WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.120 JACK: The dumbest thing I ever bought — yeah, the dumbest thing I ever bought is a Canon DSL camera, 00:00:07.120 --> 00:00:13.520 5D Mark II. Somewhere around 2007, I started getting into photography. DSLR cameras were 00:00:13.520 --> 00:00:18.680 just getting popular, and I wanted one, but I was too poor to afford it. I was obsessing over the 00:00:18.680 --> 00:00:23.400 Canon Rebel cameras, wishing I could have one, constantly looking at eBay to see what was out 00:00:23.400 --> 00:00:28.440 there, and every now and then, I’d find one undervalued, listed way below what it should 00:00:28.440 --> 00:00:34.400 be at. So, I bought the cheap one and I used it for a few days, and then sold it for more than I 00:00:34.400 --> 00:00:40.400 bought it. I did that three times, and eventually had enough money to get the camera for myself. 00:00:40.400 --> 00:00:45.320 Basically, it was a free Canon Rebel, and I used the crap out of it. I probably took thousands of 00:00:45.320 --> 00:00:50.240 photos with it. I shot models sometimes, but my favorite was architecture. I especially loved 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:57.080 derelict or abandoned buildings. After a year of taking all these photos, Canon was launching a new 00:00:57.080 --> 00:01:05.640 camera, the 5D Mark II. Oh, how I started wishing I could get that, and for some reason, I just 00:01:05.640 --> 00:01:14.840 couldn't resist, and I pre-ordered it. The thing cost $2,500, and it was absolutely something I 00:01:14.840 --> 00:01:20.080 could not afford at the time, but I thought it was my ticket to becoming a professional photographer. 00:01:20.080 --> 00:01:26.880 So, I spent every last penny I had on it and even went into debt to buy it. Oh, it was amazing. 00:01:26.880 --> 00:01:31.240 Full-framed sensor, it took perfect photos, but here’s the problem; 00:01:31.240 --> 00:01:35.280 I felt this thing was way too expensive to take anywhere. Like, if I’m walking around 00:01:35.280 --> 00:01:40.640 in abandoned buildings with thousands of dollars in camera gear around my neck, I might get robbed, 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:47.160 and if it got scratched, I would have cried. So, I never took that camera anywhere, and brought 00:01:47.160 --> 00:01:52.680 my cheaper one with me instead, the one I didn’t mind if it got broke or stolen. But this changed 00:01:52.680 --> 00:01:58.280 my whole relationship with photography after that. I had all this camera gear, and because I was too 00:01:58.280 --> 00:02:03.360 afraid to use it, I didn’t shoot much at all. I realized my dreams of being a pro photographer 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:07.680 were done, and it was a dumb idea to buy this thing. I don’t know what I was thinking at 00:02:07.680 --> 00:02:13.200 the time. So, I tried selling it, but the thing is, selling something that expensive is tricky. 00:02:13.200 --> 00:02:17.720 You could easily get scammed or robbed, and it was very nerve-wracking. On top of that, 00:02:17.720 --> 00:02:23.120 nobody was really buying these super high-end cameras, so I ended up selling it for way less 00:02:23.120 --> 00:02:30.640 than what I paid for it. Now, I say that was the dumbest thing I bought, because yesterday, 00:02:30.640 --> 00:03:01.143 I bought something way dumber. (INTRO): [INTRO MUSIC] These are true stories from 00:03:01.143 --> 00:03:03.647 the dark side of the internet. I’m Jack Rhysider. This is Darknet Diaries. [INTRO MUSIC ENDS] 00:03:03.647 --> 00:03:08.040 JACK: Yeah, alright, so, let’s start at the beginning here. First of all, what do you 00:03:08.040 --> 00:03:14.600 want to be known as if I call you names? JARETT: Yeah, it’s fine — Jarett Dunn works. 00:03:14.600 --> 00:03:19.160 I’m all over the internet and I’m totally doxed. It’s perfectly fine. Then, if not, 00:03:19.160 --> 00:03:22.180 then most people would know me as the Stacc, I guess, or Stacc Overflow. 00:03:22.180 --> 00:03:28.480 JACK: I’m gonna jump to the chase for you right now. Jarett, AKA Stacc, executed a 00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:36.160 wild and astonishing robbery. He stole millions of dollars in cryptocurrency, which is why I call 00:03:36.160 --> 00:03:42.200 this episode Stacc Attack. But his grand heist is so different that it had me questioning far more 00:03:42.200 --> 00:03:46.840 than stolen money. It cracked open a door that I didn’t even know was there, leading me through a 00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:50.920 maze of questions that I’m still trying to find my way through, and it’s also a story I think 00:03:50.920 --> 00:03:56.440 a dozen people have told me to look into at this point. Have you heard of meme coins? They’re like 00:03:56.440 --> 00:04:01.440 jokes but in the form of cryptocurrency. They’re really weird and nobody seems to 00:04:01.440 --> 00:04:05.440 understand why they have any value at all. JARETT: Yeah, there’s no inherent value. The 00:04:05.440 --> 00:04:09.280 whole pitch is that there is no pitch. JACK: You might say, oh, I would never buy 00:04:09.280 --> 00:04:14.320 something with no value. Oh yeah? Then are you saying you’ve never bought name-brand clothes or 00:04:14.320 --> 00:04:21.240 food or medicine? The store brand Ibuprofen has the exact same ingredients as the Advil brand, 00:04:21.240 --> 00:04:26.960 and it’s just as effective and is honestly the exact same product, yet people still prefer the 00:04:26.960 --> 00:04:32.880 Advil brand even though it costs twice as much, and that’s marketing for you. That’s storytelling 00:04:32.880 --> 00:04:40.400 for you. Stories alone give value and meaning to otherwise meaningless or valueless things. So, 00:04:40.400 --> 00:04:47.360 anyway, people are buying cryptocurrencies simply as a joke, almost like they’re laughing at 00:04:47.360 --> 00:04:52.160 themselves. Like, they know they’re buying a meme coin and it’s a stupid idea, but they’re like, 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:57.760 yeah, let’s do that, and then they feel stupid even after doing it. It’s very strange. Now, 00:04:57.760 --> 00:05:04.400 are you into — do you like crypto and NFTs or is this something you’re just poking 00:05:04.400 --> 00:05:08.640 at and making fun of and being like, what idiots are buying all this stupid stuff? 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:15.560 JARETT: I should, I guess, give a lot of context. I’m bad at context; it’s raging autism. So, I’ve 00:05:15.560 --> 00:05:20.160 been in crypto since maybe 2011 or ‘12. I used to make YouTube videos, and the intro I used to give 00:05:20.160 --> 00:05:26.520 was, ‘I have lost multi-millions many times over. I’m still here grinding now.’ I’ve kind of fallen 00:05:26.520 --> 00:05:31.880 disillusioned now. I used to really believe in the revolutionary aspect of this entire thing, and 00:05:31.880 --> 00:05:35.920 kind of separation of finance and state and all that fun stuff, and I — always very much on board 00:05:35.920 --> 00:05:41.640 with causing a lasting change, I guess. But I’ve kind of been disillusioned, and I’m not really 00:05:41.640 --> 00:05:48.520 sure where I fit in the spectrum of a believer or not these days, 'cause it pays the bills. However, 00:05:48.520 --> 00:05:53.560 I have this looming court case, and so, I don't really know where I stand. I’m a developer. 00:05:53.560 --> 00:05:57.800 I’m not a very great developer, and somebody recently described me as a savant programmer, 00:05:57.800 --> 00:06:03.440 but I don't think so. I connect dots really well, and I’ve contributed, I guess, to Bitcoin, 00:06:03.440 --> 00:06:07.400 Ethereum, some — I contributed that way to Steam, and I was actually a block-producing whitness on a 00:06:07.400 --> 00:06:12.160 bunch of sidechains. I played around with eos for a while. I went to WAX. WAX is a gaming 00:06:12.160 --> 00:06:16.360 chain that is like an esport, kind of like a — very close to eos, and then — the thing is, 00:06:16.360 --> 00:06:21.960 Solana’s built different, and they really do tailor the entire thing to welcome and promote 00:06:21.960 --> 00:06:25.780 new developers. So, once I found Solana, I kinda found a place for myself, I guess. 00:06:25.780 --> 00:06:29.920 JACK: So, he’s contributed to the development of many cryptocurrency projects out there, and it was 00:06:29.920 --> 00:06:35.320 Solana, the fifth-largest cryptocurrency, that he felt most at home in, and he put his focus there. 00:06:35.320 --> 00:06:41.040 But one thing Jarett just can't help doing is looking for bugs in the code that can be exploited 00:06:41.040 --> 00:06:46.560 for money, because if a bug is present in a crypto-project, it could result in catastrophic 00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:51.960 losses for everyone involved. The bug-hunting — I’m trying to get a square understanding of 00:06:51.960 --> 00:06:56.360 this because — are you looking for bugs and then reporting them so they get fixed, or are 00:06:56.360 --> 00:07:01.240 you looking for bugs and then exploiting them? JARETT: So, I will tell you. I have in the past 00:07:01.240 --> 00:07:05.760 reported any number of bugs that have gone on deaf ears. I’ve reported bugs all over the place. So, 00:07:05.760 --> 00:07:12.440 I reported a bug to Radeon and Orca Whirlpools at one point. Orca dismissed it as out of scope 00:07:12.440 --> 00:07:15.840 because they don’t support that big of a program, I guess. I don't know why. Then, 00:07:15.840 --> 00:07:18.840 also, Radeon, they got ahold of me in the end and basically said, there’s nothing we 00:07:18.840 --> 00:07:27.280 could do to prevent good market behavior. So, that’s that kind of wall you hit. In short, no, 00:07:27.280 --> 00:07:29.680 I usually try to report these things. In total I’ve been paid, I think, 00:07:29.680 --> 00:07:33.240 two bug bounties that are significant. JACK: [Music] Jarett claims that he had 00:07:33.240 --> 00:07:40.520 information about FTX’s downfall before it became public. FTX was a huge crypo exchange that was 00:07:40.520 --> 00:07:45.920 discovered to be mismanaging its money and lying about it, and the founder ended up going to jail. 00:07:45.920 --> 00:07:50.080 A lot of people lost a lot of money because of it, and Jarett tried to warn his government 00:07:50.080 --> 00:07:54.000 by telling them to look into FTX. JARETT: In November 2022, I withdrew 00:07:54.000 --> 00:07:56.760 my re-application to the Canadian Forces, hoping to bring my concerns to the right 00:07:56.760 --> 00:08:01.400 people about FTX. Proud to make a difference. However, the recruitment process took too long, 00:08:01.400 --> 00:08:04.600 and when I finally withdrew my application, the damage had already been done to the larger crypto 00:08:04.600 --> 00:08:08.720 ecosystem. Knowing that should I ever be left in a moral conundrum with hundreds of millions 00:08:08.720 --> 00:08:12.960 in user funds at risk, surely leading to another bloodbath or worldwide suicides, 00:08:12.960 --> 00:08:16.680 the only way to be heard is through dramatic and impactful action, because without a 00:08:16.680 --> 00:08:22.760 theatrical display, nobody ever really listens. JACK: He wished he could have been more dramatic 00:08:22.760 --> 00:08:29.800 and theatrical to warn people about the FTX collapse? That makes me wonder what he’s thinking 00:08:29.800 --> 00:08:33.880 here. Like, what does it mean to be more theatrical about warning people? What do 00:08:33.880 --> 00:08:40.000 you consider yourself? Are you trying to make things better? Are you securing the internet, 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:45.860 the crypto, are you evangelizing it, or are you sticking your finger in someone’s eye? 00:08:45.860 --> 00:08:49.760 JARETT: I really wish I knew. I really wish I knew. If I knew, I would have some kind of idea 00:08:49.760 --> 00:08:51.080 of where I’m going. JACK: Even in 2023, 00:08:51.080 --> 00:08:56.040 you didn’t have a clear direction? JARETT: No, not at all. I mean, in 2023, that was 00:08:56.040 --> 00:08:59.800 the first anniversary after my mom’s death. The 25th there, when they put — released that outage 00:08:59.800 --> 00:09:03.120 report, I was very deep into grieving. JACK: How did your mom die? 00:09:03.120 --> 00:09:09.880 JARETT: She was — mercy. Canada killed her. She fell and broke a hip and she was inoperable, 00:09:09.880 --> 00:09:15.040 so they put her out of her misery. JACK: Oh, my gosh, that was — that must 00:09:15.040 --> 00:09:17.960 have been so sudden and surprising. JARETT: Yes, it was. So, she was already 00:09:17.960 --> 00:09:24.040 on — we knew she was on the way out. It’s a very long story, but it is what it is, and it’s 00:09:24.040 --> 00:09:29.360 probably for the better. I still struggle with very important days of the year. I struggle. 00:09:29.360 --> 00:09:34.400 JACK: Jarett had a hard time coping with the death of his mother. He loved her dearly. She 00:09:34.400 --> 00:09:41.000 was everything to him, but it was a complicated relationship. I read his psychiatric report. It 00:09:41.000 --> 00:09:46.520 said she had her own mental health issues and would do crazy things like set her own 00:09:46.520 --> 00:09:53.200 house on fire. So, Jarett came home from school three different times with his house on fire. He 00:09:53.200 --> 00:10:00.000 got addicted to cocaine early on, when he was a teenager, and just had a wild upbringing. 00:10:00.000 --> 00:10:04.920 He wanted me to add that the psychiatric report is questionable since the NHS screwed 00:10:04.920 --> 00:10:10.360 it up a little bit by putting the wrong ID on there and misspelled his last name. 00:10:10.360 --> 00:10:16.920 In February 2023, he was grieving her loss pretty hard because it was the one-year anniversary of 00:10:16.920 --> 00:10:22.280 her death, and he turned to his computer to cope. [Music] Perhaps that’s a safe outlet if he’s just 00:10:22.280 --> 00:10:30.520 playing video games or watching YouTube, but what he decided to do was attack the Solana network. 00:10:30.520 --> 00:10:35.440 Solana is a type of cryptocurrency. It’s the fifth-biggest coin in terms of market cap. It’s 00:10:35.440 --> 00:10:41.000 kind of a big deal, and Jarett knew some of its weaknesses. So, he started messing with it. 00:10:41.000 --> 00:10:44.920 JARETT: I was out of my mind, I was grieving, and I was trying to do as much damage as I could. So, 00:10:44.920 --> 00:10:49.640 I was queuing as many recursive transactions as I possibly could. The validator is running 00:10:49.640 --> 00:10:53.120 clockwork, 'cause they can optionally do this Geyser plug in and get additional money by running 00:10:53.120 --> 00:10:57.000 these threads. Clockwork is a scheduling software. The thing is, I figured out that you could do 00:10:57.000 --> 00:11:00.680 recursive transactions. So, you’ll actually have a transaction that calls another transaction in the 00:11:00.680 --> 00:11:05.560 same slot, which, obviously, if you have enough money to pay the Pied Piper, that’s terrible for 00:11:05.560 --> 00:11:09.960 blockchains or any competing network. All went down again, and a couple days later, 00:11:09.960 --> 00:11:15.620 I was asleep or in a coma, and the entire Solana network went down when clockwork came back up. 00:11:15.620 --> 00:11:20.840 JACK: He was able to generate block sizes so large that it overwhelmed the network, 00:11:20.840 --> 00:11:25.040 and transactions were getting clogged. JARETT: I have all the transactions bite-size. I 00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:29.560 was four percent. I was the user or bot submitting four percent of everything on Solana in that 00:11:29.560 --> 00:11:33.520 particularly block, yes, or for a few… JACK: How did that — you must 00:11:33.520 --> 00:11:38.720 have had a really beefy system. JARETT: No, it was just using their thread. So, 00:11:38.720 --> 00:11:43.520 I was queuing transactions that would then call themselves on a chain whenever there were certain 00:11:43.520 --> 00:11:47.640 conditions met. However, I then found out that I could just have them call themselves immediately, 00:11:47.640 --> 00:11:54.880 which is the recursion that I think broke it. JACK: Solana reported a twenty-hour outage on 00:11:54.880 --> 00:12:00.920 February 25, 2023. They experienced unusual block sizes which, when re-broadcasted through 00:12:00.920 --> 00:12:05.280 the network, ended up degrading the service. So, they put Solana in maintenance mode to fix the 00:12:05.280 --> 00:12:12.040 problem. Essentially, no Solana transactions could occur pretty much that whole day. I can’t exactly 00:12:12.040 --> 00:12:18.120 confirm it was Jarett who took down Solana during that time. My guess is he contributed to whatever 00:12:18.120 --> 00:12:22.240 problems that were going on, but the thing is is that he was never blamed for this. Solana never 00:12:22.240 --> 00:12:27.640 came out and said they know who did it or anything like that. I have to admit, I didn’t think it was 00:12:27.640 --> 00:12:33.240 possible to cripple a cryptocurrency’s network so badly that it can be taken offline like this. $2 00:12:33.240 --> 00:12:37.640 billion are traded every day on Solana, and for all that to come to a halt because some 00:12:37.640 --> 00:12:43.000 guy is having a bad day? That’s just wild to me. How did you get started with Pump.fun? 00:12:43.000 --> 00:12:49.680 JARETT: Toly, the CEO of Solana, launched the coin on April Fool’s Day, April first of this year, 00:12:49.680 --> 00:12:54.840 and it was called Bunkercoin. I forwarded it and I PR’d back, and all I did was 00:12:54.840 --> 00:12:58.320 copy the first half of a paragraph on the Bitcoin Whitepaper and threw it in there, 00:12:58.320 --> 00:13:00.800 and then I threw in a Pump.fun coin. It’s pretty rare for someone in my life — would 00:13:00.800 --> 00:13:05.680 ever use Pump.fun at that point, and I called it Bunkercoin Futures. It’s April Fools Day, 00:13:05.680 --> 00:13:09.280 but it filled immediately. I didn’t expect anything to happen. I went to go back to my bed; 00:13:09.280 --> 00:13:15.440 I went back to the computer. My two Sol had become ten Sol, which is significant. So, I 00:13:15.440 --> 00:13:27.200 guess I was hooked on the casino at that point. JACK: [Music] Pump.fun. To research this episode, 00:13:27.200 --> 00:13:32.560 I actually created an account on there and used the site for a few days. He’s absolutely right; 00:13:32.560 --> 00:13:37.600 it feels like a casino, and it’s pretty addictive because of that. The meme coins I bought on there 00:13:37.600 --> 00:13:42.880 yesterday absolutely are the dumbest things I ever bought in my life. I kept finding myself lost in a 00:13:42.880 --> 00:13:48.360 daze, staring at the screen, watching my bags, then suddenly waking up, realizing I’m betting 00:13:48.360 --> 00:13:54.400 on memes. I say to myself, what in the world are you doing? So, what Pump.fun is — it’s a place 00:13:54.400 --> 00:14:00.520 that anyone could go to and make a meme coin on the Solana network. It’s very easy and fast. 00:14:00.520 --> 00:14:05.280 Then others can buy your meme coin from you, if they want, on the site. The site looks a lot like 00:14:05.280 --> 00:14:10.080 4chan, and as you’re there, you’re just bombarded with endless messages of new coins being created 00:14:10.080 --> 00:14:14.200 and what coins people are buying and selling, and it’s wildly popular. So, before your eyes, 00:14:14.200 --> 00:14:18.600 you’re watching a coin get created by someone, and then hundreds of people are buying that coin all 00:14:18.600 --> 00:14:23.600 in the first five minutes of it existing. I only went there to research this place. I only spent 00:14:23.600 --> 00:14:29.320 a few bucks on meme coins. Like, for $2, you can buy 30,000 meme coins. As I used the site myself, 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:35.720 I got familiar with the game. It’s called Pump.fun because the game is to pump and dump. 00:14:35.720 --> 00:14:41.760 A meme coin’s relevancy only lasts a few minutes sometimes, then it crashes into oblivion. So, 00:14:41.760 --> 00:14:46.200 the game is to jump in on a coin, hoping more people are gonna buy it after you do, 00:14:46.200 --> 00:14:52.000 and if they do, your holdings go up. Then you need to get out before that goes back down. So, the 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:57.560 people holding that coin will use every strategy they can to get others to buy it after them. As I 00:14:57.560 --> 00:15:02.960 played this game, I, too, became someone trying to convince others to get in on this coin. It’s 00:15:02.960 --> 00:15:10.640 hot. Pump it, and then as soon as they’d jump in, I’d jump out, dump it. It’s ruthless in that way 00:15:10.640 --> 00:15:14.480 because you see the other people who are buying the coin, and you want to think they’re on your 00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:18.160 team. They’re gonna help you pump it. But, no, they’re just looking for a way 00:15:18.160 --> 00:15:21.920 to get out before you do. Everyone’s trying to take each other’s money, and that’s the 00:15:21.920 --> 00:15:25.720 game. That’s the gamble, and I think that’s what draws a lot of people to come play at 00:15:25.720 --> 00:15:30.920 the site. One of my favorite towns to visit is Las Vegas, and everyone knows when you gamble, 00:15:30.920 --> 00:15:35.080 the house always wins. It’s a rigged game, yet they still gamble. They put their luck on the 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:39.840 line and bet real money even after knowing the games they’re playing are not fair. But 00:15:39.840 --> 00:15:45.280 I love Las Vegas because there’s nowhere else in the world which is as wild and crazy as it. 00:15:45.280 --> 00:15:50.160 It’s incredibly entertaining and fascinating to experience, and I learned a lot from that town, 00:15:50.160 --> 00:15:54.920 such as how to stay focused in a chaotic environment, how to see through the glitz and glam 00:15:54.920 --> 00:16:01.760 and notice what something really is, and maybe even a glimpse of what humanity is really like. 00:16:01.760 --> 00:16:06.720 I met some people who use Pump.fun regularly, and even they think what they’re doing is laughable. 00:16:06.720 --> 00:16:12.240 Like, he was telling me he made bank off of Fartcoin or a squirrel called Peanut the other 00:16:12.240 --> 00:16:16.760 day, or something ridiculous, because when you’re buying meme coins, you’re buying something that is 00:16:16.760 --> 00:16:22.640 just so bizarre that you end up question your own sanity, but it’s fun because it’s interesting and 00:16:22.640 --> 00:16:27.720 weird, and we all like interesting things. JARETT: You go there, you make a token, 00:16:27.720 --> 00:16:31.080 you share it with your friends and family, and then they come in and buy it after you. It’s on 00:16:31.080 --> 00:16:35.200 a bonding curve, so, the first person that buys, buys it at the very cheapest, and as more people 00:16:35.200 --> 00:16:40.880 buy, if it was only buyers, for instance, the purchasing just continues to go up per token. So, 00:16:40.880 --> 00:16:45.160 the idea is that you eventually sell your tokens for a gain after you’ve shared it with 00:16:45.160 --> 00:16:50.000 close friends and family for them to buy it after you. Regardless if it's Twitter friends or not, 00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.240 however you want to describe it, legally it is friends and family. Then you make a 00:16:54.240 --> 00:17:00.800 gain on their loss, essentially, and that’s basically it. It’s made to look like 4chan, 00:17:00.800 --> 00:17:03.840 I guess, with the comments and such, and there’s a cute, little interface with 00:17:03.840 --> 00:17:07.000 flashing lights on the landing page. JACK: You say ‘cute, little interface’. 00:17:07.000 --> 00:17:10.880 I’m looking at it now; it is ugly. JARETT: Yes, it is. It is horrifying. 00:17:10.880 --> 00:17:15.800 JACK: The site is right out of bizarro internet land. The layout is weird. The images and coin 00:17:15.800 --> 00:17:19.720 names are a cringe. It’s all moving way too fast for anybody to be able to read. Things 00:17:19.720 --> 00:17:24.560 are jumping off the screen constantly trying to get your attention. So, Jarett was playing around 00:17:24.560 --> 00:17:30.440 on the site quite a bit, launching coins, running trading bots, and being pretty active on Pump.fun, 00:17:30.440 --> 00:17:33.360 tweeting about it, too. JARETT: A recruit on LinkedIn 00:17:33.360 --> 00:17:36.560 got ahold of me and said, you should apply for a couple jobs. I said, sure, why not? Begrudgingly, 00:17:36.560 --> 00:17:44.000 actually. I had two or three interviews with Pump, different founders, and got an offer. So, they 00:17:44.000 --> 00:17:48.200 paid for my passport, paid for my flight, paid for a couple other things. I got a same-day renewal of 00:17:48.200 --> 00:17:53.680 my passport and a ticket — that was actually the same night — and then I flew over to the UK. I 00:17:53.680 --> 00:17:58.040 only left Canada once in my life before this. JACK: So, Jarett got hired by Pump.fun and moved 00:17:58.040 --> 00:18:02.360 to the UK, and he knew this was a crazy idea to move to a new country for some wacky crypto 00:18:02.360 --> 00:18:06.400 project, but was excited about it, too. JARETT: I was just excited to work at a real 00:18:06.400 --> 00:18:09.680 office again. I’ve been a remote person since 2013. When I worked for Research 00:18:09.680 --> 00:18:14.160 In Motion, it was my last in-person job. The guys literally called themselves BlackBerry 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:18.360 and they’re now out of business. It’s a long career of isolation and addiction and stuff, 00:18:18.360 --> 00:18:21.840 and I just — I really wanted to be part of an organization that was young and fit and 00:18:21.840 --> 00:18:25.360 looking forward to achieving stuff. They were already one of the number-one earning 00:18:25.360 --> 00:18:29.560 apps anywhere in crypto. It’s a very long story. I don't really know, but the main 00:18:29.560 --> 00:18:33.200 thing is I wasn’t on my medication, probably not thinking straight — is one thing. Then… 00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:38.200 JACK: What was the medication you’re on? JARETT: I’m on antipsychotics once a month via 00:18:38.200 --> 00:18:44.320 a depot, and I’m also on Elvanse or Vyvanse, or, which — you’re in America, so, Vyvanse, 00:18:44.320 --> 00:18:46.320 yeah, fifty milligrams a day. JACK: What does that treat? 00:18:46.320 --> 00:18:48.720 JARETT: ADHD. JACK: Okay, so, 00:18:48.720 --> 00:18:53.160 you go to London, you meet with the creators of this. What are your — what 00:18:53.160 --> 00:18:55.000 is your opinions of them? JARETT: Oxford, yeah. Yeah, 00:18:55.000 --> 00:18:59.440 I flew to Oxford. They’re all younger. They’re all in student housing in Oxford. There was this 00:18:59.440 --> 00:19:02.720 black-tie event that they threw; it was their second masquerade or third or whatever. 00:19:02.720 --> 00:19:07.120 JACK: What was your first opinion of them? JARETT: I don't really know. I didn’t anticipate 00:19:07.120 --> 00:19:14.760 the CTO was the CTO. I actually mistook him as an employee. They’re all young twenties and very 00:19:14.760 --> 00:19:18.840 unexperienced, I guess is the word. JACK: How many people were there? 00:19:18.840 --> 00:19:22.580 JARETT: There’s three co-founders, and I was the first hire outside the co-founding team. 00:19:22.580 --> 00:19:25.920 JACK: He moved into a shared living space with the other co-founders, 00:19:25.920 --> 00:19:29.720 but after a short while, they all moved to London and got an Airbnb there for everyone 00:19:29.720 --> 00:19:34.840 to stay at, and they also rented an office. JARETT: We got a rental last-minute, and — across 00:19:34.840 --> 00:19:39.100 from the Buckinham Palace via booking.com, which was the Buckinham Gate Residences. 00:19:39.100 --> 00:19:44.360 JACK: This was actually a pretty posh place they rented for the team to do work out of. 00:19:44.360 --> 00:19:48.960 If you’re wondering, how does Pump.fun make money? Well, they charge a one-percent fee 00:19:48.960 --> 00:19:52.400 for every trade that happens on the site. JARETT: So, I’ll send you this link in a sec. 00:19:52.400 --> 00:19:57.240 Let me just load it up for a sec. Yesterday they made — it’s actually gone down a whole 00:19:57.240 --> 00:20:02.920 bunch. They made $520,000 yesterday. JACK: Let me look at it. $340 million in 00:20:02.920 --> 00:20:06.360 fees they’ve collected? JARETT: Yes. That’s not 00:20:06.360 --> 00:20:13.200 including TBL. That’s just fees. JACK: [Music] The site is apparently 00:20:13.200 --> 00:20:20.880 crazy popular. Tens of thousands of meme coins are made every day there, and they were experiencing 00:20:20.880 --> 00:20:25.240 explosive growth. No wonder they wanted to hire developers. The site was probably barely able to 00:20:25.240 --> 00:20:31.200 stay on the tracks. It’s strange to me that this is the wacky world we live in, where joke tokens 00:20:31.200 --> 00:20:35.760 have such a wild demand, where the site creators can make hundreds of millions of dollars from 00:20:35.760 --> 00:20:41.400 this. See, here’s the thing for me; I want to understand the wolrd. I want it to make sense, 00:20:41.400 --> 00:20:46.160 and whenever I learn about something that doesn't make sense at all, I used to dismiss it and say, 00:20:46.160 --> 00:20:50.120 oh, those people are obviously stupid or that’s fake or that’s wrong or something. But now when 00:20:50.120 --> 00:20:56.360 I hear something really absurd, I lean into it and I stay there until it makes sense to me. 00:20:56.360 --> 00:20:59.920 Like, I still don’t understand why the game Banana is the third-most popular game on Steam. 00:20:59.920 --> 00:21:04.800 Can somebody please explain that to me? Most of the time when I figure out a mystery like that, 00:21:04.800 --> 00:21:09.240 it’s a big waste of time for me, because I’ll just learn that I was lied to on the onset and 00:21:09.240 --> 00:21:13.600 I saw something fake or something which made me believe something else. But in this case, 00:21:13.600 --> 00:21:17.920 we can see exactly how much money this site is making because the blockchain is public for anyone 00:21:17.920 --> 00:21:23.440 to see. Yeah, they’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars on this site. How are meme coins so 00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:28.800 popular that millions of dollars are being spent on them every day? The more Jarett learned about 00:21:28.800 --> 00:21:32.360 Pump.fun, the more concerned he grew with the whole company. To start with, 00:21:32.360 --> 00:21:34.520 one of the first things that happened when he arrived is they 00:21:34.520 --> 00:21:38.560 held a black-tie party, which was wild. JARETT: Outrageous. There was a horse, 00:21:38.560 --> 00:21:42.240 like a miniature horse, there was fire dancers, there was two hundred oysters that were bought. 00:21:42.240 --> 00:21:45.000 We spent like, $20,000 on the bar. JACK: He started thinking this 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.160 place is more crazy than he realized. JARETT: In short, I think they’re committing 00:21:49.160 --> 00:21:54.800 any number of felonies tens of thousands of times a day, actually, 'cause there’s like, 20,000 of 00:21:54.800 --> 00:22:00.240 these tokens launched every day. The first thing that I didn’t really give much thought to is 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:05.880 there’s no KYC or AML across the entire board. JACK: Okay, so, KYC is know your customer, 00:22:05.880 --> 00:22:11.200 and AML is anti-money laundering. Personally, I don't want anyone in the world to know I bought 00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:15.040 a meme coin from this place, so, I definitely don’t want to be putting my actual name as the 00:22:15.040 --> 00:22:20.080 owner of that. Think about if I went into a casino in Vegas to gamble; there’s nobody collecting my 00:22:20.080 --> 00:22:25.640 name before I can gamble there. But regulations are starting to come up everywhere in cryptoland, 00:22:25.640 --> 00:22:30.280 and it’s very difficult to know what to follow and how. So, I’m just not sure if the site is 00:22:30.280 --> 00:22:36.000 required to do any KYC or not. Then Jarett also thinks that there’s a whole financial advice 00:22:36.000 --> 00:22:42.320 problem on the site. See, the government has made it illegal for me to give you financial advice. 00:22:42.320 --> 00:22:47.920 If I wanted to give you financial advice, I’d have to be registered with the SEC. Jarett tells 00:22:47.920 --> 00:22:52.160 me that there are loads of people on Pump.fun who are, in fact, giving financial advice, 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:59.040 saying things like ‘buy this cryptocoin and you’ll get rich’. Is that illegal? Jarett thinks so. 00:22:59.040 --> 00:23:04.160 So, he tells me the site’s official stance is that we’re all friends and family on the site, 00:23:04.160 --> 00:23:08.240 because you can give financial advice to your friends, and that’s not illegal. I 00:23:08.240 --> 00:23:13.960 looked on the site for a privacy policy or a terms of service, and they don’t exist. So, 00:23:13.960 --> 00:23:20.120 from what I can tell, the site does not post any rules of what’s allowed or not allowed. 00:23:20.120 --> 00:23:24.840 But there’s one part of the site which is worth mentioning. To launch a coin, you need to create 00:23:24.840 --> 00:23:31.320 an account, name the token, and give it a logo or something. But to pump it, you can go live, 00:23:31.320 --> 00:23:36.080 flip on your camera, and tell the world why they should be buying your token. Of course, 00:23:36.080 --> 00:23:40.520 because you’re the creator, if the token goes up, you make money. But can you think of any 00:23:40.520 --> 00:23:46.760 problems that might arise on a site where you can make money livestreaming and everyone is 00:23:46.760 --> 00:23:51.320 anonymous and no age checks are required? JARETT: So, the live-streaming feature — so, 00:23:51.320 --> 00:23:54.880 if you go and create a coin — and actually, it’ll show you on that landing page if anybody’s live 00:23:54.880 --> 00:23:58.560 streaming, and you can kinda get the gist. This was one of the things that caused me 00:23:58.560 --> 00:24:03.400 very much grief. I remember I said to my friend’s boyfriend, how could I work on 00:24:03.400 --> 00:24:07.160 this feature? Their live-streaming platform allows for the sexualization of young girls 00:24:07.160 --> 00:24:11.960 for financial gain, operating without KYC or AML protections, thus exacerbating the potential for 00:24:11.960 --> 00:24:14.960 exploitation and abuse. So, basically, anybody can live stream on the site, 00:24:14.960 --> 00:24:20.040 and what that really means and how this came to be, in fact, having noticed it while I was there, 00:24:20.040 --> 00:24:24.960 is that questionably of-age girls were sexualizing themselves on camera as a 00:24:24.960 --> 00:24:30.120 live-streaming platform for sex cameras or whatever you call them, porn cams. 00:24:30.120 --> 00:24:33.920 The point is there’s no KYC. There’s no even attempt to prove that anybody’s of age. So, 00:24:33.920 --> 00:24:38.160 for instance, when one of the founders joined one of these streams that were happening on 00:24:38.160 --> 00:24:41.880 Telegram at the time 'cause they were excited and wanted integrated live and the site gets a 00:24:41.880 --> 00:24:47.880 major boost in traffic and fees and all that — he joins, and somebody else is on the audio for 00:24:47.880 --> 00:24:52.400 this Telegram chat and says, this girl is twelve years old. She says, no, baby, I’m twenty-one, 00:24:52.400 --> 00:24:58.040 and that was the extent of the KYC there. JACK: I did not ask Jarett to show me evidence of 00:24:58.040 --> 00:25:02.080 underage girls streaming on the site, and Jarett’s lawyers told him they didn’t want to see it, 00:25:02.080 --> 00:25:07.320 either. I did see sexual photos of adults, though, on the site. Let me read a tweet from 00:25:07.320 --> 00:25:13.000 you that the Pump.fun Twitter account wrote on June 13, 2024. ‘We at Pump.fun are fully 00:25:13.000 --> 00:25:17.200 committed to a family-friendly user experience. Trading memes should be a fun experience for the 00:25:17.200 --> 00:25:22.800 whole family. That is why we resolutely condemn the porn meta that has taken over our site, 00:25:22.800 --> 00:25:29.120 but we can only accomplish that with your help. Please send all the porn you find to our intern.’ 00:25:29.120 --> 00:25:33.320 And it has the intern’s e-mail address. See, that’s what I mean about Pump.fun. You can't tell 00:25:33.320 --> 00:25:38.560 if what you’re looking at is a joke or real. But as I spent time on the site myself, I could 00:25:38.560 --> 00:25:42.800 tell you it’s definitely not family friendly. I saw way too many buttholes while I was there, 00:25:42.800 --> 00:25:47.680 for sure, and the strong has a strong resemblance of 4chan, which is known for being the underbelly 00:25:47.680 --> 00:25:51.440 of the internet, where the scummiest of content is posted and shared. But heck, 00:25:51.440 --> 00:25:57.200 even 4chan has rules. I sat in on the very first Twitter Spaces that Pump.fun held. 10,000 people 00:25:57.200 --> 00:26:03.400 joined it, and the craziest question got asked. This question actually contains a swear word, 00:26:03.400 --> 00:26:06.100 so, if you don’t want to hear swear words, skip ahead two minutes. 00:26:06.100 --> 00:26:10.000 SPEAKER: One last thing. I seen you guys getting a lot of FUD about this, 00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:15.320 and I was very curious about it 'cause I was trying to defend y’all. Guidelines; what do 00:26:15.320 --> 00:26:19.520 you guys think about guidelines? ‘Cause I seen a lot of people doing crazy stuff on Pump.fun, 00:26:19.520 --> 00:26:23.840 me included, you know? Would you guys add any guidelines or safety precautions 00:26:23.840 --> 00:26:28.000 on your website to fight that FUD or…? PUMP.FUN: I mean, so — okay, so, first of 00:26:28.000 --> 00:26:33.320 all, I think our ethos is we’re super-pro free speech. We want as much as — as much 00:26:33.320 --> 00:26:34.520 content as possible… SPEAKER: Correct. 00:26:34.520 --> 00:26:42.040 PUMP.FUN: …on our platform to go across. However, if there’s anything illegal or sort of outright 00:26:42.040 --> 00:26:46.280 illegal based on the platform, we have to take it down, right? We can't have that running both as a 00:26:46.280 --> 00:26:50.920 moral obligation and as a business obligation. We don’t want to be distributing anything like 00:26:50.920 --> 00:26:55.320 that or have anything on the platform — so, yeah, that’s the way we stand… 00:26:55.320 --> 00:26:58.000 SPEAKER: Have you guys ran into anything illegal yet? 00:26:58.000 --> 00:27:03.880 PUMP.FUN: Actually, no. Surprisingly, our — we’ve sort of had this moderation team and 00:27:03.880 --> 00:27:09.120 stuff like that, and surprisingly, there hasn’t been anything too shocking. But obviously we’ve 00:27:09.120 --> 00:27:11.800 prepared for the worst-case scenario. SPEAKER: I’m sorry, I just have one last 00:27:11.800 --> 00:27:18.680 thing to say and then I’ll get outta here. For you saying the illegal stuff and basically moderating 00:27:18.680 --> 00:27:24.120 what happens on Pump.fun, I had an idea, and since I guess I’m talking to Pump.fun right now, 00:27:24.120 --> 00:27:28.560 can you guys tell me if this is illegal or not? It’s an idea for Pump.fun. I was thinking 00:27:28.560 --> 00:27:32.640 about — well, I was thinking about fucking a girl live on Pump.fun tonight 'cause my 00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:36.520 birthday’s tomorrow, so, I thought it’d be super exciting and crazy and different. But 00:27:36.520 --> 00:27:42.040 is that illegal or not? I’m genuinely asking. It’s something that I’m very serious about. The girl is 00:27:42.040 --> 00:27:49.560 coming over. Is that illegal? Is this something I can put on Pump.fun, fucking a girl live? 00:27:49.560 --> 00:27:51.520 PUMP.FUN: Okay, so, yeah… SPEAKER: Very curious question. 00:27:51.520 --> 00:27:52.360 Very curious question. PUMP.FUN: Yeah, a very serious 00:27:52.360 --> 00:27:58.480 question. I mean, okay, let’s put it this way; we are very free-speech oriented. Obviously 00:27:58.480 --> 00:28:05.680 sexual content does exist on the web, so, yeah, I hope you take that answer as we 00:28:05.680 --> 00:28:09.680 sort of say it, basically. So, yeah. SPEAKER: I love you guys so much. Thank 00:28:09.680 --> 00:28:13.280 you so much for having me up here. Sapuji and Alon. I love y’all. 00:28:13.280 --> 00:28:16.920 JARETT: Oh, somebody sent me an interesting link earlier. It was somebody smoking meth on 00:28:16.920 --> 00:28:20.400 one of these live streams for money. It’s actually a tweet here. ‘They were smoking 00:28:20.400 --> 00:28:24.400 meth on what has happened to Pump.fun.’ JACK: A new site called Decrypt pointed out 00:28:24.400 --> 00:28:29.280 that Pump.fun has seen some pretty gnarly stuff. A young teenager got his mom to bounce her boobs 00:28:29.280 --> 00:28:33.880 on camera to pump a coin, and when he got it to pump, he sold his whole stake in it. Then there 00:28:33.880 --> 00:28:38.040 was another guy who went live after creating the Truth or Dare token, and someone dared 00:28:38.040 --> 00:28:43.480 him to cover himself in isopropyl alcohol and then shoot fireworks at himself. So, 00:28:43.480 --> 00:28:47.680 he did it. The guy set himself on fire and burned pretty bad. He was rushed to the Miami 00:28:47.680 --> 00:28:52.320 hospital where he suffered third-degree burns on a large portion of his body. 00:28:52.320 --> 00:28:58.240 People do some pretty wild stuff on Pump.fun. We’re gonna take a quick ad break here, 00:28:58.240 --> 00:29:02.960 but stay with us, because cause Jarett’s gonna top all those stories and do something even more 00:29:02.960 --> 00:29:11.480 wild. [Music] So, he’s starting to have qualms with the ethics of this project and is questioning 00:29:11.480 --> 00:29:17.240 if this is even something he should be working on. Then, on top of that, he started to get upset with 00:29:17.240 --> 00:29:21.240 the team and decided to move out of the communal living space and get his own apartment. 00:29:21.240 --> 00:29:26.680 JARETT: Aside from all these long-standing concerns, I’m really bad with money. I was 00:29:26.680 --> 00:29:30.240 making good money, but the thing is, I just spent it all on just — 'cause I am bad with 00:29:30.240 --> 00:29:35.014 money and I do party. The point is, not anymore. I’m twenty-one days sober today. I’m trying… 00:29:35.014 --> 00:29:37.200 JACK: Nice job. JARETT: …my best to be that person. So, 00:29:37.200 --> 00:29:42.720 I’d much rather survive this whole ordeal and not drink myself to death. But for a while there, I 00:29:42.720 --> 00:29:47.600 was going off the rails. So, I had no money. I got this apartment. I got in this apartment. I didn’t 00:29:47.600 --> 00:29:51.320 like it very much. Literally, I know it’s kind of standard, especially for Central London. You 00:29:51.320 --> 00:29:57.840 might see roaches and shit. However, I was very unpleased. I wanted different — immediately. 00:29:57.840 --> 00:30:01.720 I asked for them to square up to the day of that month that I had worked, which was halfway 00:30:01.720 --> 00:30:06.920 through the month, so I could get some money to find a better apartment. They said no. I said, 00:30:06.920 --> 00:30:10.200 can you — why? They said, 'cause it would look like preferential treatment. At this 00:30:10.200 --> 00:30:14.280 point we had three other people working now. Mind you, the CEO did mention — promised, 00:30:14.280 --> 00:30:17.000 rather — that I was gonna get weekly pays, which would help me out a lot. I would not have been 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:22.200 in this situation. However, it was monthly, eventually. What happened is I said, well, 00:30:22.200 --> 00:30:27.720 can you pay out bonuses? He says, no; bonuses to everyone — said this is preferential and stuff. 00:30:27.720 --> 00:30:33.680 JACK: [Music] So, with a head full of alcohol and the lack of ADHD meds and the depression from the 00:30:33.680 --> 00:30:38.000 loss of his mother and being in an apartment with mice and rats in a town he’s totally unfamiliar 00:30:38.000 --> 00:30:43.360 with and working for this mega-profitable crypto startup which wasn’t aligning with his ethics and 00:30:43.360 --> 00:30:50.760 morals, everything swirled together into focus for Jarett. Did you know what you were about to 00:30:50.760 --> 00:30:54.680 do? Were you aware of your actions at all? JARETT: The psychiatric report confirms that 00:30:54.680 --> 00:30:58.560 I was aware of what I was doing but fully unaware of the illegality of my actions. I had no idea any 00:30:58.560 --> 00:31:04.360 of this fallout would happen. I had no idea the police would care. I didn’t think this through. 00:31:04.360 --> 00:31:09.320 I really didn’t. So, unfortunately, I am where I am. I gotta deal with the repercussions of my 00:31:09.320 --> 00:31:13.240 actions. I gotta learn there are consequences to my actions. So, I’m just resigned to it. 00:31:13.240 --> 00:31:18.800 JACK: So, where does this begin? Do you see the vulnerability in the code and then just 00:31:18.800 --> 00:31:22.920 decide to exploit it as soon as you find it? JARETT: Yeah, and funny enough, I did report 00:31:22.920 --> 00:31:26.480 it a couple weeks before that. There was just no action to patch it or fix it. 00:31:26.480 --> 00:31:29.000 JACK: Well, you’re the developer. JARETT: I know, but I reported 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:32.720 it. I tried to tell the CTO… JACK: Yourself — e-mail yourself; like, 00:31:32.720 --> 00:31:36.360 hey, you should fix this. Eh, I’m busy. JARETT: Yeah, true, true. No, 00:31:36.360 --> 00:31:39.360 I mean — true enough, true enough. JACK: This hack is probably one of the 00:31:39.360 --> 00:31:43.480 more complex hacks I’ve ever talked about. I didn’t understand it when Jarett explained it. 00:31:43.480 --> 00:31:46.600 I didn’t understand it when I read an article explaining it. I didn’t understand it when I 00:31:46.600 --> 00:31:51.520 asked my degen friends to explain it, and it took a long time of me reading article after article, 00:31:51.520 --> 00:31:55.400 trying to fully grasp what happened. I’ll summarize it just for the geeks out there 00:31:55.400 --> 00:32:00.080 who like the technical aspects like me. When a token is made on Pump.fun, it pretty much 00:32:00.080 --> 00:32:05.480 is just available on Pump.fun, but when enough people buy it, it then gets graduated to Raydium, 00:32:05.480 --> 00:32:09.840 which is a DEX, a decentralized exchange, and this makes it a little bit more official because 00:32:09.840 --> 00:32:14.840 it’s on this decentralized exchange now.