Arnold Haro, a 23-year-old known on the internet as @mistafuccyou, grabbed a handgun and started a livestream one afternoon in February. Wearing a white t-shirt and gold chains around his neck, he paced around his bedroom and spoke calmly to the camera as a group of his followers watched. “I’m gonna play Russian roulette,” he said. “If I f**king die, make it a memecoin.” Two hours later, he was pronounced dead at his home in California.
The video of Haro’s final moments went viral, garnering thousands of views in the hours before it was taken down by X. While many viewers were appalled by what they saw, others took him up on his final offer and launched memecoins named for Haro’s online persona.
Haro, a young father, was suffering from depression when he took his life on Feb. 21, according to a police report obtained by Fortune. In addition to battling mental health issues, Haro had recently broken up with his girlfriend and was struggling financially.
It was in the midst of his desperation that Haro turned to memecoin trading, a trend that involves making longshot bets on jokey cryptocurrencies in hopes of winning big. While some trade memecoins for a lark, others are young men looking to gamble themselves out of a bad financial situation and, like Haro, lose it all.
A memecoin frenzy
Memecoins are a species of digital token derived from internet jokes, which invite buyers to attach real world value to everything from canines wearing beanies (“dogwifhat”) to “unicorn fart dust”—both of which are real world cryptocurrencies.
In a crypto landscape already rife with fraud, memecoins are an especially popular vehicle for “rug pulls”—a scam where someone promotes a memecoin by guaranteeing massive returns to attract investors. As the coin’s price peaks, the scammer dumps their holdings, leaving the investors with worthless tokens.
Haro was far from the only person to fall for the promises of memecoin hucksters. His untimely death coincided with a months-long speculative frenzy marked by viral stunts, rug pulls and even Presidential memecoin launches. The mania pulled billions of dollars into the crypto industry, but fleeced many investors.
The surge in speculation is partly tied to Pump.fun, a memecoin launchpad created last year that made it simple to create and sell memecoins. At its peak in January, Pump.fun helped launch over 70,000 memecoins on a single day, according to crypto data platform Dune.
The rapid pace of launches helped spur evermore shocking stunts as memecoin issuers sought to drum up hype, including one promoter who faked a suicide on a livestream. While many of these stunts turned out to be fake or inconsequential, Haro’s situation was not.
Who was Arnold?
Haro lived with his mom and three sisters on a ranch near Fresno, and had a one-year-old daughter with his on-and-off again girlfriend, according to the police report. He drove a silver Ford F150 and and a black BMW SUV, the report said. His father is incarcerated, his girlfriend said in a 911 call.
While Haro’s older sister, Maria Lucero Haro, declined to speak with Fortune, she described him as a “bright, kind, and hilarious soul who brought light to those around him,” in a fundraiser on GoFundMe. He had a “gift for making people laugh” and “spreading joy,” she wrote, even while struggling with his own hardships. People who knew him from social media echoed a similar sentiment, lauding his sense of humor and generosity.
But he was also a young man with serious financial and drug problems. According to an account from his girlfriend cited in the police report, Haro owed “a lot of people a lot of money.” Her account also noted that he was a drug dealer and sometime user, who survived a fentanyl overdose in 2020. It also stated that he had sold two stolen cars to a Mexican dealer in exchange for a large quantity of marijuana, and that the dealer was threatening to kill him upon discovering the cars were stolen.
His last $500
Despite his dire financial situation, Haro risked what he said was his last $500 on a Pump.fun memecoin.
“The other day I put my last $500 in $ye,” Haro wrote in a direct message to Lucas Dimos, a crypto influencer, on Jan. 27. Haro included a screenshot of his crypto wallet showing that the price of $ye—a memecoin that falsely branded itself the official crypto of rapper Kanye West—had fallen 36% within the last 24 hours of his message. “I tried selling but I couldn’t,” Haro said.
Blockchain data shows that Haro purchased 80,085 $ye tokens on Jan. 25 for $580. Following $Ye’s launch on Jan. 24, the memecoin soared to a market cap of over $1 billion before it plummeted back to earth in the following days. Two months later, Haro’s tokens are now worth less than 50 cents.
His crypto wallet shows that he had also invested in a number of other Pump.fun memecoins over the past 10 months, none of which hold much value today. Nonetheless, his wallet now holds a modest fortune—thanks to Haro’s dying wish for someone to turn him into a memecoin.
Minutes after Haro’s final livestream began, an anonymous creator launched $Mistacoin—a reference to Haro’s username on X—on Pump.fun and then deposited 70% of the token’s supply into Haro’s crypto wallet.
While it is unclear exactly why the creator of $Mistacoin sent him those tokens, some X users speculate that it was an attempt to give Haro’s family access to a portion of the token’s profits.
As the video of Haro’s death spread across the internet, $Mistacoin skyrocketed, raking in a $2 million market cap. The success of Mistacoin led to dozens of copycats, allowing a handful of people to turn the tragedy into a windfall. But as the internet lost interest in the weeks that followed, $Mistacoin fell to a market cap of less than $70,000.
“Mr. Haro’s death is a tragedy,” Troy Gravitt, a spokesperson for Pump.fun told Fortune. “Pump.fun had no role in the series of events beyond being the platform on which someone created and launched a crypto token related to the news, clearly in poor taste.”
Today, the 700 million $Mistacoin tokens in Haro’s wallet are worth $48,000. Some X users are holding onto hope that the money will somehow make it to Haro’s family but it is unclear if they can access his wallet. Unlike with a traditional bank account, there is no “forgot your password” option for a crypto wallet. However, before he died, Haro texted his sister a password, “unknown to what,” the police report says. “It was just a password and nothing else.”
If you or someone you know is strugging or needs help, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline for free at 1-800-273-8255. Text HOME to 741-741 for the Crisis Text Line.
