Drop out of school, All in encryption, conversation with Trump... Why did the post-00s boy who reached the peak of power suddenly disappear?

Author: Kaori, BlockBeats

Editor: Jack, BlockBeats

Today is the 20th day of threadguy "disappearing", and almost every day people talk about when he will return on X.

Threadguy's latest interaction on social media was when he liked a post that read, "Business leaders are willing to pay up to $5 million to meet with President Trump on his Florida estate, while others pay $1 million to attend a group dinner with him. I have to admire threadguy, spending $25,000 to see Trump is really a bargain."

This praise is like a time capsule that seals the closest time of the 23-year-old crypto youth with the center of power.

Time goes back to September 22, 2024, at this Trump dinner at Mar-Lago, threadguy, wearing a dark striped suit, with a carefully selected eagle-shaped tie clip, and his newly-dyeed iconic blonde hair, raised his hand and asked Trump a question, "As someone who is following NFT, I'm curious, what do you think the future of cryptocurrencies will be like if (and hopefully it won't happen) you fail to win the election this time?"

Trump spread his hands as usual and said, "I think it's the future." In the direction of threadguy, Trump spent 30 seconds answering the question, "I think the future of cryptocurrencies is very bright, really. Maybe we can use it to repay $35 trillion in debt, right? I just wrote a little note, 35 trillion in cryptocurrencies so that we have no debt, right?"

Before his speech on stage began, Trump was doing preparations behind the curtain. Threadguy was only two steps away from Trump. The girl who shot the video for threadguy kept urging him to do something.

threadguy raised his hand and signaled to Trump. When he saw Trump whispering, he asked, "Will there be more Trump Cards in the future?" Trump said he didn't know, threadguy then said, "I am a top holder, I love them," Trump then reached out and held threadguy tightly.

There is another episode about this dinner. Threadguy asked five people in a row. They didn’t know they needed to buy NFTs to enter. Just because they knew someone, threadguy repeated several times in front of the video camera, “Am I the only one who bought NFTs?”

And five months later, threadguy was involved in another president-related storm, and the Argentine currency LIBRA allowed the young man to experience a capital meat grinder with his crypto career. This time, there was no high-spirited suit and blonde. In the camera, threadguy said angrily, "Most people will eventually be 'cut off' in this market. There are very few people who can really make money, and the ending is usually not very good. No one is willing to take the initiative to promote this casino, but I played this role invisibly."

The rules for breaking the circle for dropout boys

In 2021, Michael Jerome, a sophomore at Virginia Business School, decisively withdrew from the meeting after less than 10 minutes in the first Zoom class in accounting. The next day, he made a bold decision - dropping out of school, all in the crypto field.

Michael, who had been involved in trading cards and sneaker reselling as a teenager, found himself naturally attracted to the NFT world, where he found a familiar feeling—a passionate community, the possibility of making money, and the joy of collecting—all 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 US$19.6 billion, which is 228 times the volume in 2020. NFT digital collections have generated a total transaction volume of more than 8.16 million and a total transaction volume of more than 6.5 billion. In the reports released by domestic media, the majority of the "post-00s" and "post-90s" digital collections are interested in collectors, with the "post-90s" accounting for about 37% of the NFTs, ranking first, and the "post-00s" accounting for about 27% and ranking second.

Michael is not a big player, a veteran trader, nor a project founder, so he began to look for vacancies in the market. At that time, if someone wanted to know about an NFT project, they could hardly find a reliable source of information. Maybe you can see a few posts on Twitter and find an article that has long been outdated. That’s why Michael decided to start writing long-term pushes about projects he was really interested in.

In August 2021, Michael named his newly registered Twitter DiscoverxNFT, and continued to update the long analysis tweets of the NFT project 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 fans to about 5,000.

Michael mint’s first NFT project was Jenkins The Valet, and in October 2021, Michael wrote a long push for 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), and it was during this period that his social account and personal brand began to truly take off.

Because Michael's long-term push has a solid brand impression, in 2022, he changed his Twitter name from DiscoverxNFT to threadguy.

As DiscoverxNFT and Jenkins have become more and more influential, in April 2022, the Jenkins team took the initiative to come to the door, hoping to include Michael in the team, but at the beginning the Jenkins team didn't know what kind of position to give Michael, and Michael joked that he wanted to be the "Director of Vibes".

"Age discrimination is a false proposition"

In February 2021, the world was plagued by COVID-19 lockdowns. Musk and a group of Silicon Valley giants stood on the Clubhouse, causing the whole world to go crazy about this voice social product. Two months later, Twitter also launched the Space feature. As the functions gradually improve, hosting Space has become an important way to promote crypto communities and individuals.

At that time, someone invited threadguy to do a podcast together. Although it failed to make a comeback in the end, it planted a seed in his heart. In the summer of 2022, threadguy began hosting the Daily Space with Crypto OG Alex as a co-host, inviting some people in the NFT or crypto space for conversations, when his studio was in the basement of his home.

Threadguy's behavior is highly recognized by Alex, which has made him stand up and support this young man at many moments.

"I only host Twitter Space with threadguy because he is the number one influencer in the field of Ethereum. He is ridiculously smart and can be the first in the industry, not by luck. This guy's work attitude is unprecedented. Not only people in the field of Web3, but even ordinary people can compare. I am really grateful to learn from him. That's right, he is a teenager younger than me, and I can learn from him every day. Age discrimination is simply a false proposition."

In November 2022, threadguy decided to host the show independently, and it was slow at first, with personal hosting and co-hosting completely different, and the atmosphere was also completely different.

"I've made up my mind, so I think - no matter it, even if I don't have experience, I want to do it," threadguy said. "I will think about what kind of discussion will be triggered by inviting this guest and what new opportunities may be brought about. This is a game of chess and requires careful layout."

The 2000s who dropped out of school and joined the crypto field full-time once expressed his understanding of what he did: "In the social and content fields, the most important principle is to maintain stable output. Even if you are not at the top of 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 yourself going further than most people.

Many people are aggressive when they first enter the field and have full firepower in just two or three months, but this method is difficult to sustain and often ends up in a collapse. A more stable and planned rhythm will allow you to persevere for a longer time. Being able to hold on for longer than others is often a seriously underestimated competitive advantage. "

threadguy once said he "had taken months to find his voice" and since then he has insisted on hosting the show every Saturday without interruption. This almost paranoid stable output just confirms his self-described philosophy of survival - in the battlefield of fragmented attention, endurance itself is a moat.

In this era of traffic first, attracting attention and winning audience love has become the goals that many people pursue. However, in the face of a market where attention is easily dispersed, threadguy knows that to survive in such an environment and maintain his influence, it requires not only strong abilities, but also forward-looking vision and flexibility to adapt to market changes.

The price of chasing traffic

In April 2023, threadguy and his Space partner Leap moved to Los Angeles, with their goals not limited to Twitter Space, but the wider community has also given them more new opportunities and possibilities.

Left: Leap; Right: threadguy

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

There is no doubt that these guests are closely related to NFT culture. Threadguy will run to the guests' places for interviews. Whether it is a studio or an exhibition hall, the state of this young man in the video is always positive and high-spirited.

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

In June 2024, the well-known Rapper Iggy Azalea and her meme coin MOTHER were in a turmoil. Threadguy, who grasped this wave of celebrity coin craze, invited Iggy to do a video podcast called "Understanding Attention, Encryption and Internet Culture".

In July, threadguy flew to Romania for the 12th podcast interview, this time the guest was another internet celebrity, Andrew Tate. This guest, who is very controversial and topical across the network, has many fans and many opponents, has brought more than 10 million views to threadguy. On YouTube, this video has 15 times the number of views that are second.

Before Andrew Tate’s interview, threadguy’s most successful podcast on X accumulated millions of views, and YouTube was around 1,000 views. This interview amplifies these numbers exponentially, with the number of views on X reaching nearly nine times the previous one, reaching 8.8 million times, and the number on YouTube increased by hundreds of times to 1.24 million times. This podcast issue has brought threadguy to a brand new audience, and he also clearly feels the influx of new traffic.

But this unexpected peak of traffic puts threadguy in trouble. For some time after the interview was sent, threadguy's mental state gradually declined. On the one hand, Andrew Tate's reputation is not good. In addition to his sensational operations, most of the meme coins related to it were manipulated to rise and fall, making threadguy realize the terribleness of this person.

On the other hand, the decline in podcast traffic data sent after this interview was too serious, and the sense of gap caused by threadguy was unacceptable. He reflected on X:

I started doing Spaces in the first place, and then I started doing podcasts, but it was just because I like to chat with interesting people and listen to them share some interesting things. But recording podcasts in reality really made me tired. Due to cost and travel restrictions, I can only interview those top guests. Moreover, I have been refusing to accept ad sponsorships (I don’t know why, but I just kind of resisted), which has caused 99% of the guests I really want to talk to become out of reach. As a result, every episode is under tremendous pressure and must perform well, which completely destroyed my enthusiasm for this matter.

"So I decided to return to my original intention - to use live broadcasts to communicate with interesting people anytime, anywhere, and no longer care about their influence or platform size." A Twitch live broadcast link is given below the tweet. Since then, threadguy has stopped making live video podcasts, but mostly interviews through online connections.

Encrypted Lifestyle Matrix for Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, threadguy

However, this suspicion of the side effects of influence did not last long. The controversy brought by Andrew Tate may be the manifestation of threadguy's shift to lower-cost Twitch for content dissemination. The deeper driving force is that he realizes that the meme coin supercycle is attacking the cryptocurrency field in unprecedented ways.

The interview with Andrew Tate was also conducted at the same time as the founder of Punm.Fun, the founder of the most exciting crypto app this cycle, and was interviewed for the first time to be interviewed to the public. It was this podcast that made threadguy start a journey that he later said that he "gradually became full-time, even promoting meme coin casinos."

Start with a card game

January 16th is threadguy's 23rd birthday, and he excitedly introduced his new studio during the live broadcast, even rolling in an empty room. A friend knocked in and gave threadguy a basketball, planning to take him to the Lakers game tonight, and sit in the sidelines. threadguy happily turned the basketball in his hand, apparently already coming out of Andrew Tate's shadow.

Before moving into this new room, threadguy's live background was an open-plan living room, and he often used a whiteboard as a background board. Since no offline interviews with people, threadguy's interview video has a more personal style, and the entire live broadcast process is interspersed with barrage questions and jokes.

Often, two or three hours of live broadcast time will be chatted with the audience in the live broadcast room at will, and then guests will be invited to discuss the issue. After the live broadcast is over, the conversation with the guests will be cut and uploaded to Youtube.

In this way, Twitch is the first channel for threadguy to convey values, Twitter is his traffic accumulation pool, and YouTube is his content back garden.

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

And this house is not just threadguy for live broadcasts, it is also the residence of him and several other KOLs who also broadcast cryptocurrency content on Twitch.

Back three months ago, at the end of October, Polymarket sponsored a poker night event, which was sponsored by threadguy, and was held at a dedicated poker table that threadguy and his team spent 26 hours building in the house. In complex live broadcast equipment and a corner of the room, you can also see the table and computer of threadguy's previous live broadcast.

Throughout October, threadguy was preparing for this live poker broadcast. In addition to going to the casino to practice poker skills, he also had to officially announce 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, and the game was accompanied by the audience betting on Polymarket and tweeting interactions.

After a live broadcast, there were more than 20,000 views on Twitch, adding 800 new fans. It was also after this card game that threadguy officially started his Twitch live broadcast career. After the live broadcast, threadguy posted on X:

"To be honest, I was so moved that I almost burst into tears. You don't know how important this is to me. This is just the beginning, and the live broadcast journey has just begun!"

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

Of course, it’s not just a game of cards that connects them together, they organized an account called “Probably Nothing” in March 2024. Members include FaZe Clan FaZe Banks, founder of the NFT project DeGods, Malcolm, member of de Labs (the parent company of DeGods), and encrypted KOLs including threadguy, rasmr, and OGshoots.

These Los Angeles crypto people gathered with NFT culture live broadcasting cryptocurrency-related content on Twitch. In addition to interviews and conversations, threadguy, Frank and others will also analyze meme coin opportunities, review transactions, and discuss market trends during live broadcasts.

In addition to the live broadcast, these people have a small group of their own, and the group name is "LA Vape Cabal". A community member named Mikasa was once pulled into this group chat by a friend. The first opportunity he seized after joining the group was JELLYJELLY, a meme coin launched by lessin, former vice president of product at Facebook. At the time of scanning, the market value was only US$2 million, and soared to 250 million in just six hours.

People in the group frantically read lessin’s Twitter and social media to confirm whether their account was hacked, and then communicated in the group, as if it was related to life and death, so it was necessary to figure out the situation. Once they judge that this is not a runaway project, they will take a large position. Of course, due to Degen's mentality, there will be people who will go directly at the beginning. Mikasa said that the core of bringing the people in this group chat together is Frank's words - "Know what you are holding". Mikasa wrote on her social media:

Anyone who comes out of this group can retire now, and you will basically not have to worry about your livelihood in the next 5 to 10 years. But they are still trying hard to watch the market, find coins, and mine insider information, as if they are still relying on their wages to make ends meet. He was surprised that he had no signs of insider trading or smashing the market, but because of this, he finally understood why so many people always kept leaving Frank.

For threadguy, the first three games of Twitch live broadcast were very good, with subscriptions exceeding 2,000. According to the data at that time, the subscription volume of the top 100 Twitch website was 7,000, and the subscription volume of the top 25 reached 17,000. In just three days, threadguy completed the 35% progress of the top 100 Twitch.

Banks, the sponsor of Probably Nothing, has explained why such an organization is being built, saying it is extremely important to document the living conditions of a new generation of day traders and young Web3 builders, and that through the Probably Nothing platform – especially this team – is the best way to achieve this. Obviously, threadguy's live broadcast career took him a step further from his crypto ideal.

LA Vape Stream Cabal

threadguy The last live broadcast was on Valentine's Day.

At 7 p.m., he wore a T-shirt with Snoopy dog ​​printed on it and shared with listeners two hours ago with Argentine President Milei forwarded the meme coin LIBRA in the live broadcast room. threadguy bought LIBRA when he said in the live broadcast that he had a market value of 2.5 billion. While watching the game video, he followed the market FOMO until he found that the big players sold and withdrew the pool. After realizing something was wrong, he cleared the position and left the market with a loss of around 1.2 billion market value.

This live video has been deleted on Twitch. Regarding the live broadcast this day, the most widely circulated on the Internet is a slice of threadguy mutes the live broadcast and covers his mouth to answer the phone. It is precisely because of this action that he became the target of the Argentine President Libragate incident.

During the time when he started doing live broadcasts, threadguy often posted live broadcast data on his account. He believed that the market was seriously lacking in high-quality encrypted content and hoped to provide more content that reflects the industry.

"Talking directly to the camera, you will accidentally bump into Adin Ross-> level traffic one day."

In February 2025, threadguy, Banks, Frank, Rasmr and others really went to the Adin Ross live room, which also became the second most watched interview video, with the title "I teach Adin Ross how to trade Memecoins".

Adin Ross is the top live streaming industry in today's streaming era. He has more than 20 million followers on YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and other platforms. Ross, a post-00s generation who is two years older than threadguy, interviewed Trump in August last year. Two years earlier, Adin Ross had also done live broadcasts with Andrew Tate.

In addition to Adin Ross, threadguy and others also conducted a video interview with internet celebrity Haliey Welch. Haliey is the protagonist of the once popular Hawk Tuah Girl. She became an unexpected hit in June 2024 because of a street video. She imitated Hawk Tuah (spitting sound) with a playful southern accent and gave sexually suggestive answers, which quickly spread on social media, just like Ross, the focus of Generation Z social media.

But all this turned into a farce. In the eyes of threadguy, the release process of this episode was full of mistakes and chaos. From the leak of content to the mistaken release of the program that should have been cancelled, to the final decision to go online, the entire team had serious problems in all aspects, and $HAWK also ended up like many celebrity meme coins.

The choices of these guests are not so much a consideration of the depth of content, but rather as a precise capture of the focus of Generation Z social media, or, more bluntly, a naked pursuit of traffic.

The name "LA Vape Cabal" has gradually changed from the initial joke to the community's "accusation" against them. They are accused of using their fans to exit liquidity and manipulating the meme currency market. This community anger was finally released on LIBRA. The video of threadguy covering his mouth and calling Banks was regarded as "hard evidence" of "LA Vape Cabal" having insider information on Argentina coins.

There were criticisms coming one after another, and some people even rumored that "LA Vape Cabal" was associated with the North Korean hacker group Lazarus Group. Even the photos taken by threadguy and Adin Ross during an interview were dropped and circulated in the community. This is a conspiracy group that only relies on insider trading to manipulate the meme market.

Solana Wiki also removed the entry "LA Vape Cabal" in the storm, which originally said "The group is famous for its 'celebrities' and its controversial personality."

Left: Solana Wiki page after web page recovery; Right: Solana Wiki delete page;

On the fourth day after LIBRA "runs away", threadguy posted a ten-minute clarification video on X. In addition to clarifying that he has no insider information on Argentina coins and no factual evidence that he has insider trading in advance, threadguy also said something unexpected:

At some point in time, my content direction changed. I was originally interviewing the project party, founder and developer, but later I gradually became full-time 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 off" in this market, and there are very few people who can really make money, and the ending is usually not too good. No one is willing to take the initiative to promote this casino, but I played this role invisibly.

More than 2000s, the president should also have an internet sense

When threadguy issued the first NFT project long-term analysis in the basement, the post-00s may not know that he is stepping on the pulse of the times. The crypto world is like a giant magnet, continuing to attract Generation Z - there is no threshold for investment banking in suits and ties, no promotion system for seniority, only Twitter followers, meme communication power and beastly intuition about hot spots.

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 asking young people to "start from interns", the crypto field has already staged a more naked wealth myth: a funny NFT emoji produced at 3 a.m. may earn more than a fund manager with ten years of service; a live streaming slice of Twitch playing games while chatting about the token economy may leverage millions of dollars of liquidity.

From the "P young players" who became famous in one battle and got big results, to the millisecond-level business of the founder of the billionaire Formula, age has never been a bottleneck that limits a person's development. From Elizabeth's group fee to Hunhe's short composition, these post-00s, like threadguy, leave their own stories in this market in the way they are good at.

This industry will give many young people opportunities, but because there are not many rules and barriers, it not only creates the wildest grassroots counterattack myth, but also breeds disorder and speculation under the laws of the jungle. When the academic certification, career ladder, and resource monopoly in traditional society are all invalid, the Z generation who masters the meme propagation password are reconstructing the value coordinate system using emoticons, live streaming slices and online slogans.

Although LA Vape Cabal has been hated a lot, they and other content creators with public identities play a very important role in the field of encryption. Retail investors need interesting content to be attracted to it, and the most effective way in 2025 is vlog and live streaming. Anonymous culture cannot be scaled.

Just like now people complain about infrastructure oversupply, geek podcasts seem to be too overflowing. In the eyes of some, threadguy and his live room are representatives of the crypto-lifestyle media, discussing with fans about the recent football matches they watched and talking about what they did on the weekend. Some people say, "We need avant-gardes to build the industry threshold into a trendy symbol - when Generation Z begins to regard becoming an anchor-level KOL in the crypto field as a life ideal, this field has truly achieved mainstreaming." Cryptocurrency lifestyle media may be the real killer of this cycle.

On the day after the article was finished, threadguy posted his first post 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 match it. Everyone wants to enter, but no one really understands it. In any other field, KOLs cannot directly create wealth for community members like in the cryptocurrency field."