152: Stacc Attack

Jarett Dunn, AKA StaccOverflow, stole millions of dollars from a website called Pump Fun, and he wanted to do it in the most dramatic and theatrical way he could. His big heist is known as the “Stacc Attack”. https://x.com/STACCoverflow He has a merch store now freestacc.io https://freestacc.io/. SponsorsSupport for this show comes from Cobalt Strike https://cobaltstrike.com/darknet. Cobalt Strike simulates real-world, advanced cyber attacks to enable red teams to proactively evaluate an organisation’s security readiness and defence response. Their Command and Control framework gives red teamers the ability to customise their engagements and incorporate their own tools and techniques, allowing you to stress-test specific parts of your incident response capabilities. Learn more about Cobalt Strike and get a custom demo at https://cobaltstrike.com/darknet. Support for this show comes from Axonius https://axonius.com/darknet. The Axonius solution correlates asset data from your existing IT and security solutions to provide an always up-to-date inventory of all devices, users, cloud instances, and SaaS apps, so you can easily identify coverage gaps and automate response actions. Axonius gives IT and security teams the confidence to control complexity by mitigating threats, navigating risk, decreasing incidents, and informing business-level strategy — all while eliminating manual, repetitive tasks. Visit axonius.com/darknet https://axonius.com/darknet to learn more and try it free. Support for this show comes from ThreatLocker® https://www.threatlocker.com/. ThreatLocker® is a Zero Trust Endpoint Protection Platform that strengthens your infrastructure from the ground up. With ThreatLocker® Allowlisting and Ringfencing™, you gain a more secure approach to blocking exploits of known and unknown vulnerabilities. ThreatLocker® provides Zero Trust control at the kernel level that enables you to allow everything you need and block everything else, including ransomware! Learn more at www.threatlocker.com https://www.threatlocker.com/.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jack Rhysider?

  The dumbest thing I ever bought. Yeah, the dumbest thing I ever bought is a Canon DSL camera, 5D Mark II. Somewhere around 2007, I started getting into photography. DSLR cameras were just getting popular and I wanted one, but I was too poor to afford it. I was obsessing over the Canon Rebel cameras, wishing I could have one, constantly looking at eBay to see what was out there. And every now and then, I'd find one undervalued, listed way below what it should be at. And so I bought the cheap one and I used it for a few days and then sold it for more than I bought it. I did that three times and eventually had enough money to get the camera for myself. Basically, it was a free Canon Rebel.

• 0:42Jack Rhysider?

  And I used the crap out of it. I probably took thousands of photos with it. I shot models sometimes, but my favorite was architecture. I especially loved derelict or abandoned buildings. And after a year of taking all these photos, Canon was launching a new camera, the 5D Mark II. Oh, how I started wishing I could get that. And for some reason, I just couldn't resist and I pre-ordered it. The thing cost $2,500 and it was absolutely something I could not afford at the time. But I thought it was my ticket to becoming a professional photographer. So I spent every last penny I had on it and even went into debt to buy it.

• 1:25Jack Rhysider?

  Oh, it was amazing. Full-frame sensor, it took perfect photos. But here's the problem. I felt this thing was way too expensive to take anywhere. Like if I'm walking around in abandoned buildings with thousands of dollars in camera gear around my neck, I might get robbed and if it got scratched, I would have cried. So I never took that camera anywhere and brought my cheaper one with me instead. The one I didn't mind if it got broke or stolen. But this changed my whole relationship with photography after that. I had all this camera gear and because I was too afraid to use it, I didn't shoot much at all. I realized my dreams of being a pro photographer were done and it was a dumb idea to buy this thing. I don't know what I was thinking at the time. So I tried selling it.

• 2:10Jack Rhysider?

  But the thing is, selling something that expensive is tricky. You could easily get scammed or robbed, and it was very nerve wracking. On top of that, nobody was really buying these super high-end cameras. So I ended up selling it for way less than what I paid for it. Now, I say that was the dumbest thing I bought because yesterday, I bought something way dumber.

• 2:37Jack Rhysider?

  These are true stories from the dark side of the internet.

• 2:43Jack Rhysider?

  I'm Jack Resider. This is Darknet Diaries.

• 3:04Jack Rhysider?

  This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. You care about your privacy, do ya? Then get yourself over to joindelete.me.com. And let me tell you why. Whatever size you think your digital footprint is, well, it's bigger. Social media, news apps, shopping, all the private data can be scraped by data brokers and sold. A few years ago, I signed up, and ever since then, they have been busy scouring the internet for my name, and then they give me reports about what they find, and then start deleting stuff. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now, at a special discount for my listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete.me/darknetdiaries and use promo code DD20 at checkout.

• 3:46Jack Rhysider?

  The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me/darknetdiaries and enter code DD20 at checkout. That's joindelete.me/darknetdiaries, code DD20.

• 4:05Jack Rhysider?

  This episode is sponsored by Delete Me. You care about your privacy, do you? Then get yourself over to joindelete.me.com. And let me tell you why. Whatever size you think your digital footprint is, well, it's bigger. Social media, news apps, shopping, all the private data can be scraped by data brokers and sold. A few years ago, I signed up and ever since then, they have been busy scouring the internet from my name. And then they give me reports about what they find and then start deleting stuff. Take control of your data and keep your private life private by signing up for Delete Me. Now at a special discount for my listeners. Get 20% off your Delete Me plan when you go to joindelete.me/darknetdiaries and use promo code DD20 at checkout.

• 4:47Jack Rhysider?

  The only way to get 20% off is to go to joindelete.me/darknetdiaries and enter code DD20 at checkout. That's joindelete.me/darknetdiaries code DD20.

• 5:04Jack Rhysider?

  Yeah, all right. So let's start at the beginning here. First of all, what do you want to be known as if I call you names?

• 5:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's fine. Jer, Jer Dunn works. I'm all over the internet and I'm full of it. So it's perfectly fine. And then if not, then most people would know me as Stack, I guess, or Stackover.

• 5:23Jack Rhysider?

  I'm gonna jump to the chase for you right now. Jared, aka Stack, executed a wild and astonishing robbery. He stole millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which is why I call this episode Stack Attack. But his grand heist is so different that it had me questioning far more than stolen money. It cracked open a door that I didn't even know was there, leading me through a maze of questions that I'm still trying to find my way through. And it's also a story I think a dozen people have told me to look into at this point. Have you heard of meme coins? They're like jokes, but in the form of cryptocurrency. They're really weird and nobody seems to understand why they have any value at all.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's no inherent value. The whole pitch is that there is no pitch.

• 6:08Jack Rhysider?

  And you might say, oh, I would never buy something with no value. Oh, yeah, then are you saying you never bought name brand clothes or food or medicine? The store brand Ibuprofen has the exact same ingredients as the Advil brand. And it's just as effective and is honestly the exact same product. Yet people still prefer the Advil brand, even though it costs twice as much. And that's marketing for you. That's storytelling for you. Stories alone give value and meaning to otherwise meaningless or valueless things. So anyway, people are buying cryptocurrencies simply as a joke. Almost like they're laughing at themselves, like they know they're buying a meme coin and it's a stupid idea. But they're like, yeah, let's do that.

• 6:54Jack Rhysider?

  And then they feel stupid even after doing it. It's very strange. Now, are you, are you into, like, do you like crypto and NFTs? Or is this like something you're just like poking at and making fun of and being like, what idiots are buying all this stupid stuff?

• 7:09Speaker 01

  I should, I should, I guess, give a lot of context. I'm mad at context. It's, it's raging autism. So I've been in crypto since maybe 2011 or 12. I used to make YouTube videos. The intro I used to give was, I have lost multi millions many times over. Instead, I'm still here grinding now. I've kind of fallen disillusioned now. I used to really believe in the revolutionary aspect of this entire thing and kind of separation of finance and state and all that fun stuff. And I was very much on board with causing a lasting change, I guess. But I've kind of been disillusioned and I'm not really sure where I fit in a spectrum of, of a believer or not these days. Cause it pays the bills. However, I have this booming court case, so I don't really know where I stand.

• 7:53Speaker 01

  I'm a developer. I'm not a very great developer. Somebody, somebody recently described me as a Sefog programmer, but I don't believe so. I, I connect thoughts really well and I've contributed, I guess, to, will they going Ethereum some, some? I contributed heavily to Steam and I was actually a block producing witness on a bunch of sidechain. I've been around with EOS for a while. I went to Wax. Wax is a gaming chain. It's like Neil's Spork or like a very close to EOS. And then, the thing is, as long as. Built different and they really do tailor the entire thing to to to to welcome and and promote new developers. And so, once I found Solana, I kind of found a place for myself, I guess.

• 8:26Jack Rhysider?

  So he's contributed to the development of many cryptocurrency projects out there. And it was Solana, the fifth largest cryptocurrency that he felt most at home in, and he put his focus there. But one thing Jarrett just can't help doing is looking for bugs in the code that can be exploited for money. Because if a bug is present in a crypto project, it could result in catastrophic losses for everyone involved. The bug hunting, I'm trying, I'm trying to get a square understanding of this because are you looking for bugs and then reporting them so they get fixed? Or are you looking for bugs and then exploiting them?

• 8:59Speaker 01

  So I will tell you, I have in the past, uh, reported any number of bugs that have gone on deaf ears. Forty bugs all over the place. So I reported a bug to, uh, Radium and, uh, Orca, World Bulls at one point. Orca dismissed it as out of, out of, uh, scope because they don't support that particular program, I guess. I don't know why. Uh, and then also Radium, they, they got all the means of basically, so there's nothing we could do to prevent good market behavior. Um, so that's, that's that kind of, uh, that kind of wall you hit. In, in short, no, I, I usually try to report these things. In total, I've been paid, I think, two bug bunnies that are significant.

• 9:32Jack Rhysider?

  Jarrett claims that he had information about FTX's downfall before it became public. FTX was a huge crypto exchange that was discovered to be mismanaging its money and lying about it. And the founder ended up going to jail. A lot of people lost a lot of money because of it. And Jarrett tried to warn his government by telling them to look into FTX.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  In November two thousand twenty-two, I withdrew my reapplication to Canadian forces, hoping to bring my concerns to the right people about FTX. Perhaps can make a difference. However, the recruitment process took too long. And by the time I withdrew my application, damage had already been done to the broader crypto ecosystem. Knowing now that should I ever be left in a moral conundrum with hundreds of millions in user funds at risk, surely leading to another bloodbath of worldwide suicides. The only way to be heard is through dramatic and impactful action. Because without a theatrical display, nobody ever really listens.

• 10:21Jack Rhysider?

  He wished he could have been more dramatic and theatrical to warn people about the FTX collapse? That makes me wonder what he's thinking here. Like, what does it mean to be more theatrical about warning people? What do you consider yourself? Are you trying to make things better? Are you securing the internet to the crypto? Are you evangelizing it? Or are you sticking your finger in someone's eye?

• 10:47Speaker 01

  I really wish I knew. I really wish I knew. If I knew, I would have some kind of idea of where I'm going.

• 10:50Jack Rhysider?

  Even in 2023, you didn't have a clear direction?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  No, not at all. In 2023, that was the first anniversary after my mom's death. The 25th there, when they released that outage report, I was very deep in grieving.

• 11:03Jack Rhysider?

  How did your mom die?

• 11:04Speaker 01

  She was, uh, nursing. Uh, Canada, Canada killed her. Uh, she, she, she fell and broke a hip and she was interopable, so they put her in her misery.

• 11:13Jack Rhysider?

  Oh, my gosh. That, that was, that must have been so sudden and surprising.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  Yes, it was. Uh, so she was already out. And we, we knew she was on the way out. And, um, it's a very long story. Uh, but, um, it is what it is, and it's probably for the better. I just still struggle with, uh, it's been a very important day of the year. I struggle.

• 11:30Jack Rhysider?

  Jarrett had a hard time coping with the death of his mother. He loved her dearly. She was everything to him, but it was a complicated relationship. I read his psychiatric report. It said she had her own mental health issues and would do crazy things like set her own house on fire. So like Jarrett came home from school three different times with his house on fire. He got addicted to cocaine early on when he was like a teenager and just had a wild upbringing. And he wanted me to add that the psychiatric report is questionable since the NHS screwed it up a little bit by putting the wrong ID on there and misspelled his last name.

• 12:11Jack Rhysider?

  In February 2023, he was grieving her loss pretty hard because it was the one year anniversary of her death. And he turned to his computer to cope. Perhaps that's a safe outlet if he's just playing video games or watching YouTube. But what he decided to do was attack the Solana network.

• 12:31Jack Rhysider?

  Solana is a type of cryptocurrency. It's the fifth biggest coin in terms of market cap. It's kind of a big deal. And Jarrett knew some of its weaknesses. So he started messing with it.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  I was out of my mind. I was grieving and I was trying to do as much as I could. So I was queuing as many recursive transactions as I possibly could. The validator is running Clockwork because they can optionally do this Geyser plugin and get additional money by running these threads. Clockwork is a scheduling software. The thing is, I figured out that you could do recursive transactions. So you actually have a transaction that calls another transaction in the same slot, which obviously, if you have enough money to pay Piper, that's terrible for blockchains or any competing network. All went down again and a couple of days later, I was asleep or in a coma and the entire Solana network went down when Clockwork came back up.

• 13:17Jack Rhysider?

  He was able to generate block sizes so large that it overwhelmed the network and transactions were getting clogged.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  Of all of the transactions by byte size, I was 4%. I was the user or bot submitting 4% of everything on Solana in that particular block. Yes, or for a few.

• 13:32Jack Rhysider?

  And how did that? You must have had a really beefy system.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  No, it was just using their threads. So I was queuing transactions that would then call themselves on chain whenever there was certain conditions met. However, I then found out that I could just have them call themselves immediately, which is the recursion that I think got broken.

• 13:53Jack Rhysider?

  Solana reported a 20-hour outage on February 25, 2023. They experienced unusual block sizes, which when rebroadcasted through the network, ended up degrading the service. So they put Solana in maintenance mode to fix the problem. Essentially, no Solana transactions could occur pretty much that whole day.

• 14:12Jack Rhysider?

  And I can't exactly confirm it was Jarrett who took down Solana during that time. My guess is he contributed to whatever problems that were going on. But the thing is, is that he was never blamed for this. Solana never came out and said, "They know who did it," or anything like that. I have to admit, I didn't think it was possible to cripple a cryptocurrency's network so badly that it can be taken offline like this. $2 billion are traded every day on Solana. And for all that to come to a halt because some guy is having a bad day? That's just wild to me. How did you get started with Pump Fund?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Totally the CBO of Solana lost the coin on April Fool's Day, April 1 of this year. And...

• 14:52Speaker 01

  It was called Bunker Coin. I I poured it and I appeared back and all I did was copy the first half of the paragraph from the Bitcoin white paper and threw it in there. And then I threw a pump fun coin. It's the very first time in my life I've ever used pump fun at that point. Um, and I called it Bunker Coin Futures and it's a fool's day. But it filled immediately. I didn't expect anything to happen. And I went to go make a bed, I went back to the theater. My two slarn would become ten slarn, which is significant. So, uh, I guess I was hooked on the casino at that point.

• 15:24Jack Rhysider?

  Pump Fun. To research this episode, I actually created an account on there and used the site for a few days. And he's absolutely right. It feels like a casino and it's pretty addictive because of that. And the meme coins I bought on there yesterday absolutely are the dumbest things I ever bought in my life. I kept finding myself lost in a daze, staring at the screen, watching my bags, then suddenly waking up, realizing I'm betting on memes. And I say to myself, what in the world are you doing? So what Pump Fun is, it's a place that anyone could go to and make a meme coin on the Solana network. It's very easy and fast. And then others can buy your meme coin from you if they want on the site. The site looks a lot like 4chan.

• 16:06Jack Rhysider?

  And as you're there, you're just bombarded with endless messages of new coins being created and what coins people are buying and selling. And it's wildly popular. So before your eyes, you're watching a coin get created by someone and then hundreds of people are buying that coin, all in the first five minutes of it existing. And I only went there to research this place. I I only spent like a few bucks on meme coins, like for $2, you can buy 30,000 meme coins. As I used the site myself, I got familiar with the game. It's called Pump Fun because the game is to pump and dump. A meme coin's relevancy only lasts a few minutes sometimes, then it crashes into oblivion. So the game is to jump in on a coin, hoping more people are gonna buy it after you do. And if they do, your holdings go up.

• 16:49Jack Rhysider?

  And then you need to get out before that goes back down. And so the people holding that coin will use every strategy they can to get others to buy it after them. And as I played this game, I too became someone trying to convince others to get in on this coin. It's hot. Pump it. And then as soon as they jump in, I jump out. Dump it. It's ruthless in that way because you see the other people who are buying the coin and you want to think they're on your team, they're gonna help you pump it. But no, they're just looking for a way to get out before you do. Everyone's trying to take each other's money and that's the game, that's the gamble. And I think that's what draws a lot of people to come play at the site. One of my favorite towns to visit is Las Vegas and everyone knows when you gamble, the house always wins, it's a rigged game.

• 17:34Jack Rhysider?

  Yet they still gamble, they put their luck on the line and bet real money, even after knowing the games they're playing are not fair. But I love Las Vegas because there's nowhere else in the world which is as wild and crazy as it. It's incredibly entertaining and fascinating to experience and I learned a lot from that town, such as how to stay focused in a chaotic environment, how to see through the glitz and glam and notice what something really is. And maybe even a glimpse of what humanity is really like. I met some people who use PumpFun regularly and even they think what they're doing is laughable. Like, he was telling me, he made bank off of fart coin or a squirrel called Peanut the other day, or something ridiculous. Because when you're buying meme coins, you're buying something that is just so bizarre

• 18:18Jack Rhysider?

  that you end up questioning your own sanity. But it's fun because it's interesting and weird and we all like interesting things.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  You go there, uh, you make a token, you share it with your friends and your family and then they come in and buy it after you. It's on a bonding curve, so the first person that buys buys it the very cheapest. And as people, as more people buy, it was only buyers. For instance, the price is used to go up per token. So, uh, the idea is that you eventually sell your tokens for a gain after you have shared it with those friends and family, uh, for them to buy after you, whether it's you toward for their friends or not, or however you want to describe it legally as friends and family. And then you, you make a gain on their loss, essentially. And, um, that's basically it. It's, it's, it's, it's made to look like 4chan, I guess, with the comments and such. And there's a cute little interface with flashing lights on the, on the landing page.

• 19:06Jack Rhysider?

  You say cute little interface, I'm looking at it now, it is ugly.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Yes, it is horrifying.

• 19:12Jack Rhysider?

  The site is right out of bizarro internet land. The layout is weird, the images and coin names are a cringe. It's all moving way too fast for anyone to be able to read. Things are like jumping off the screen, constantly trying to get your attention. And so Jared was playing around on the site quite a bit, launching coins, running trading bots, and being pretty active on Pump Fun, tweeting about it, too.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  And I recurred on LinkedIn at all these, and he supplied for a couple of jobs. And I said, sure, why not? Regurgitating, actually. And I had like two or three interviews with Pump, different founders, and and I got an offer, so they paid for my passport, paid for my flight, paid for a couple of other things. I got a thing gave renewal of my passport and a ticket that was actually the same night. And then I flew over to the UK. I've only left Canada once in my life before this.

• 19:56Jack Rhysider?

  So Jared got hired by Pump Fun and moved to the UK. And he knew this was a crazy idea, to move to a new country for some wacky crypto project. Was excited about it, too.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  I was just excited just to work in a real office again. I've been a remote person since like 2013, when I worked for Research Emotion was my last in-person job. Like, the guys that literally called themselves Black Rain, they're now out of business. It's a long career of isolation and eviction and stuff. And like, I just, I really wanted to be part of an organization that was young and fit and like looking forward to achieving stuff. Like, they were already one of the number one earning apps anywhere in crypto. It's a, it's a very long story, like, I don't really know, but the main, the main thing is why I wasn't on my medication, probably not thinking straight, that's one thing. And then, uh-

• 20:33Jack Rhysider?

  What was, uh, what was the medication you're on?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I'm on antipsychotics once a month via, via Depo, and I'm also on, uh, Alden's or Viva's or whatever. Which, you're in America, so Viva's, yeah. I fixed my monitors up there.

• 20:46Jack Rhysider?

  What is that treat?

• 20:47Speaker 01

  radiation.

• 20:48Jack Rhysider?

  Okay, so you go to, you go to London, you meet with the, uh, the creators of this. What are your, what is your opinions of them?

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Oxford, yeah. Yeah, I flew to Oxford, they're all, they're all younger, they're all in, in student housing in Oxford. There was this black tie event that threw, it was their second, masquerade or third or whatever.

• 21:04Jack Rhysider?

  What was your first opinion of them?

• 21:06Speaker 01

  I don't really know. I, I didn't anticipate the CTO was the CTO. I actually, I actually, uh, mistook him as an employee. They're all, they're all young twenties and, and very, uh, inexperienced, I guess is the word.

• 21:17Jack Rhysider?

  How many people were there?

• 21:19Speaker 01

  There's three co-founders and I was the first hire outside the founding team.

• 21:23Jack Rhysider?

  He moved into a shared living space with the other co-founders. But after a short while, they all moved to London and got an Airbnb there for everyone to stay at. And they also rented an office.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  We got a rental last minute across from the Buckingham Palace, the Buckingham.com, which was the Buckingham Gate residence.

• 21:40Jack Rhysider?

  This was actually a pretty posh place they rented for the team to do work out of. And if you're wondering, how does Pump Fund make money? Well, they charge a 1% fee for every trade that happens on the site.

• 21:52Speaker 01

  So I'll send you this link in a sec. Let me just load it up for a sec, Tom. Yesterday, they made, that's actually gone down a whole bunch. They made $520,000 yesterday.

• 22:00Jack Rhysider?

  Okay, let me look at it.

• 22:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:02Jack Rhysider?

  $340 million in fees they've collected?

• 22:05Speaker 01

  Yes. That's not including TBL. That's just fees.

• 22:12Jack Rhysider?

  The site is apparently crazy popular. Tens of thousands of meme coins are made every day there. And they were experiencing explosive growth. No wonder they wanted to hire developers. This site was probably barely able to stay on the tracks. And it's strange to me that this is the wacky world we live in, where joke tokens have such a wild demand, where the site creators can make hundreds of millions of dollars from this. And see, here's the thing for me. I want to understand the world. I want it to make sense. And whenever I learn about something that doesn't make sense at all, I used to dismiss it and say, ah, those people are obviously stupid, or that's fake, or that's wrong, or something. But now, when I hear something really absurd, I lean into it. And I stay there until it makes sense to me.

• 22:57Jack Rhysider?

  Like, I still don't understand why the game Banana is the third most popular game on Steam. Can somebody please explain that to me? Most of the time, when I figure out a mystery like that, it's a big waste of time for me. Because I'll just learn that I was lied to on the onset and I saw something fake or something, which made me believe something else. But in this case, we can see exactly how much money this site is making because the blockchain is public for anyone to see. And yeah, they've made hundreds of millions of dollars on this site. How are meme coins so popular that millions of dollars are being spent on them every day? The more Jarrett learned about Pump Fun, the more concerned he grew with the whole company. Like, to start with, one of the first things that happened when he arrived is they held a black tie party, which was wild.

• 23:38Speaker 01

  Outrageous. There was a horse, like a miniature horse. There was fire dancers. There was 200 oysters that were bought. We spent like 20,000 dollars in the bar.

• 23:44Jack Rhysider?

  He started thinking this place is more crazy than he realized.

• 23:48Speaker 01

  In short, I think they're committing any number of that one spends a thousand times a day, actually. Because there's like 20,000 of these tokens launched every day. The first thing that I didn't really get much thought to is there's no KYC or AML across the entire board.

• 24:04Jack Rhysider?

  Okay, so KYC is know your customer and AML is anti-money laundering. Personally, I don't want anyone in the world to know I bought a meme coin from this place. So I definitely don't want to be putting my actual name as the owner of that. And think about if I went into a casino in Vegas to gamble, there's nobody collecting my name before I can gamble there. But regulations are starting to come up everywhere in crypto land, and it's very difficult to know what to follow and how. So I'm just not sure if the site is required to do any KYC or not. Then Jarrett also thinks that there's a whole financial advice problem on the site. See, the government has made it illegal for me to give you financial advice. If I wanted to give you financial advice, I'd have to be registered with the SEC.

• 24:48Jack Rhysider?

  And Jarrett tells me that there are loads of people on Pump Fun who are in fact giving financial advice, saying things like, "Buy this crypto coin and you'll get rich." Is that illegal? Jarrett thinks so. So he tells me the site's official stance is that "we're all friends and family on the site, because you can give financial advice to your friends, and that's not illegal." I looked on the site for a privacy policy or a terms of service, and they don't exist. So from what I can tell, the site does not post any rules of what's allowed or not allowed. But there's one part of the site which is worth mentioning. To launch a coin, you need to create an account, name the token, and give it a logo or something.

• 25:29Jack Rhysider?

  But to pump it, you can go live, flip on your camera, and tell the world why they should be buying your token. And of course, because you're the creator, if the token goes up, you make money. But can you think of any problems that might arise on a site where you can make money live streaming? And everyone is anonymous and no age checks are required?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  So the live streaming feature, so if you go and create a coin, and actually it'll show you on that landing page if anybody's live streaming, and you can kind of get the gist. This was one of the things that caused me very much grief. I remember I said to my friend's boyfriend, "How could I work on this feature?" Their live streaming platform allows for the sexualization of young girls for financial gain, operating without KYC or A and L protections, thus exacerbating potential for exploitation and abuse. So basically, anybody can live stream on the site. And what that really means, and how this came to be, in fact, how they noticed it while I was there, is that questionably of age girls were sexualizing themselves on camera, like as a live streaming platform for sex cameras, whatever you call them. Corrigan, the point is, there's no KYC, there's no even attempt to prove that anybody's of age.

• 26:34Speaker 01

  So, for instance, when one of the founders joined one of these streams that were happening on Telegram at the time, because they were excited and wanted to integrate it live on the site, because it was a major boost in traffic and feeds and all that. He joins, and somebody else is on the audio for this Telegram chat and says, "This girl is 12 years old." And she says, "Nah, baby, I'm 21," and that was the extent of the KYC there.

• 26:56Jack Rhysider?

  I did not ask Jared to show me evidence of underage girls streaming on the site, and Jared's lawyers told me they didn't want to see it either. I did see sexual photos of adults, though, on the site. Let me read a tweet from you that the Pump Fun Twitter account wrote on June 13, 2024. "We at Pump Fun are fully committed to a family-friendly user experience. Trading memes should be a fun experience for the whole family. That is why we resolutely condemn the porn meta that has taken over our site, but we can only accomplish that with your help. Please send all the porn you find to our intern." And it has the intern's email address. And see, that's what I mean about Pump Fun. You can't tell if what you're looking at is a joke or real. But as I spent time on the site myself, I can tell you it's definitely not family friendly.

• 27:41Jack Rhysider?

  I saw way too many buttholes while I was there for sure. And the site has a strong resemblance of 4chan, which is known for being the underbelly of the internet, where the scummiest of content is posted and shared. But heck, even 4chan has rules. And I sat in on the very first Twitter Spaces that Pump Fun held. 10,000 people joined it, and the craziest question got asked. This question actually contains a swear word, so if you don't want to hear swear words, skip ahead 2 minutes.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  One last thing, I seen you guys getting a lot of fun about this, and I was very curious about it, because I was trying to defend y'all. Guidelines, what do you guys think about guidelines? Because I seen a lot of people doing crazy stuff on Pump Fun, me included, you know? Would you guys add any guidelines or safety precautions on your website to fight that?

• 28:26Speaker 03

  I mean, so, okay, so first of all, I think like our ethos is we're like super pro free speech. We want as much content as possible on our platform to go across. However, if there's anything illegal or outright illegal based on the platform, like we have to take it down, right? Like we can't have that burning, like both as a moral obligation and as a business obligation. Like, we don't want to be distributing anything like that or having anything on the platform. So yeah, that's sort of the way we stand.

• 28:56Speaker 02

  Have you guys been saying anything illegal yet?

• 28:58Speaker 03

  Actually, no, surprisingly, our sort of, we've sort of had this moderation team and stuff like that. And surprisingly, there hasn't been anything too shocking. But obviously, we have to be prepared for the worst case scenario.

• 29:11Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, I just have one last thing to say, and then I'll get out of here. For you saying the illegal stuff and, you know, basically moderating what happens on Pump Fun, I had an idea, and, you know, since I guess I'm talking to Pump Fun right now, can you guys tell me if this is illegal or not? It's an idea for Pump Fun. I was thinking about, well, I was thinking about fucking a girl live on Pump Fun tonight, because my birthday's tomorrow, so I thought it'd be super exciting and crazy and different. But is that illegal or not? I'm genuinely asking, it's something that I'm very serious about. The girl is coming over. Is that illegal? Is this something that I can put on Pump Fun? Fucking a girl live?

• 29:50Speaker 03

  Um, okay, so yeah.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Very serious question.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, very serious question. I mean, okay, let's, let's put it this way, like, we, we are, um, very free speech, speech oriented, um, obviously sort of sexual content does exist, um, uh, uh, uh, on the web. Um, so yeah, I, I hope you sort of take that answer as we sort of, um, say it basically. So, yeah.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  I love you guys so much. Thank you so much for having me up here. Sapuji and Alon, I love y'all.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  Oh, somebody sent me an, an, uh, an interesting link earlier. It was somebody smoking meth on one of these live streams for money. It's actually a tweet here. They're smoking meth on what has happened to Pump Fun.

• 30:23Jack Rhysider?

  A news site called Decrypt pointed out that Pump Fun has seen some pretty gnarly stuff. A young teenager got his mom to bounce her boobs on camera to pump a coin, and when he got it to pump, he sold his whole stake in it. And then there was another guy who went live after creating the truth or dare token, and someone dared him to cover himself in isopropyl alcohol and then shoot fireworks at himself. And so he did it. The guy set himself on fire and burned pretty bad. He was rushed to the Miami hospital, where he suffered third-degree burns on a large portion of his body. People do some pretty wild stuff on Pump Fun. We're gonna take a quick ad break here, but stay with us because Jared's gonna top all those stories and do something even more wild.

• 31:06Jack Rhysider?

  This episode is sponsored by Arctic Wolf. Everyone is slapping AI-powered on their security tools, but Arctic Wolf took a different approach. Instead of duct taping AI onto the SOC, they rebuilt the SOC around AI and called it the Aurora Super Intelligence Platform. If you ever tried to build your own AI pipeline, you know the pain. Data engineering, model tuning, governance, validation, Aurora removes all of it. You deploy it and instantly inherit the intelligence, guardrails, and operational maturity of one of the world's largest agentic SOC. Under the hood, Aurora is running a fully agentic architecture they call the Swarm of Experts. These agents are battle-tested inside the world's largest commercial SOC

• 31:48Jack Rhysider?

  and only ship when they can outperform human-only workflows. And its integration is seamless as Aurora works within Arctic Wolf's concierge experience, allowing your security team to focus on higher-value strategy and proactive risk reduction. If you want to see what a real trustworthy agent-led SOC looks like, not the marketing slide version, go to arcticwolf.com/darknet. That's arcticwolf.com/darknet.

• 32:20Jack Rhysider?

  So he's starting to have qualms with the ethics of this project. And he's questioning if this is even something he should be working on. Then on top of that, he started to get upset with the team and decided to move out of the communal living space and get his own apartment.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Aside from all these longstanding concerns, I'm really bad with money. I was making good money, but the thing is like I just spent it all on, because I am bad with money and I do party. The point is, not anymore. I'm 21 days sober today. Like I'm trying my best not to be that person. And so, thank you. I'd rather, I'd much rather survive this oil ordeal and not drink myself to death. But for a while there, I was going off the rails and stuff. So I had no money and I got this apartment. I got in this apartment. I didn't like it very much. Little did I know it's kind of like standard, especially for central London to have mice and roaches and shit. However, I was very unpleased. I wanted a different room, like immediately. I asked for them to square up to the day of that month that I had worked, which was like halfway through the month. So I get some money to find a better apartment. They said no.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  I said, can you, like, why? They said, this will look like preferential treatment at this point. We have three other people working now. Mind you, the CEO did mention, I'd rather that I was going to get weekly pays, which would have helped me a lot. I would not have been in this situation. However, it was monthly eventually. And what happened is, I said, well, can you pay all bonuses? And he says, no, like bonuses to everyone, so this is professional and stuff.

• 33:40Jack Rhysider?

  And so, with a head full of alcohol and the lack of ADHD meds and the depression from the loss of his mother and being in an apartment with mice and rats in a town he's totally unfamiliar with and working for this mega profitable crypto startup, which wasn't aligning with his ethics and morals. Everything swirled together into focus for Jarrett. Did you, did you know what you were about to do? Like, were you aware of your actions at all?

• 34:06Speaker 01

  Psychiatric report confirms that I was aware of what I was doing. Like totally unaware of the illegality of my actions. I had no idea any of this fallout would happen. I had no idea that the police would care. I didn't, I didn't think this through. I really didn't. So unfortunately, I am where I am. I gotta deal with the repercussions of my actions. I gotta learn there are consequences to my actions, so I'm just resigned to it.

• 34:26Jack Rhysider?

  So where does this begin? You like, do you see the vulnerability in the code? And then just decide to exploit it as soon as you find it?

• 34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and funny enough, I did report it a couple of weeks before that. There was just no action to patch it or fix it.

• 34:39Jack Rhysider?

  Well, you're the developer.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  I know, but I reported it and I tried to tell the CTO.

• 34:44Jack Rhysider?

  You email yourself like, hey, you should fix this.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  I'm busy. You're not sure, true enough. No, I mean, true enough.

• 34:51Jack Rhysider?

  This hack is probably one of the more complex hacks I've ever talked about. I didn't understand it when Jared explained it. I didn't understand it when I read an article explaining it. I didn't understand it when I asked my DGEN friends to explain it. It took a long time of me reading article after article, trying to fully grasp what happened. And I'll summarize it just for the geeks out there who like the technical aspects like me. When a token is made on Pump Fund, it pretty much is just available on Pump Fund. But when enough people buy it, it then gets graduated to Radium, which is a DEX, a decentralized exchange. And this makes it a little bit more official because it's on this decentralized exchange now. And so for it to graduate out of Pump Fund into the DEX, Pump Fund sends a bunch of Solana along with it in order to fund the liquidity pool on the DEX.

• 35:34Jack Rhysider?

  So what Jared did is he took out a flash loan and bought all the tokens needed to graduate the meme coin over to the DEX. And then he immediately sold the meme coin to pay back the flash loan. Then, using his insider access, he redirected where the Solana was supposed to go. Instead of it going to the DEX, it went to somewhere that he controlled. This would allow him to take anywhere from one to eighty Solana coins every time he could get a coin to graduate out of Pump Fund and onto the Radium DEX. But Jared, being Jared, wrote a little program to try to do it to not just one or ten or twenty, but thousands, tens of thousands of Pump Fund meme coins. Because every time he could get one of them moved over to the DEX, he'd make a few thousand dollars.

• 36:19Jack Rhysider?

  So he wrote this program and executed it, taking out thousands of flash loans, pumping projects and redirecting the Solana that was supposed to go to the DEX to somewhere else he controlled. Then he immediately sold the meme coins to pay the loan back. On May 16th, 2024, he decided he was going to execute this program. It was all built and ready, and once triggered, it would just automatically try to hit as many meme coins as possible on Pump Fun.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  I was not thinking straight at all. I was just that out of it that I didn't understand what was going on. I didn't even know what is writing while I was writing it. It's very interesting.

• 36:51Jack Rhysider?

  Any, any idea why, why you were so out of it? Like, what do you mean by out of it?

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Uh, probably without, probably without medic, like any psychotic medication for about six months. But do it. I, I'm a diagnosed schizophrenic person with a panic disorder, bipolar and antisocial personality disorder. And depending on how you talk to ADHD, the new psych report, the new psych report believes me to have one diagnosis. He doesn't think there's any psychotic symptoms, nor are there so long, so long when it's over. However, he thinks just ADHD and maybe need to a personality disorder, but he didn't want to actually declare it just in his more assessment, so.

• 37:25Jack Rhysider?

  Gosh, dang dude, no wonder you're called Stack Overflow.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  It's a memory leak, isn't it? It's, that's the vibe. It's my, my, my Instagram and, and my No Law Instagram is 256 bits of confusion. Um, yes, it's, it's, it's, uh.

• 37:38Jack Rhysider?

  That was a lot. You just told me like a whole bunch of diagnostics, right, right, right? It just rattled one after another.

• 37:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's, well, the first one was more than, more than 18 years ago, wasn't it? I got diagnosed. The last three years of my life, I've spent more than two years in hospital or, or permanent, uh, more, more long-term, uh, hospital, uh, grounds, I guess, or like residences or programs.

• 38:02Jack Rhysider?

  I read through Jarrett's psychiatric report. It was conducted on him to see if he knew what he was doing at the time of this hack. The report is kind of dark. The dude was addicted to cocaine his whole life, but he had been off it for the last three years. He's been hospitalized for mental issues six times in the last three years. One was just to go through the excruciating detox from cocaine. And in the report, he admitted to attempt suicide a few times by taking too many meds. He often has these extreme cases of paranoia where even the smallest things can trigger it. Like, he gets hallucinations sometimes.

• 38:39Speaker 01

  Little everyday manageable events become not so manageable or like, or like even, even self-care, all that stuff. It just becomes, it's a slippery slope into insanity, really.

• 38:47Jack Rhysider?

  A psychological report says that the day he did the hack, he was aware enough to know what he was doing, but not aware of the legality of what he was doing. It's kind of like the spotlight of consciousness was only focused on the here and now, and no light was shed on the possible future or the consequences. You see this vulnerability, you have this episode, a psychotic episode, and you're just like, oh my gosh, let's see, like, let's see if this can work. I don't really care. Like, I mean, do you have, do you have kind of a, I'm, I'm thinking about that moment right before pushing enter.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, that's the thing. The moment right before pushing enter, and I'm glad you phrased it like that, because it was quite the, uh, quite, uh, leading up to it, I, I got paranoid again. I couldn't be in the same building as them. I thought they would last shower and stuff. And like, I did like, surreptitiously move to a cafe post by and stuff. And like, I had to sneak around and like, and like, look around the corners. They couldn't see me and stuff. But then at the very moment, I was hovering over the entry key, right? I step back and I said, well, let's just, let's just think about it for a second. Let's, let's draft a tweet here. And so it was actually a Facebook post originally. It was, yeah, I'm gonna show you. It got 2.1 million views.

• 39:56Jack Rhysider?

  What?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Uh, this is the tweet. It, it basically summarizes my thoughts at that very moment.

• 40:03Jack Rhysider?

  No, magic. Everybody be cool. This is a robbery. What'd it do? Stack attack? I'm about to change the course of history and then rot in jail. Am I insane? Nah. Am I well? Very much not. Do I want anything? My mom raised from the dead and barring that, life without parole. Okay, so you string a series of tweets, and you had 2.2 million views, this thing.

• 40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:30Jack Rhysider?

  So you knew, you knew this was going to steal money. Who'd you think it was gonna steal money from?

• 40:36Speaker 01

  The users. That's the thing. They are, I limited the damages enough that they could pay back to users. That's not a big deal, given what the site got.

• 40:41Jack Rhysider?

  Now, um, did you have any estimate on how much money you would be stealing?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Forty million.

• 40:47Jack Rhysider?

  Forty million.

• 40:49Speaker 01

  No, it says in tweet about eighty million, but I was just being silly.

• 40:53Jack Rhysider?

  If done right, this heist is going to steal forty million dollars worth of Solana from the users of PumpFun. In his tweet, he even goes so far as to say it might cause a Solana outage, suggesting that this hack could be so catastrophic to Solana that it causes a chain split, similar to what happened to Ethereum Classic.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  I don't know why I said the Solana fork thing. People laugh about it constantly these days. They quote this thing still on the scene, not even thinking it can cause a fork of Solana fork. It's just very interesting that people think I'm bad. I mean, I was. I was always, I was always not well when I wrote this.

• 41:26Jack Rhysider?

  Okay, so you write the tweet and then hit enter?

• 41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  I'm going to start getting phone calls on Telegram over and over again, so I uninstall Telegram.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  How was that? I went and walked around in circles and I was running out of battery. One of the employees came running by me and like, I even just put up my hands and a peace sign, but he like ran right by me and looked both ways down the road and ran off in a different direction. I said, well, that's my, that's my hands that I should, I should get some cover. God protecting in that instance, so let's go get some cover.

• 41:59Jack Rhysider?

  His program was working flawlessly. He was taking out flash loans, pumping projects until it'd flip over to the DEX and then sell those coins to pay back the flash loan and then redirecting the Solana that was supposed to go to the DEX. But here's the thing, his program had one other trick up its sleeve. His mission wasn't to make money. He wanted to be dramatic and theatrical, remember? So his hack was programmed to send the coins he was getting to random Solana projects that he liked. In fact, he never had possession of the stolen Solana at any time. They were automatically redirected to random people in the world and he had thousands of wallets that he was sending this money to.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  There's about ninety-five total thousand addresses. Ninety-five thousand total addresses that could have potentially received funds. Out of those, only about two thousand did again because I'm not good at math. And it was supposed to actually hit everybody one at once. Um, regardless, uh, yeah, just random tokens. I actually, I, I, I asked somebody, uh, at some point, it says, who do you believe to be more deserving? Subset of users on Solana. And this is, uh, on a kind of like.

• 43:02Jack Rhysider?

  Hundreds of Pump Fund coins were getting hit by this. And as the script continued running, thousands were getting hit. The owners of Pump Fund quickly became aware that their site was under attack and were looking for Jarrett. But at that point, someone gave Jarrett some money and he checked into a hotel room, not even a block away from the offices to try to lay low for a while. And I'm just trying to catch your emotional reaction when you're seeing it actually working. I'm like, shit, it worked.

• 43:28Speaker 01

  I, I didn't anticipate. Yeah, I mean, there's that. The first, okay, the first one, when it went through, I was like, oh, shit, it didn't work. And then it was obviously multiplying, like doing these on a, you got an A-sycrim and sleep and stuff. So there's, there's many thousands or a couple of minutes or whatever, but like, or at least attempts, right? Cause there's again, many hundreds or thousands in total that failed. However, um, I guess.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I was more worried about getting the thing to have more successful transactions than money. But emotional response, again, again, somebody who's diagnosed presently with ASBD and potentially mixed personalities, or I don't really understand emotion the way that most people do. It's more technical and it's more, more, uh, like, I don't process emotions in my mind. This is what I should say.

• 44:08Jack Rhysider?

  Yeah, how does that work?

• 44:09Speaker 01

  It's like I'm on the moon and I have a telescope and I can kind of witness what other people go through by viewing them through the telescope. And I can emulate as best as I can and I come off pretty well. Uh, but I really have no idea what I'm doing. It's just through emulation at a very long distance.

• 44:25Jack Rhysider?

  Pump Fund creators couldn't stop it. They wanted to, but simply had no tools to combat this. And they just sat there staring at the devastation unfolding. Thousands of Solana tokens were being taken and redistributed to random Solana projects. Eventually, the Pump Fund team came up with a plan. They increased the transaction fees that were being charged on the site. This way, every time Jarrett bought some Pump Fund tokens, he'd be charged a ridiculous amount. And the increase in fees actually did put an end to this because the flash loans that Jarrett was taking out simply couldn't cover the extra fees required to pump the token anymore. And even if it did, it would likely make this plan be a lot less profitable. So somewhere between 30 to 60 minutes in, the elaborate and wild robbery of Pump Fund came to an end.

• 45:09Jack Rhysider?

  Jared was able to pilfer 12,600 Solana coins at the time and send them all to random addresses, other projects that he thought were deserving of the money. He didn't keep a single token for himself. In total, it was about $2 million worth of Solana. So the victims here were the people who were using these meme coins on Pump Fund. They had their liquidity stolen. Pump Fund had to take responsibility for this and spend their own money putting back the liquidity into these projects that got it stolen from. So in the end, the biggest loser here is actually Pump Fund. And they were mad. They learned pretty early on that Jared must have been behind this. His sudden disappearance, strange behavior, and wild tweets were clues alone. But tracing this through, they also could see that it was an insider

• 45:54Jack Rhysider?

  who was redirecting the funds. So they called the police to help them hunt down and arrest Jared.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  Two days later, they found me. Three days later, actually. They found me again 90 meters from the office. They sent somebody to my sister's house in Canada in that time. And there was a private, what was it called? Like, the International Security Service was hired to find me, which is why they found me, I guess. But I was just eating a burger across the street. And they saw me and reported me. And then two in the morning, cops showed up.

• 46:27Jack Rhysider?

  Somewhere in the middle of it all, he discovered that his wallet was receiving huge amounts of meme coins. And he couldn't quite understand why. By the time this was all over, he had about $600,000 in meme coins in his wallet. But he just handed the private key of that wallet over to the Pump Fund team because he wasn't trying to make money off this himself and felt like he already made the statement he was trying to make.

• 46:49Speaker 01

  2:00 in the morning, I was asleep. I was fast asleep. The cops show up and they knock on the door. And I said, "Ah, shit, here we go. Knock on the door, this is the person I've ever been arrested." And they come in. "These gentlemen," and it was cordial and stuff. I eventually went to go pick up a glass bottle full of water, the porous of water. I didn't know I was under arrest at this point. And they said, "Can you put the bottle down? I just want some water." I said, "I'll get you some water." He's like, "Sure, thank you." Anyway, they're terrifying. I've learned since that the reporter for the alleging party said that I would tend to violence very quickly. It's just not true, all categorically, historical, all of that stuff. And they were worried I would destroy the evidence upon the police arrival. The body can just will prove by the lines. We're recording.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Then I went to the station, stayed overnight, stayed on in the morning. I talked to psychiatrist, three psychiatrists actually. They said I probably shouldn't answer questions. I mean, I really bit me myself. Listen, I haven't had medication, I have not had medication in six months. I don't think I can answer questions right now. So that's what happened. Then I was in hospital for a month, came out, I was late on my rent, paid my rent. Bill says that be here. Been here since. Got drunk for, I think, two months straight, pretty well. And then decided one Monday to stop drinking, started doing recovery groups and have been sober since.

• 48:03Jack Rhysider?

  The court looked at his case and decided that he'll receive a maximum of fourteen years in prison for this and a minimum of seven. How do you feel about that?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  I'm busy. No, I have no idea. I'm not really phased. I've been through worse and

• 48:20Speaker 01

  it's just unfortunate. I'm glad mom's allowed to see this. I really have my reservations about my nieces, knowing that I'm in jail, that will suck for them. But the point is, yeah, I'm not, I see no issue with it. It's a good jail. I mean, but no jail is good jail, but it's BK. I mean, it's not, it's not like dirt floor.

• 48:38Speaker 01

  You can get a degree, there's like libraries, I'll be fine. You can buy vapes at the canteen.

• 48:42Jack Rhysider?

  You'll be fine. You'll be fine in jail.

• 48:45Speaker 01

  I'll be fine. I'll be fine. I'll be, funny thing is like I begged, I begged for it in a tweet, like you just saw the tweet, like I begged for it. At that point, anything was better than living with the roaches and mice here in this environment. At that point, I really just didn't want to live where I was living. I didn't want to deal with the things anymore. And I thought to myself, chill, preferable to this. And so I took the stupid thing. And now I, now I gotta face the music, so.

• 49:05Jack Rhysider?

  You really are a character out of like Sarchar Kamu or Kafka or something. Mice and rats made me, drove me crazy to the point where I committed a crime to go to jail for seven years. But at the same time, I wanted to spread the wealth to everyone else who deserved it. This is ridiculous.

• 49:24Speaker 01

  This is, this is what it is.

• 49:27Speaker 01

  This is all fact. I mean, you can be welcome to do your research and cross-reference, but this is all, this is the series of events that exactly what I.

• 49:34Jack Rhysider?

  Don't even know what's a thing of all this.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  But uh.

• 49:40Jack Rhysider?

  How do you want this story to end? Like you're you're gonna go to jail and you're gonna be watching the news. And what news are you hoping to see?

• 49:48Speaker 01

  I I know invariably that they're gonna run off with the money at some point. All of the user funds, which is much more than the trade.

• 49:53Jack Rhysider?

  Hold on, it's kind of ironic they said that because when you go to the site pumped up fun, a pop up shows up and it says pump prevents rugs by making sure all created tokens are safe. They say they're the ones preventing rugs, but you're saying, no, they are going to rug pull.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I I believe so. I I I have firm, firm belief, yeah.

• 50:14Jack Rhysider?

  It's that last part that really makes me wonder where it says all created tokens are safe. What are you talking about? Should I be concerned they aren't safe? Like if I go to my bank's website, it doesn't say, we promise your money's safe here.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty, it's a, it's a, it's a class act anyway, but um, I I firmly believe that uh, uh, that's, that's the end goal for them. Uh, whether or not they go to a centralized version themselves, they pitch themselves as the next FTX. The first time I, it's, it's really long story, but I guess in the nutshell, I really, I really wish that I could have some effect where I limit the damages this time around. Um, but I guess I wouldn't be able to.

• 50:48Jack Rhysider?

  Well, it is kind of ironic that Jared thought the site was going to rug everyone else, but he rugged them first. Like really, he's the one who took money from the users, you know? It was only the site that had to reimburse everyone.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  So it's just that's, I guess that's the key, the key there. So when I came over, flew over, I didn't anticipate that they were, they were, they were planning this heist uh, to be exactly what it is. And now I am firmly convinced that it will be what I, everybody doesn't expect apparently. Uh, and it's cool. Um, yeah, they believe that money to be theirs. I have no idea how much they have in T D L. It was maybe million on June, May 16th or whatever. Uh, it's exponentially more now probably. And so it will be, it will be mayhem and carnage. I don't hope for that. I just know that'll happen. Um, yeah.

• 51:32Jack Rhysider?

  So Jared thinks the owners of the site are going to rug pull all the users of Pump Fun, take all the money that's locked into the site and close up. But it seems like the site's making a lot of money, so I'm not sure. Like, why butcher a cash cow, you know? But this was Jared's whole point, to try to warn everyone before it happens and to be dramatic and theatrical about it.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  I seem sold at the time that I was in the right and like I still swear that I'm fine by my demons here. Like, even in that letter, I'll just read this out loud. "I need to be honest, I do not feel remorseful for the damages caused by Baton Corporation Limited. Of late, they have been earning north of one million quid a day from the systemic exploitation of friends and family, people posting unregulated tokens to the site each and every day. There is absolutely no damage to them, they have not recuped many times over. I petition you, your honor, to consider me the relative harm here. While my actions may have caused temporary disruption, the ongoing practices of Baton Corporation Limited pose a far greater and more sustained threat to individuals and families who are unknowingly drawn into this exploitative scheme."

• 52:32Jack Rhysider?

  So Jared pled guilty and even admitted guilt on Twitter, which got two million views. And it was all said that on October 25th, 2024, he was going to be sentenced. However, last minute, he changed his mind and he asked his lawyers to vacate his guilty plea. And they were like, "Seriously?" And they quit, they didn't want to represent him anymore. So he told the court, "He's changing his mind, he's not guilty." Which now means there's a much bigger process ahead for this case and it might take months to solve. So we'll see where Jared ends up in the next few months. Oh, and this episode was really hard to make because Pump Fun is always changing. Just before I was about to publish this, there was a surge in new users at Pump Fun and along with that came a surge of new live streamers. And things got pretty wild.

• 53:17Jack Rhysider?

  Some guy was holding a goldfish at gunpoint, saying, "Buy my coin or I'll kill the fish." Another guy was live streaming himself pooping for four days. He was sitting on the toilet for four straight days, trying to pump his coin. Another guy locked himself in a dog cage until his coin would hit a certain price. And someone else locked their grandma in a cage until the coin would hit a certain price. I saw the photo, but I'm pretty sure it was fake. Another guy was firing his gun out the window every time the coin went up a certain amount. And I also heard reports of some live streaming bestiality. And there were reports of people threatening to shoot their pet dog unless their coin pumps. And I heard a report that there was someone live streaming threatening to shoot their family unless their coin got to a certain height.

• 54:02Jack Rhysider?

  And someone livestreamed themselves tying a rope around their neck, saying unless their coin hits a certain amount, they're gonna hang themselves. And the coin didn't make it, so he hung himself. But then, as the stream continued, some viewers were like, nah, I can see your hand moving. That's fake, bro. Anyway, all this sparked an outcry on Twitter, especially from the crypto community, saying, whoa, Pump Fun, you've got people killing themselves on camera. You need to make some rules, guys. You're going to ruin everything. On top of that, the Pump Fun team themselves was actively taking down livestreams that had repulsive or dangerous content. And it got to be too much. The Pump Fun team simply couldn't keep up with the constant stream of awful content that they were trying to remove.

• 54:44Jack Rhysider?

  So they turned off the live streaming feature altogether and issued a statement, saying, "They simply can't moderate effectively with the current user base size. And they need to scale up their moderation abilities and make it clear what's allowed and what's not allowed before allowing live streaming back on." All I can say is, I think this is just Pump Fun's origin story. I don't know what's gonna happen next, but it almost feels like one of those internet moments that I'm tuned into now, and I'm gonna have a box of popcorn ready for whatever happens next.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Aside from that, it was a pleasure, Jack. If you do get around to publishing this, I just wanna say that I recommend everybody get some more sun and more time to talk to your guys. That's about it. Thank you. Seriously.

• 55:28Jack Rhysider?

  Alright, well, take advice from you.

• 55:31Speaker 01

  Thank you. I can't even trust a bunch.

• 55:44Jack Rhysider?

  This episode was created by me, The Cyber Clutz, Jacque Rhysider. Our editor is Control All Defeat, aka Tristan Ledger. Mixing by Proximity Sound. Our intro music is by The Mysterious Brickmaster Cylinder. Why was the computer tired when it got home? Because it had a hard drive. This is Darknet Diaries.