In a post that attracted over 800,000 views yesterday, a pseudonymous crypto trader claimed to have bought a ‘controlling stake’ in a NASDAQ-listed pennystock for $1.8 million with a quirky plan to squeeze short-sellers through the power of memecoins.
Dropping clues obviously intended to drum up interest in his bizarre investment, he announced tantalizing plans to tokenize his equity, pairing it with a memecoin, and launch a short-squeeze campaign against the ‘92.3%’ of the float that he claimed was already sold-short.
There was one problem with his wild tale, however. No such company exists.
A proposed Community Note on X correctly debunked the possibility that he could have bought shares in a company matching his description.
Three hours later, the attention-seeker admitted that he had fabricated some of those numbers, recasting his original post as intentionally obscure despite an otherwise sincere effort.
Delusional memecoin ‘trading’ of Nasdaq stocks
In this case, the backpedal is notable because it demonstrates a repeating pattern of misinformation about real stocks from crypto influencers.
Indeed, just one night prior, memecoin traders tried to squeeze short-sellers on Nasdaq-listed Hims & Hers. That effort entirely failed because, to state the obvious, memecoin trades do not oblige Nasdaq stocks to change their price.
Over the summer, crypto influencers tried to revive a short-squeeze narrative using chatter about tokenizing NYSE-listed GameStop using memecoins or Robinhood Chain smart contracts.
Horrifyingly, a researcher found 354 out of 361 Robinhood Chain contracts using the GME ticker had absolutely no link to Gamestop’s actual GME stock.
Read more: Robinhood Chain’s memecoin boom is already imploding
Healthy skepticism is warranted
One trader in the reply section called the plan about short-squeezing a Nasdaq penny stock through a secret memecoin takeover a load of bollocks, noting a stake this size ordinarily requires a disclosure filing.
The trader’s numbers were oddly precise: $4.8 million market cap, $0.12 share price, 92.3% short interest, $6.2 million in debt, and $380,000 of revenue.
He claimed to have bought a 37.4% stake for $1.8 million over three weeks through two brokers “so the [sic] I didn’t spike the price,” he wrote.
He congratulated himself on his supposedly brilliant plan to pair tokenized equity with memecoins to create “the biggest crossover story in financial history.”
Even if the plan were true, it would certainly not be bigger than actual financial crossover stories from history, such as the listing of agricultural futures or other historic developments like exchange-traded funds.
‘I won’t do a memecoin’
In any case, his self-congratulation evaporated within hours alongside his specificity.
The trader first claimed to have purposefully fudged numbers to deter front-running. Then, buried in his own thread, he retroactively removed his promise of a memecoin entirely. “There’s no memecoin, I won’t post a memecoin, I won’t do a memecoin and this is not a memecoin ad. Some of the details are not finalized.”
In other words, he retracted the precise novelty that made the post newsworthy in the first place.
No stock, with whatever actual metrics it might have had, surfaced in the comment section or quote-post threads by late evening yesterday.
To summarize, one hour after the original claim, he was defending it, wildly comparing himself to Michael Saylor. Within two hours, a proposed Community Note was live for moderators. Within three hours, he had conceded, “the numbers are clearly off to avoid certain people thinking im trynna pump a certain stock.”
Short interest of 92.3% on a 12-cent stock is close to unheard of and next to impossible. Sub-$1 stocks are hard to borrow at any scale — even for a single share, let alone 92.3% of the float.
A 37.4% stake, which preceded his subsequent acquisition of a ‘controlling stake’ in his original narrative, would also ordinarily trigger a Schedule 13D disclosure requirement with the SEC.
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