A drug addict with a one-year-old daughter, two cars, and three types of celebrity tokens ultimately chose to sacrifice himself with a Meme coin.

Original source: The Wall Street Journal

Translation: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily

Editor’s note: As market liquidity tightens and attention resources become increasingly scarce, Meme coins have transformed from a vehicle of the entertainment-driven attention economy and a barometer of hot news into a wave of entertainment to death, the ultimate PVP amplifier of human nature. From the "burn incident" on pump.fun, to pornographic live-streaming tokens, to countless fleeting and decaying insider trades, the Meme coin craze has gradually evolved into a massacre of retail investors by market makers, a siege of casino patrons by conspiracy groups. Now, a 23-year-old man from California has chosen to commit suicide due to a Meme coin scam, using his life to satirize and whip the brutal reality of "everything can be a Meme coin." This is his story; his name is Arnold Haro.

Tragedy in the corners of the crypto world: When a suicide becomes a Meme coin

A 23-year-old man from California chose to end his life by live-streaming a gunshot after experiencing a Meme coin scam.

At 3:28 PM on February 21, in a remote farmhouse in California, Arnold Haro was alone and in extreme agony. He scratched his scalp incessantly, accompanied by heavy breathing, looking very distressed. "If I die, I hope you can turn this (suicide) into a Meme coin," he said to his fans watching his live stream on platform X.

About three hours later, facing the phone camera, he first picked up a bullet, then calmly loaded it into the Smith & Wesson handgun in his hand, and then spun the chamber—"bang"—a vibrant life bid farewell to this world.

Subsequently, his dying wish was fulfilled—a Meme coin named after Haro's social media account briefly surged to a market value of over $2 million before quickly crashing, just like countless other Meme coins. Of course, this was not an isolated incident. A crypto gold rush followed, with dozens of other imitation Meme coins emerging, some even using screenshots from live streams as token logos, as the Meme coin community attempted to seize a share of the profits from Haro's suicide.

Meme coins originated from the rise of Dogecoin in 2013, designed to satirize the crypto world. Over time, a subculture developed around the idea that "any cultural moment can have its own cryptocurrency." Meme coins related to celebrities, political leaders, and anonymous fringe figures flooded the market; they have no intrinsic value, merely hyping up the memes and related figures that flood the internet.

Image source: Silas Stein/DPA/Zuma Press

Undoubtedly, during the crypto boom, Meme coins have become a part of the $2.8 trillion crypto market, but they have also proven to be a breeding ground for scams—a speculative world where bubbles and crashes coexist, where token creators amass wealth while other bag holders end up holding these fleetingly surging Meme coins that gradually return to zero. U.S. federal authorities view Meme coins as entertainment rather than securities, meaning many of the protections enjoyed by traditional asset investors do not apply here.

The Meme coin created using "Haro's death" as a gimmick showcases the brutal side of the Meme coin world—where anything can become a Meme coin—even a horrific suicide tragedy.

Arnold Haro's sister, Maria Lucero Haro, stated that the family refrains from commenting on the cause of Arnold's death, but "I don't want my brother's death to become anyone's news headline or entertainment material."

Encountering a Rug pull, Meme coins become worthless in an instant

As he became increasingly entangled in the world of Meme coins, Haro's life became more turbulent.

The 23-year-old's crypto wallet showed that since the summer of 2024, he had been an active trader of Meme coins and NFTs, especially those on the Solana chain.

At the time of Haro's death, the cryptocurrency market had been on a year-long upward trend. In January of this year, Bitcoin broke $106,000, setting a new historical high, and crypto enthusiasts and the Trump administration claimed that the future would be an era of crypto legalization, with Meme coins becoming an ever-growing part of it, including the TRUMP token issued by Trump.

However, there were so many "pump and dump" scams in the Meme coin space that they developed a specific term—Rug pull. Haro experienced these endless scams—one after another, the Rugs compounded the difficulties of his already precarious life.

He lived in a rural area outside Fresno, California, with his sister and mother—a family cleaner—relying on each other. Neighbors described them as low-key, while other family members viewed him as a fool.

According to police records, he worked in the solar industry and had a one-year-old daughter with his ex-girlfriend, but they had long since separated. Additionally, he owned two cars: a silver Ford F-150 pickup and a BMW X6 SUV. According to police records, his ex-girlfriend stated that aside from his regular job, he sold drugs like fentanyl and methamphetamine to some homeless individuals near the riverbank. He was also a drug user, having experienced a fentanyl overdose in 2020 that was severe enough to require him to relearn how to walk and talk.

Under his account MistaFuccYou, he often posted extreme elements of memes and racist remarks. He boasted about his gun collection, used oxycodone, and was banned from a steakhouse for not tipping the waiter. After a video of him spinning around and then vomiting circulated, he became a kind of Meme himself, referred to as "360-degree Vomit Guy" by people on social media.

His personal social media accounts were filled with screenshots and information about cryptocurrency losses.

He once asked a crypto influencer known for hyping Meme coins to return $8, simply because the person hadn't posted enough content.

In January of this year, he stated that he borrowed money to buy tokens launched by President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump. "I promised my parents I would get rich overnight by taking out a huge loan to buy TRUMP tokens, but now it's worth nothing," Haro posted on January 19, "I just bought some MELANIA tokens, but with my luck, it probably won't end well either."

Both of these Meme coins plummeted significantly after a brief hype, with TRUMP dropping 86% after reaching a market value of nearly $15 billion. Haro also purchased a quickly worthless imitation TRUMP Meme coin. On January 27, he privately messaged another crypto trader on X, saying he lost his last $500 on a token allegedly related to rapper Kanye West.

"I tried to sell this token, but I couldn't," he wrote. It turned out that this token had nothing to do with Kanye. A screenshot showed that Haro's loss was as high as 35.9%.

Meanwhile, his situation in illegal drug trading seemed to be heading towards a dead end. According to information disclosed by his ex-girlfriend to the police, Haro had sold two stolen cars to a Mexican drug dealer in exchange for a large amount of marijuana. He also told his ex-girlfriend that the dealer threatened to kill him. According to police records, Haro was also very upset to find out that his ex-girlfriend was dating another man. "Arnold owed a lot of money to many people, and he felt very tense and anxious about it," a report summarizing the police interviews with his ex-girlfriend stated.

No one can say for sure what ultimately led Haro to pull the trigger and choose death; police records contain no suicide note or explanation left by him.

When a death is turned into a Meme coin, who is the real killer?

After Haro's ex-girlfriend checked her phone after work, she saw the death video Haro posted on his X account.

"I called because the father of my daughter is live-streaming playing Russian roulette on his social media account," she told the police dispatcher around 5:03 PM, according to recordings and police records, "I don't know if this is real."

At 5:43 PM, police reported finding a male body with a gunshot wound to the head in Haro's room. His mother was outside the house, hysterically crying, still unable to accept the reality.

Six days after Haro's death, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement saying that there was no issue with the Meme coins created using Haro's likeness. "Meme coins are typically purchased for entertainment, social interaction, and cultural purposes," the agency stated, suggesting that Meme coins should be compared to collectibles. The statement added that speculation primarily drove their value.

According to archived versions of the video, in his final moments before death, Haro requested that any Meme coins created after his death be sent to his Solana wallet.

These now worthless Meme coins continue to haunt his family.

Meme coins related to Haro's death surged on Pump.Fun (a website that allows users to quickly create Meme coins, as easily as creating a blog on Tumblr).

Some Meme coins used static images taken from the live stream as avatars, showing Haro with his eyes closed, gun to his head.

Other Meme coins used his X platform avatar or screenshots from his vomiting video.

The most popular was a Meme coin named MISTA, which briefly surged to a market value of over $2 million before crashing by half in a day, with current trading volume around $80,000.

A spokesperson for Pump.Fun stated in a statement, "Mr. Haro's death is a tragedy, and Pump.Fun has no other connection to this matter other than allowing users to create and issue obviously morally reprehensible, news-related crypto tokens."

Some token creators claimed they were raising funds for Haro's family and sent tokens to Haro's wallet, but it remains unclear whether his family will receive these funds. The developers who created the MISTA token claimed to have donated $5,000 to the GoFundMe platform for Haro's funeral expenses.

"Please do not exploit our pain and my brother's death for profit," Haro's sister said, although this statement now seems so helpless and powerless.

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