The Life Changing Magic Of.. Nothing — How Everyone Spent $1.3M to Receive 'Nothing' in Return

When I wrote this tweet 2 days ago

I had no idea that just a few hours later, a new story would unfold, and I’d decide to cover it. But not a single day is boring in web3 and one ever knows what’s coming. So here I am after a day of research on the matter cracking open a bottle of beer and writing you this story.

Let’s not waste time and start.

Context/backstory

In the past few weeks, everyone was talking about ben.eth. The guy basically tweeted out his wallet address telling people to send $ETH to it if they wanted to be part of the pre-sale of his upcoming new coin.

I did not cover that story but a short version for context: BitBoy endorsed the coin, ben.eth received millions on that wallet and the whole space was astonished and kept speculating if it was a rug, marketing genius operations, or an illustration of how desperate the whole space had become. Since then ben.eth has launched/released 3 tokens so far: $PSYOP, $BEN, and now $LOYAL.

It’s not about him now - but his story probably set the first precedent of people sending millions to a personal wallet with no smart contract and no idea of what the project is about and completely trusting a human vs the blockchain/code. (may be wrong - so feel free to correct me if that’s the case).

Fast forward a few weeks and another influencer borovik.eth tweeted this after his phone kept crashing while he was on Twitter spaces.

As a result, he ended up getting way more than what he needed.

So that, too, became a popular topic in the Crypto Twitter. I kept seeing “I need x please send ETH to this address” tweets all over my timeline and it was becoming a meme already…

Add to that the usual complaints about “this space has become a joke”, “so many people are so stupid”, “we have hit the bottom”, etc. as a backdrop and we have the full scene to start the story.

The trigger

Just like the above, this time, too, it all started with a tweet

Pauly has probably been one of the most controversial characters in the space. I found out about him while writing my story about Phunks (here are parts 1 and 2) since he was among the most active members of the community and later founded Not LarvaLabs with a few other Phunks and launched its own marketplace.

Later many found out about him because of his and Ryder Ripps’ fight against the founders of BAYC (both have been sued by Yuga Labs).

He’s eccentric, loud, raw and unfiltered. Or as he describes himself

“I'm very stubborn and opinionated and I take feedback from certain people who I trust, but I don't really care what the peanut gallery has to say.”

Many may argue that he is very toxic too. Pauly keeps fighting VCs, centralized exchanges and marketplaces, influencers… anything and anyone he thinks are wrong.

It feels like whatever he does gets amplified by the 2 extreme camps of people: those who are his true fans and those who are his haters. As a result, no matter what the proportions of those camps are  - he wins in this attention economy.

His popularity grew with $PEPE, since he was one of the most active community members who promoted the meme coin from day 1 (some even speculate that he may even be the founder of $Pepe…).  Many found out early about Pepe thanks to his tweets.

Anyway, his tweet got out there, and maybe at first, no one gave it much thought… but then people started sending him money… and in less than 24 hours, there was more than $1 MILLION worth of crypto in that wallet.

So the next day, I spoke to Pauly for this article.

We started by Pauly saying that this whole thing reminded him of the Potato Salad campaign on Kickstarter that had stuck in his memory. (for those who have not heard of it, you can check it out here. The guy raised $55k to make a potato salad)

I asked Pauly if it was something he had planned and if he expected what happened to be the outcome.

“It started as a joke,” Pauly responded. “And it just, you know, kind of organically developed further. It wasn't something that I thought of. I'm super impulsive with, like, Twitter and stuff like that. I usually just post what's on my mind, but, yeah, I definitely saw a lot of ridiculous stuff happening where people were doing all this illegal sh*t and, like, sending money for, like, a scam or sending money because someone was begging for money.

I don't know, I guess I just looked at that. It's, something to comment on or play with. But I wasn't expecting this, I wasn't.

I was honestly shocked when there was three hundred dollars in it. I was like, Wow, that's a lot of money. Three hundred dollars. And then it went up a lot. And then it started getting traction. Now I'm having too much fun with it to stop. So no, it wasn't planned or thought out at all.

Pauly really seems to be having fun with all the memes, jokes and unfolding the whole theme of “nothing”. Feels like he is very explicit that people should not expect anything in return, but at the same time, here and there you might perceive some tweets as hints of something actually coming.

I thought that in a similar situation, one might feel psychological pressure caused by people’s expectations or feel obliged to do something in return, so I wanted to know if he felt so or not.

“No, not at all. Like, I'm already being sued by a four billion dollar company that is trying to ruin my life and I don't care. And yes, maybe it was just a joke, but it captured people’s attention, triggered their curiosity and in many cases made people pissed. Many don’t understand how something like this happens? It doesn’t make sense at all, right?”

The Confusion

Even the guy from Coinbureau is not sure about what he is missing…

I personally think that if you have been really deep into this space - and what I mean by that is not only being focused on the tech and building but also spending time with the people in it, embracing the culture and following the sentiments and the conversations in this space, probably it wouldn’t be a complete mystery to you.

At the end of the day it’s all about human nature…

So what’s behind this? Why are people taking part in this crazy thing? Why did “nothing” become something to talk about? If blockchain is really a stage…

What is this story about then? Is it a blockchain performance art? A social experiment? Yes, it started as a joke… but what is it becoming?

What’s even more important: why are people supporting it?

So I thought that the fastest way to find out was speaking to those who had sent money to Pauly. Shot a tweet, and people reached out, confirming that they sent crypto to yougetnothing.eth (some multiple times) and explained their reasoning behind it.

But first, let’s see if those people are expecting anything in return or not. Well… feels like some do have expectations or other motives.

A few used this as part of their marketing efforts (2 examples below)

Some others did not seem to believe nothing meant literally nothing, so they are waiting to get something after all…

I also received messages from people who don’t expect anything in return and are completely fine not to receive anything in return. And they all gave different variations of the following reasons:

• They resonate with Pauly’s narrative (anti-VC, anti-influencers, etc.) and want to support him, because they trust him to fight for them + they think he has already done a lot for the space

• They are having fun and are supporting this as a meme for the culture

• They were introduced to $Pepe by Pauly and ended up making life-changing money from it. So now they are more than happy to show their appreciation.

  
  

  Accusations

  Obviously, it’s not only about fans or speculators here. I received claims that Pauly has copied the concept and the way he’s promoting “nothing” from this project here. You can check and judge for yourself…

  
  

  Others think that it’s another story of wash trading and avoiding taxes. I got this comment too implying that it was all planned.

  Results so far

  So far yougetnothing.eth wallet has received over $1,3M worth of crypto from 10,862 transactions.

  
  

  People still keep sending small amounts and the anticipation is building up. Seems like no one knows what’s gonna happen next and I did not even bother asking Pauly cause I am certain the answer would be “nothing”.

  
  

  All we gotta do is wait and see how the story ends.

  
  

  In any case I think this is yet another proof of the things I’ve kept talking about for many years already: the importance of the community of die hard fans, being yourself and not taking things too seriously, knowing your audience really well and telling the stories that resonate with them + building movements, not just code.

  Disclaimers

  Since my audience grew a bit, some did not feel happy about my choices of stories I cover, or the way I cover them, etc.

  
  

  Just wanted to reinforce that

  • I am writing for my own newsletter exactly for that reason: to write whatever I want the way I want it and not have a boss/editor decide that for me
  • I never shill anything and always do my best to stay unbiased. I am not promoting coins, projects or people - I just document stories
  • I always reveal if I am part of a story in any way (eg. own coins, etc) - and that being said, no I have not sent anything to Pauly

  
  

  And that’s a wrap. Cheers rebels!