This story contains mentions of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, please call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Twenty-three-year-old Arnold Robert Haro addressed his final words to the phone in his hand. “If I die, I hope you guys turn this into a memecoin,” he said. Then Haro took his own life.
Haro died on February 21 at his family home in Madera County, California, a death certificate obtained by WIRED shows. His suicide was broadcast live to his followers on X, where he went by the handle @MistaFuccYou. Footage of Haro’s death has since been removed from the platform, but the incident was briefly listed in its trending tab.
In the hours after Haro’s death, people created dozens of memecoins—a type of highly volatile crypto coin used as a vector for financial speculation—modeled after him. Sensing an opportunity to profit, traders piled into one of the coins in particular, driving its value to $2.1 million in aggregate. (The coin has since lost 96 percent of its value.)
On X, some tried to argue that whoever was behind the MistaFuccYou coin had duly granted Haro’s final wish. But most denounced the impulse among traders to try to profit by his death. “If you’re trading this, you’re sick af,” wrote one user.
Speculation ran rampant on X that Haro had ended his life because he had lost money to a memecoin rugpull—a maneuver whereby somebody creates a new coin, promotes it online, then sells off their holdings in one swoop, devaluing everyone else’s stake. WIRED was unable to confirm whether this had happened to Haro, but his friends have disputed the narrative. “It had nothing to do with crypto … It’s not what all these crypto nerds seem to think,” one of Haro’s friends, who goes by j nova on social media, told WIRED. Haro’s family, meanwhile, has described his death as the result of “his battle with depression.”
The incident captures in microcosm the race to the bottom in memecoin trading circles, where only the most heinous and morally bankrupt ideas are now rewarded with attention, says Azeem Khan, cofounder of the Morph blockchain and venture partner at crypto VC firm Foresight Ventures.
“We’ve reached the point where the most potentially exciting launch that people are looking at is Kanye trying to launch a Swastika coin,” says Khan, in reference to now-deleted X posts made by an account associated with the artist Kanye West. “That’s how terrible this space is.”
Until last year, launching a memecoin was relatively expensive and technically burdensome, which meant few came to market. Only Dogecoin—the original memecoin—and a handful of derivatives had any sort of longevity.
That equation was reversed with the arrival of Pump.Fun, a platform that makes it simple for anyone to launch a memecoin at no cost. Since Pump.Fun launched in January 2024, many millions of memecoins have flooded the market, among them the coins modeled after Haro.
In a statement provided to WIRED, Pump.Fun spokesperson Troy Gravitt described Haro’s death as a “tragedy,” but explained that the coins made in his image, though “clearly in poor taste,” do not violate the platform’s terms of use. “There was no content associated with the token that would have identified it as either illicit or explicit,” says Gravitt.
Betting on memecoins is lionized in certain online crypto circles, where traders are euphemistically described as charging headlong into “the trenches.” But behind the combat metaphor is an implicit recognition that the odds are stacked against the individual “trencher,” particularly given the prevalence of rug pulls and alleged collusion between the insiders behind certain high-profile memecoin launches.
“Everyone assumes that crypto is where you come to become rich, no matter how dumb you are. I think it’s the exact opposite,” says Khan. “There are these layers of insiders … retail traders are always exit liquidity.” In other words, regular people buying into coins allows insiders to cash out at a profit.
The new cultural prominence of highly volatile memecoins, which offer the prospect both of outsized gains and losses, is also likely to have compounded the risk for people predisposed to problem gambling or trading, researchers say.
“People have enormous capacity to make money very quickly. The appeal of making money rings so much louder than calls of danger,” says Benjamin Johnson, a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland specializing in the public health implications of digital technologies. “Adding to the attraction with memecoins is that you’ve got these online communities where people really congregate. It becomes an emotional attachment to these assets … It creates a perfect storm.”
Though academics have not identified a direct association between crypto trading and heightened psychological distress, the externalities of crypto trading—namely, the likelihood of losing money—are shown to have a negative impact on mental wellbeing. And the vast majority of memecoins released on Pump.Fun wind up practically worthless.
“If you are really into day trading … it is definitely something that is likely to cause people mental stress or psychological distress,” says Atte Oksanen, a professor of psychology at Tampere University, who has conducted multiple studies on the mental health implications of crypto trading. “Financial problems cause a lot of stress, which can escalate.”
Meanwhile, the glut of memecoins entering the market through Pump.Fun—among them coins issued by celebrities like rapper Iggy Azelea—has led coin creators to take increasingly elaborate, sexually degrading, and sometimes dangerous measures to attract attention to their coins. One guy ended up catching on fire after a memecoin promotional stunt went awry, leaving him with serious burns.
The launch of US president Donald Trump’s memecoin in January pushed the fight for attention to new extremes. The inevitable effect has been that only the most depraved and provocative concepts—like the MistaFuccYou coin, based on a suicide—so much as register in the hive mind of memecoin traders. And even then, only briefly.
“The president of one of the most powerful countries in the world launches a coin. How much further is there to go?” says Khan. “Then if you hit the top of the market, how quickly will all of this vaporware actually end up nosediving?”
The calculus among memecoin traders is captured on Pump.Fun in the comment section for the MistaFuccYou coin. “This token shows how fucked the trenches are rn, and is highly unethical,” wrote one user, before implying that others should invest.
In the process, people like Haro—whose X feed is a kaleidoscope of memes, practical jokes, guns, women, weed, and crypto—are effectively erased; quite literally commodified into an incomplete and cartoonish version of themselves.
A fundraising page set up by Haro’s family to help cover the funeral costs paints a more three-dimensional picture: “Arnold was a bright, kind, and hilarious soul who brought light to those around him,” reads a description written by a family member. “He had a gift for making people laugh, spreading joy, and offering unwavering support, even when he was struggling himself.”
If you or someone you know needs help, call 1-800-273-8255 for free, 24-hour support from the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also text HOME to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line. Outside the US, visit the International Association for Suicide Prevention for crisis centers around the world.