We’ve Reached the ‘Crack Head Dev’ Stage of the Meme Coin Cycle

Here’s how weird the world of meme coins on Solana has become.

Meet Trevv, a young man from California, just 19 years of age, with no prior experience in crypto. (He asked us to withhold his full name.) Trevv’s a drug addict—mostly fentanyl, but also dabbles in coke, heroin, and other substances. He’s got a small following of 2,000 people on Instagram, where he mostly posts goofy videos of himself for attention.

He’s now the latest livestreaming “meme coin dev” to have gone viral—his brief moment in the crypto spotlight beginning with him feeling scammed, he says.

Trevv claims he was approached by a group of Crypto Twitter influencers who told him to live stream his Instagram antics instead on Pump.fun, the Solana meme coin factory responsible for $28.73 million in revenue on the network in just the last month. He says they told him he’d “make a lot of money.” He obliged.

The group called the stream “Crack Head Dev” (CHD), and as Trevv smoked a combination of drugs to his viewers’ delight, degens threw money at the CHD token to keep the insanity going. You won’t find this kind of entertainment on Twitch. But, eventually, the drugs caught up to him and he passed out from smoking too much fentanyl. Some viewers thought he’d died of an overdose.

Rip dev $CHD pic.twitter.com/6ehIn0gOB3

— Danny (@DannyB87700636) August 18, 2024

“I pass out, I wake up, and I’m embarrassed,” he told Decrypt, setting up a hit of fentanyl on a sheet of tin foil. “And then they’re fucking all hitting me up. They’re all like you did so good, let’s get you another one.” Trevv claims the group of influencers, who he wouldn’t name for fear of retaliation, paid him $500 for his troubles—money he was happy to make.

As speculation that he’d actually died on stream spread on Crypto Twitter, pseudonymous crypto trader Beaver reached out to Trevv and offered to pay him to fake his death so the token would pump. Over the next 24 hours, fake screenshots and a video from his supposed mom mourning his death circulated Twitter. The stunt worked about as well as could be expected, with the CHD token hitting an all-time high market cap of a mere $200,000. It might not seem like a lot, but most meme coin trench warriors pine to launch a $100k token.

Is this really real rn? Did this lady’s son die on https://t.co/1jv0ZfWjPz live stream doing fentanyl and crack? #CHD https://t.co/xWJgHyrgAk pic.twitter.com/f23K7xGtJh

— PooBear069 🇦🇱 (@Poobear_069) August 18, 2024

Trevv went on to launch three more tokens on Pump.fun.

The day after the fake-death stunt, the Crack Head Dev came back with a stream and token called “I’m Alive.” He says he was paid $500 again, but the group pulling the strings made off with $15,000 from the token, he claims, leaving him feeling short changed.

So, feeling frustrated, Trevv linked up with a second group of influencers who he says DM’ed him on Twitter. Together they launched the third token, Stripper Trev Dev, which featured his stripper girlfriend joining him on the livestream to perform all kinds of wild and suggestive antics. This token was by far the most successful, hitting a $680,000 market cap at its peak.

2700 people are watching the crackhead dev with a prostitute live on @pumpdotfun and the coin is doing pretty well

Can’t believe that’s a real sentence

This cycle is weird pic.twitter.com/hnktHrw9F5

— NFT POWER RANKINGS (@nftpowerranking) August 20, 2024

Trevv says he was paid $1,200 for this stream, but Beaver, who claims to have paid Trevv over $2,000 to fake his death, thinks the “Crack Head Dev” has made more money than he’s letting on.

“He made a bag I have no doubt,” Beaver told Decrypt, pointing out that the wallet to which he sent his payment has cumulatively sent 151 SOL ($21,719) to centralized exchange Coinbase since Trevv started streaming on Pump.fun. When asked if this was his wallet, Trevv simply said, “Idk.”

Pump.fun has become a breeding ground for the weirdest and wildest in the crypto space. The platform has been a breakout success for the Solana network, essentially enabling anyone to launch a token with the click of a button—may the best memes win. Lately, however, the memes on Pump.fun have reached new degen heights, especially after releasing its livestream feature less than three months ago.

Trevv is far from the only lost soul of the TikTok generation to take his talents to Pump.fun with dreams of striking it crypto rich. Other recent examples include Meth’d Up Dev, who smoked meth on stream, and DARE dev who set himself on fire in the name of his meme coin.

Crackhead dev pumps his token to only 400k whilst having a mental breakdown

pic.twitter.com/4W0e4F80v4

— SolHub (@koolk123456) August 20, 2024

The meme coin factory has been responsible for launching over a million tokens since the start of the year, with countless dubious acts happening on livestreams as a result. Critics of the platform would argue it’s potentially enabling dangerously risky behavior, like taking way too many drugs to try and pump some bags.

Trevv says he’s struggled with drug addiction for years, first taking Xanax when he was just 12-years old. He’s been chasing that high ever since, he says, and has tried almost everything. He’s taken to smoking raw fentanyl due to the lack of clean heroin in his area, he claims.

And despite feeling scammed after his first run at crypto, Trevv was not deterred. He said he planned to learn as much as he could about crypto and come back with something bigger and better completely on his own. A coin that would go to “millions and millions and millions,” he said.

His last token, Smoking Meth Fent Heroin (SMFH), hit a $75,000 market cap before crashing to zero.

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