$GREED 2.0: A New Lesson in Crypto Avarice That Might Also Enrich the People It Dupes

“In
Sh*tcoin
Season,
any
pointless
cryptocurrency
with
a
Twitter
account
can
enchant
thousands
of
traders
into
playing
memecoin
musical
chairs.
Throwing
money
at
the
wall
and
reason
out
the
window,
they
let
greed
get
the
best
of
them.
Sometimes
literally.”

That
is
how
I
started
my

May
2023
story
about
$GREED,
a
social
experiment
that
duped
crypto
traders
hoping
to
score
a
quick
buck
into
embarrassing
themselves
on
Twitter
(now
X).
It
was
a
lesson
in
good
judgment
disguised
as
a
money-making
opportunity.

The
story’s
moral
did
not
stick.
In
less
than
a
year,
speculators’
memecoin
greed
prompted
them
to
once
again
trade
their
good
judgment
for
too-good-to-be-true
returns.
Presale
scammers
pitching
exclusive
memecoins
earlier
this
year
stole
$122
million
from
wannabe
get-rich-quick
degens,
according
to
on-chain
sleuth

ZackXBT.

It
was
a
devolution
of
the
zero-sum
casino
games
that
give
crypto
a
shady
reputation.
Forget
about
exchange
tokens
that
traders
believe
have
value,
or
well-known
memecoins
that
have
graduated
from
pure
joke
to,
well,
billion-dollar
jokes
like
DOGE
or
SHIB.
These
presale
tokens
were
literal
scams.
But
people
were
willing
to
suspend
their
disbelief
to
get
in
early.

“This
is
so
stupid,
people
are
just
going
to
get
rugged,”
$GREED’s
creator,
who
goes
by
Voshy,
said
in
an
interview.
“How
do
you
teach
these
people
a
lesson?”

He
decided
to
recreate
his
social
experiment
with
a
twist.
Last
time,
his
nonexistent
$GREED
token
made
a
mockery
of
its
“victims”
without
costing
them
any
capital:
He
duped
them
into
giving
him
access
to
their
Twitter
accounts,
letting
him
shame
them
by
posting
an
embarrassing
tweet
about
their
succumbing
to
their
own
greed.

This
time,
like
last,
$GREED
would
not
cost
its
participants
anything,
nor
would
there
be
a
token
at
all.
Instead
it
would
be
the
lure
for
a
surprisingly
lucrative
staking
freeze.
$GREED’s
unwitting
participants
would
lock
their
own
SOL
in
a
staking
account,
safe
from
presale
predators.
While
their
money
was
working
for
them,
it
would
also
work
for
$GREED:
an
education
initiative
that
Voshy
hopes
will
teach
the
entire
space
a
lesson.

For
part
two
of
$GREED,
Voshy
started
by
tweeting
vague
promises
of
what
seemed
like
an
upcoming
airdrop
of
a
GREED
token.
It
caught
on.
Just
like
in
2023,
crypto
traders
started
angling
for
a
token
they
knew
nothing
about.

Soon,
Voshy
upped
the
ante
with
a
website
with
wallet-connection
capabilities.
People
could
now
seemingly
commit
their
SOL
to
GREED.
But
for
what?
The
website
didn’t
say
it
was
conducting
a
presale.
It
made
no
promises
about
what
it
was
for,
or
what
people
would
get.
Details
didn’t
matter;
in
the
first
hour,
1,527
wallets
pledged
6,220
SOL
(currently
worth
about
$1
million).

That’s
where
Voshy’s
experiment
diverged
from
the
scammy
sh*tcoin
presales.
Instead
of
taking
people’s
money
in
exchange
for
a
token
(or
in
exchange
for
nothing,
as
scammers
do),
Voshy’s
website
had
prompted
them
to
stake
their
SOL
tokens
to
a
Solana
validator.
When
they
signed
the
transaction,
they
locked
their
tokens
to
this
validator
for
six
months,
until
mid-September.

“Locking
it
for
three
days,
nobody
would
care.
We
wanted
the
people
to
notice,
we
wanted
the
people
to
feel
something,
to
remember
it
just
like
last
$GREED,”
Voshy
said.

Last
year’s
$GREED
experiment
taught
its
unwitting
participants
to
be
“very
careful”
about
giving
out
access
to
their
social
media
accounts
lest
they
be
embarrassed
again,
the
prankster
said.
With
this
year’s
$GREED,
“we
wanted
to
achieve
that
people
don’t
just
send
their
assets
out.”

Those
who
locked
their
money
in
$GREED
aren’t
completely
stranded.
They
can
get
their
tokens
out
by
creating
a

governance
proposal
and
then
convincing
15
other
$GREED
participants
to
vote
for
their
assets’
release.
A
couple
hundred
of
the
GREEDy
have
attempted
to
lobby
their
way
back
to
liquidity,
with
mixed
success.

“Vote
for
me
if
you
also
hate
presale
meta
and
will
never
send
to
anyone
again,”
wrote
one
participant
who
failed
to
get
their
SOL
unlocked
through
a
vote
last
month.

One
of
the
benefits
of
duping
people
to
stake
their
SOL
during
presale
scam
season
is,
well,
protecting
their
SOL
from
presale
thieves.
But
another
lucrative
benefit:
staking
yield.
Staked
SOL
earns
more
SOL.

For
those
who
don’t
get
their
money
out
in
votes,
they’ll
have
the
option
to
withdraw
come
Solana’s
Breakpoint
conference
in
September.
At
that
point,
the
lock
freeze
will
thaw
and
with
it
a
pile
of
extra
tokens
from
$GREED’s
partner
protocols:
Samoyed
memecoin,
the
Marms
NFT
collection,
Texture,
Famous
Fox
Federation,
Racket
and
Cyberfrogs.
They
all
pitched
in
an
assortment
of
tokens
and
NFTs
that
will
go
to
those
who
leave
their
money
in
$GREED
to
the
end.

“Everybody
who
put
their
SOL
in
there
is
going
to
get
more”
than
they
had
if
GREED
was
actually
a
token,
Voshy
said.
He
mused:
A
good
chunk
would
have
likely
lost
their
SOL
tokens
to
some
other
scam
if
their
money
wasn’t
stuck.
Instead
of
losing
it,
they’re
earning
more
through
staking
at
an
annualized
rate
near
8%.

Most
validators
take
a
commission
on
the
earnings
generated
by
its
staked
assets,
but
the
$GREED
validator,
run
by
Triton,
doesn’t,
Voshy
said.
All
of
its
staking
yield
goes
to
the
frozen
stakers,
the
ones
who
locked
their
SOL
up
for
months.

Voshy’s
$GREED
experiment
is
attempting
to
teach
the
whole
space
a
lesson.
Though
the
validator
at
the
heart
of
it
doesn’t
take
a
commission,
it
does
collect
tens
of
thousands
of
dollars
in
SOL
every
month
from
transaction
tips.
All
that
money
will
go
toward
education
initiatives,
according
to
Voshy.

“Mostly
we
want
to
empower
people
in
the
ecosystem
to
educate
others,”
Voshy
said.
He
spat
out
a
few
ideas:
dapps
that
incentivize
learning
about
crypto,
TikToks
and
YouTube
videos,
that
kind
of
thing.

“It’s
going
to
be
fully
crypto
education
and
quite
Solana-focused,”
he
said.

Altruism
turned
$GREED’s
validator
into
an
unlikely
success
story.
Though
a
couple
thousand
SOL
were
staked
before
the
lockup
“gotcha”
was
widely
known,
a
tsunami
of
SOL
poured
in
after
word
got
out.
The
$GREED
validator
currently
has
nearly
900,000
SOL
tokens
–
a
hoard
worth
roughly
$150
million.
More
continues
to
pour
in
ahead
of
an
end-of-July
deadline,
he
said.