme market.

Solana Wiki also removed the LA Vape Cabal entry during the incident. The entry originally stated that the group is known for being celebrity insiders and their controversial personalities.

Left: Solana Wiki page after webpage restoration; Right: Solana Wiki deleted page;

Four days after LIBRA ran away, threadguy posted a ten-minute clarification video on X. In addition to clarifying that he had no inside information on the Argentine currency and there was no factual evidence that he had insider advance trading, threadguy also said something unexpected:

At some point, the direction of my content changed. I was originally interviewing project owners, founders, and developers, but later gradually became fully committed to and even promoted this meme coin casino. This matter is now very clear, even more obvious than ever before – most people will eventually be cut to pieces in this market, and very few people can really make money, and the ending is usually not very good. No one is willing to actively promote this casino, but I have played this role invisibly.

Not only the post-00s, but also the president needs to have a sense of the Internet

When threadguy issued his first long analysis of an NFT project in his basement, this post-00s generation probably didn’t know that he was stepping on the pulse of the times. The crypto world is like a giant magnet, continuously attracting Generation Z—there are no investment banking thresholds with suits and ties, no promotion system based on seniority, but only the number of Twitter followers, the spread of memes, and a beast-like intuition for hot topics.

CoinGecko 2025 GenZ survey data shows that the proportion of crypto practitioners aged 18-25 has jumped from 17% in 2021 to 43% in 2025. While traditional industries are still requiring young people to start as interns, the crypto field has already staged a more naked wealth myth: a funny NFT emoticon package made at three in the morning may earn more than a fund manager with ten years of work experience; a live broadcast clip on Twitch while playing games and talking about token economy may be able to leverage millions of dollars in liquidity.

From the P-boys who became famous in one battle and sat in to get big results, to the millisecond-level business of the billionaire formula founder, age has never been a bottleneck that limits a persons development. From Elizabeths group fees to Uh-huhs essays, these post-00s, like threadguy, use their own expertise to leave their own stories in this market.

This industry will give many young people opportunities, but because there are not many rules and barriers, it has created the wildest grassroots counterattack myth, but also fostered the disorder and speculation under the law of the jungle. When the academic certification, career ladder and resource monopoly of traditional society are all invalid, the Z generation who mastered the meme dissemination code is using emoticons, live streaming slices and network jargon to reconstruct the value coordinate system.

Although LA Vape Cabal has received a lot of dislike, they and other publicly identified content creators play a very important role in the crypto field. Retail investors need interesting content to be attracted, and the most effective way in 2025 is vlog and live broadcast. Anonymous culture cannot be scaled.

Just like everyone is complaining about the oversupply of infrastructure, and geeky podcasts seem to be too rampant. In the eyes of some people, threadguy and his live broadcast room are the representatives of crypto lifestyle media, discussing with fans the recent football games they watched and what they did over the weekend. Some people say, We need avant-garde to turn the industry threshold into a trend symbol – when Generation Z begins to regard becoming a KOL anchor in the crypto field as a life ideal, this field will be truly mainstreamed. Crypto lifestyle media may be the real killer of this cycle.

On the day the article was written, threadguy posted for the first time after the storm, replying to a tweet from November last year, Cryptocurrency is the most exciting and fastest-growing industry in the world today. No other field can compare to it. Everyone wants to get in, but no one really understands it. In any other field, KOLs cannot directly create wealth for community members like in the cryptocurrency field.

This article is sourced from the internet: threadguy: The crypto counterattack of a post-00s dropout