The Daily - A Conversation With a Dogecoin Millionaire: An Update

Episode Date: December 29, 2021

This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and checking in on what has happened in the time since they first ran.This episode contains strong language.Dogecoin started out as a kind of inside joke in the world of cryptocurrency. However, earlier this year, it quickly became, for some, a very serious path to wealth.Today, we return to the unlikely story of a 33-year-old who bought the cryptocurrency and became a millionaire in the process, to see what he has lost or gained in the time since.Guest: Kevin Roose, a technology columnist for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: Glauber Contessoto went looking for something that could change his fortunes overnight. He found it in a joke cryptocurrency.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

Hey, it's Michael. This week, The Daily is revisiting some of our favorite episodes of the year and hearing what's happened in the time since they first ran. Today, we return to the unlikely story of a 33-year-old who bought a cryptocurrency intended to be a meme and became a millionaire in the process, to find out what he's lost or gained in the time since. It's Wednesday, December 29th. So Kevin, the last time we spoke with you,

you had, quite improbably, made $750,000 by selling a picture of your column in the form of a non-fungible token. So what have you been up to since then? Well, quick update. The value of cryptocurrency has skyrocketed in the time since that episode. So the NFT that I sold is actually now worth about $1.4 million.

Show off. Again, I don't get to keep it. I am a fake cryptocurrency millionaire, but there you go. So I've kind of moved on from NFTs, but I've stayed very interested in the world of cryptocurrency. And for the last few weeks, there's been one giant story in the world of cryptocurrency. And that is the story of Dogecoin.

We're gonna take Dogecoin to the moon. A positively dogged rise, it says here, in the price of Dogecoin. Dogecoin has been everywhere. Its total value stands at $86 billion, more than FedEx. Every time I open my TikTok feed, there's like a video about Dogecoin. Hold it, hold it, hold it, hold it, never sell. Much rich. Buy more, buy more, buy more, buy more, it's doing well.

Every time I go on Twitter, there are people talking about it. I have friends that I haven't talked to in years, like texting me about whether or not they should invest in it. Shut up and take my money. Every day, the internet has a main character. And today, you know, Reddit and Twitter have decided that main character is Dogecoin. So unlock that word and that concept for us as only you can, Dogecoin. Unlock that word and that concept for us as only you can, Dogecoin.

Sure. So Dogecoin is something like Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of these other cryptocurrencies. It's a way to send and receive money on the internet. And it was created in 2013 during the first real speculative mania around Bitcoin. And it was literally meant as a joke. These two programmers created it to poke fun at how seriously all these investors and speculators were taking cryptocurrency. And basically they decided we should sort of make fun

of the people trading cryptocurrencies by making our own joke cryptocurrency. So they take this meme, this Shiba Inu dog who was called Doge that was popular in the 2013 internet who would talk in comic sans and would say things like, much wow, so scare.

So they decided we're going to combine Bitcoin with Doge and make Dogecoin. Okay, so given that context, who would bother to trade this parity of a currency, Dogecoin? So for most of its life, Dogecoin is basically worthless. One Dogecoin is worth a tiny fraction of a cent. But this year, as Bitcoin and Ethereum and these other cryptocurrencies are having another massive run, Dogecoin made this very strange comeback. It totally exploded. And I kept hearing about these big-time Dogecoin traders. There was one in particular. People on the Dogecoin subreddit were calling him the Dogefather

or Slumdoge Millionaire. Would you mind just introducing yourself and explaining a little bit about who you are? Yeah, sure. And his name is Glauber Contisoto. So I go by Jason or Pro, but my birth name is Glauber Contisoto. We get on a video call. He's a big guy, big beard. He's got like a picture of Jay-Z behind him. And I work here in LA. I work at a music company, a hip hop music company.

So Glauber is 33 years old. He was born in Brazil. He came to the US when he was six years old and his family landed in the Washington DC area. We basically grew up very poor. So I remember growing up, we were in a little apartment, like basement kind of area. I shared a room with my sister until I was like 13. His mom and dad didn't even have their own room. They had like the back end of the apartment

that we had to like put a divider up so they had some privacy. So he graduates from high school, goes to college, but ends up dropping out, and then stays in the DC area for a while. And he meets this aspiring rapper and decides to manage him. And like, he really wants to work in the music industry. Maryland is not the place for music. So I'm like, either I'm moving to New York or LA. I had some friends out here already. So I was like, LA it is.

And like a lot of people who moved to LA hoping to have a career in the entertainment industry, Glauber has a dream. He wants to buy a house. That's what I've always wanted to do. My family has never owned a house. So I was like, I want to buy a house. And the reason for me buying a house is I wanted to get a bunch of rooms so my artists could come live with me.

Like I get Lambo to come out here and live there and then work on music. Doesn't have to worry about rent. Doesn't have to worry about food or anything. But when he gets to L.A., he does not have anywhere near the amount of money he's going to need to do that. So I'm sleeping on couches. I have a friend of mine in Van Nuys. I'm sleeping on his couch. And then I sleep on a couch in West Hills.

So I actually have screenshots of all the 2017 of my bank account because to motivate myself, I changed the name of my bank account to Pro is Broke as Fuck. And then I had like the little part there and it'd be like a dollar or like 50 cents or like 50 bucks or something like that in my account. It was crazy. So I didn't know you could change the name of your bank account. Yeah, you can. It's so funny. And he starts picking up some

freelance video editing gigs. He's making like a thousand dollars a month and he eventually gets this break. He gets a job at a startup in LA. They're having him do sort of entry-level video editing. And as he starts getting more experienced and taking on more responsibilities, he eventually starts making a little more money. All I do is work. So you're making a little bit more money at that point. Like, did you change the name of your bank account? Yes, I did. I just went back to what it was for. But as he's continuing to sort of save up, he really develops like tunnel vision on this goal of buying a house. I do everything in my power to do that. I'm saving every bit of money that I can. My money every month is literally going to bills. My car is a piece of shit. I'm not going out shopping. I'm not going on vacation.

I'm not going to concerts. So at the beginning of 2020, he finally has enough money saved up that he thinks he can start looking for a house. But that turns out not to be easy. Like he just can't find any place that's within his budget. So I'm like, I'm going to find a house that's 300,000 because I could do 20% of that. So he starts working with a realtor. And eventually, I find this house in the woods past Pasadena, like up by the mountains. And it's like 350,000. I'm like, that's fine. At least I'll have a house, right? That's all I ever wanted. So he gets really excited. He can actually afford a down payment on this place.

So the realtor calls the house, calls me back the next day and says, oh, they're cash only. You got to pay for the whole thing. And so his dream is dashed again. I'm like, that's it. I can't get a house. God doesn't want me to get a house. And he ultimately decides like,

maybe this just isn't in the cards for me right now. Hmm. So this is a pretty depressingly familiar version of the American dream. A guy who comes from not very much, works really hard, tries to save up, does save up, and still feels stuck. Because in a city like Los Angeles, given the economics of trying to buy a home, he is actually stuck. The system's just not working for him. Exactly. This whole classic sense of like, you work hard, you climb the ladder, you buy a house, you settle down. Like that version of the economy is just not really working for him.

But then he figures out that he actually has another option. We'll be right back. We'll be right back. So, 2020, the pandemic hits, go into lockdown. And over the course of that year, Glauber stops thinking about buying a house and starts just focusing on work. But then this year... 2021, GameStop happens, right? This weird thing happens

with GameStop, this video game store. Right. This weird thing being a social media frenzy around GameStop that leads the stock to soar, creates enormous wealth for the people who got in early. But more than that, it also sent a message to establishment players in finance that regular investors were now in charge. Right. And that gets Glaubur thinking, like, if I could figure out the next GameStop before it happens, like, maybe that's my ticket. While I go through the Reddit, somebody posts, has Dogecoin ever gone to a dollar? And then I'm like, what the hell is Dogecoin? And that's when he hears about Dogecoin. This thing that is really taking off on the internet,

that is exciting people, that's getting people interested in investing, and that the people who get in on the ground floor of this might actually be able to make some money off of it. I have an extra 40 bucks somehow in my buying power or whatever, right? So I take those 40 bucks. I put it in Dogecoin. I'm like, this is fun. Let's see what happens. Put on Dogecoin.

So he starts small. And the very next day, Dogecoin goes from a penny to eight cents. I'm staring at my phone, watching it go from 40 bucks to 100 bucks to 150 to 250, 350. The price of Dogecoin goes up like 700%. Wow. I'm like, I don't know what the hell this is, but I'm not missing the next time this happens. I have to get in on this. No stock I've ever purchased before has ever done this. And he's realizing like, oh, this might be

actually happening. I might have bet right. So what's drawing him to Doge is not the intrinsic value of a Dogecoin, but the fact that lots of other people are excited about and being drawn into Doge. Right. In a way, it's purely speculative. He's just betting that this thing that is going up will continue to go up. But Glauber sort of has this new millennial Gen Z way of looking at the stock market,

which is that it doesn't really matter what the underlying value of something is. It's more about attention and momentum and figuring out where the culture is going than it is about the actual soundness of the investment. Wake up, go to sleep for a few hours, wake up next day, bam, up at five cents, six cents, goes back down to four. I'm like, this isn't going down to two ever again. This isn't going down to one ever again. This is going to go up. And then there's this tipping point. And when is that? In February of this year, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, one of the richest men in the world, and kind of like

self-appointed king of the meme internet, starts tweeting about Dogecoin. He calls it the people's crypto. And he says that he's actually buying Dogecoin for his son. Elon does a blast of like eight or nine or ten tweets, like back to back to back to back. And it shoots up from three cents to like four to five to six. I'm like, this is it.

This is the blast off. I'm missing it right now. And Glauber starts sort of thinking about this as the point of no return. Like Dogecoin is popular. It's getting more popular. Elon Musk is tweeting about it. This thing is going to the moon, as they say on Reddit. So now I was like, I'm going all in. Like, this last thing was it for me. And so he makes up his mind and he decides to put everything he has into Dogecoin. Can you quantify that? What do you mean? I mean, everything, like his entire life savings. How much money did you decide to invest? Total, it was $250,000 at 4.5 cents. He put in about $250,000. Wow, that's a lot of money.

A lot of money. And actually, he went into debt so that he could buy more Dogecoin. So how does this quarter million dollar bet end up playing out for Glauber? So he goes all in in February. And for the first couple months, it doesn't really make him much money. But then April 15th rolls around. What happens then?

So that day, it's a Thursday, Elon Musk, he's sort of been tweeting about Dogecoin off and on for a long time, posts this image on Twitter. It's actually a painting of a dog barking at the moon. And he captions it, Doge barking at the moon. And people on Reddit get super excited because the moon in Reddit speak is what happens when something goes viral. Right on cue, the price of Dogecoin starts to skyrocket. And what does this mean for Glauber?

And what does this mean for Glauber? Man, it was the craziest day because, like I said, I knew in my heart it was going to go up. So he's just watching all this happen in real time. Like he's looking at his phone, at the value of his investment. It's just going up and up and up. You know, $200, $300, $400, $500, $600, $700. Going up and up and up. You know, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700.

And eventually, like the price of Dogecoin ends up going up hundreds of percentage points that day, like more than triple the value at the start of the day. So I know the exact time it happened. It was April 15th at 6 p.m. I'm staring at my phone like I usually do. And I'm looking at it and it's going up, going up, going up. And the value of Glauber's Dogecoin investment crosses a million dollars. And I'm like, it's today. Today. Now, I'm a million. Right now, I'm a millionaire. I'm like, it's today. Today. Now I'm a million.

Right now I'm a millionaire. I'm 33 years old. I just became a millionaire. Wow. Yeah. It's wild. I texted my mom. I was like, I was like, mom, your son's a millionaire. She was like, you're lying.

No, you're not. I sent her a screenshot. I have a screenshot of all that. I sent it to her and I was like, I was like, your son's finally a millionaire. I was like, everything's going to be all right. I was like, like, you know, like you can start looking at houses. And she writes me back. She's like, all I want is you and your sister's happiness. And I'm good. That shit, like, that was crazy, man. Like, this thing changed my life.

This thing changed my life. And it doesn't even stop there. 12 hours later, 6.40 a.m. the next day, it hits $1.8 million. The price of Dogecoin just keeps going up and up and up. And by the time I talked to him, I can show you guys on the screen right now. If you want to see what is it? Can you just read that to me? Yeah. He had turned his original investment of about $250,000 into at this very second, it's at $2,431,000. $2,431,000.

Almost $2.5 million. Wow. Yeah. That's a big number. That's a huge number. Oh, I just went up. That is truly astonishing. And basically, an overnight fortune. Yeah.

But of course, this wealth is paper wealth. He has to sell Dogecoin in order to get it. And I'm nervous just hearing you tell this story on Glauber's behalf, because I think it might be time for him to sell. So does he sell? No. No.

It didn't cross my mind, not once, to sell it. And why not? Because he sees this as a long-term investment. No. No. It didn't cross my mind, not once, to sell it. And why not? Because he sees this as a long-term investment. If you could buy into Amazon when it was $10 a share, would you have sold when it hit $20 or when it hit $200? No, you wouldn't. I think part of the reason is just he thinks it's going to keep going up. He doesn't want to miss out on the gains that he'll make

if Dogecoin goes to $ dollar or two dollars or five dollars. But he's also got this ideological motivation. I look at Dogecoin as the future. I truly believe in the cryptocurrency. I believe Dogecoin is the future of currency. of currency. Like a lot of people, he thinks that the sort of old financial system, you know, with all the banks and hedge funds and transaction fees and middlemen, that's all becoming obsolete. We realize the system is rigged. The stock market's rigged. Wall Street, they all play their game. Hedge funds play their game. If they're winning, it's all good and fine and dandy and you can buy and sell all you want. It's a free trade. As soon as they start losing billions, and dandy and you can buy and sell all you want. It's a free trade. As soon as they start losing billions, they change the rules. And the thing that's replacing it is this kind of

parallel economy that's growing up around the internet, this cryptocurrency economy. So he's optimistic about cryptocurrency, but he's specifically optimistic about Dogecoin. It's the most friendly, the funnest, the most exciting cryptocurrency. Kids will get into it. Old people will get into it. People that don't know anything about cryptocurrency, Dogecoin is the bridge. Dogecoin bridges the gap between the real world and the cryptocurrency world. If you're wrong and Dogecoin loses 99% of its value tomorrow. Would you have any regrets? I'll buy the dip.

You'll buy more? Yeah. You're a madman. I think in some way he represents the attitudes of this cohort of young people who are getting out into the economy, who are trying to make it the old way, climbing the ladder, you know, one rung at a time. And they're realizing, like, that actually might not work anymore. And so they're looking for trampolines, basically. They're looking for big bets that they can take. Maybe it won't work, but maybe it will.

And to Glauber, that risk is not a turnoff. Scared money don't make no money. That's just the reality of it. People get scared and people want to be safe and not take any risks. In fact, that's what draws him to Dogecoin. He wants the risk. I feel like those experts on TV and like the older generation of like old money and wealth, they try to scare people into staying safe, right? And to not taking these big risks. I'm not going to take what an expert says on TV for their word.

He doesn't want to do it the safe way because he thinks maybe this is his trampoline. Maybe this is the risk that is going to pay off for him. I mean, it's a rags to riches story, bro. Like I'm trying to tell you like this, this shit changed my entire life. Maybe it's a rags to riches and back to rags. This, this, you know what this is? this is the story of the underdoge i've always felt like the underdog my whole life i'm serious man like oh i've always had a chip on my shoulder always been like there's got to be more there's got to be more to life i've got to be able to accomplish more like there's no way it's just this yeah well thank you again for

your time and i'll call you back if i have other questions, but this is really, really fun. Awesome. All right. Take care. All right. Bye-bye. When we come back, Kevin gets an update from Glauber. Glauber, can you hear me? Hey, what's up? Hey, man. What's going on? Good to see you. Me too, man.

How's it on? Good to see you. You too, man. How's it going? Good. It's good to talk to you. So, Gleiber, when we last talked to you, you had invested your whole life savings in Dogecoin, and it had paid off. You turned, I think it was an initial investment of about $250,000 into something like $2.5 million. So I'm going to start by asking,

what is the value of your Dogecoin right now? Oh, so that's how we're starting it off? We're just going for the jugular? I don't know, you tell me. Yeah, no, we could check out the portfolio. I think I'm actually roughly around $600,000 or $700,000 right now. Got it. And so not to rub it in, but when we last talked to you, our episode was called A Conversation with a Dogecoin Millionaire.

Today, it seems like you are no longer a Dogecoin millionaire. Yes, exactly. It's a conversation with a Dogecoin thousandaire right now. 100,000aire. So what happened? Man, so much happened. Since Dogecoin took off, you've had all types of copycats. You know what I mean? You've had mommy Doge, daddy Doge, baby Doge, uncle Doge, cousin Doge. You had every version of Doge that you can think of. And I feel like that took a lot of momentum away from Dogecoin. If everybody just kind of stuck together and was like, let's get this Dogecoin all the way to a dollar, it would have happened by now, given the amount of money that's been put into other meme coins and other projects

right and i know that was a big goal for a lot of dogecoin people and investors was to get it to a dollar one dollar per dogecoin what what is the value of a Dogecoin today? Today is probably the worst day to do this interview because Dogecoin is at its lowest point since it took off. It's about 16 cents right now, which is insane because for the majority of the year, it stayed around 30 cents. And I tell people this all the time. Dogecoin at 25 cents or above, I'm a millionaire. So for the majority of the year, I've been a millionaire. It's only been until recently that it's dropped under 25 cents, I guess within the last month or so that I lost that status. Wow. So that's a drop of about half, about 50%. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another coin that I've invested in very heavily since we last spoke is a Floki. So

what is Floki? So Floki is also another meme coin, but Floki is named after Elon's dog. So Elon's dog, which is a Shiba Inu dog. Elon Musk. Elon Musk. Yes. So that investment, I've been kind of slowly putting more and more money into it. How much of your money do you have invested in Floki? I have about, wow, I've been buying a lot of dips. I have well over $100,000 of my own money invested in Floki. It's probably my second biggest investment in a coin since Dogecoin. So Dogecoin was probably my biggest investment and then Floki is like right up there. I saw a few months back that Elon Musk had actually tweeted at you. He did.

Elon Musk tweeted back at me on Twitter, which was like a surreal moment. Like I woke up one day, I looked at my phone and everybody was like, wait, bro, Elon just tweeted you. Look, bro, Elon just tweeted you. I'm like, you guys, I thought it was Photoshop. I went and checked my Twitter and sure enough, Elon responded to one of my tweets talking about the mass appeal that Dogecoin has. And his tweet was very important. He replied to me saying one of the big reasons why he decided to support Dogecoin was because he saw his factory

workers holding Doge. And to him, it was the people's currency. So that was a huge deal. Man, I was through the roof into the moon, man. I was really looking at it. I was like, I cannot believe this just happened to me. Elon knows who I am. It's crazy to think about that. Yeah, you're on his radar for sure. Yeah. I remember the last time we talked, part of the reason that you had started investing in Dogecoin was because you wanted to buy a house.

You wanted to make plans for the future that you needed money for. So how has what's been happening with Dogecoin over the past several months, how has that changed any of your plans for the future? I feel like most of my plans are still pretty intact because when it comes to buying a house, you only have to put in a percentage, right? As far as a down payment is concerned. So I would still have enough for that. You know what I mean? As far as some of the other things that I wanted to do for my mom, like I wanted to pay off my mom's bills. I'll still be able to do that. You know, I want to do that for Christmas, actually. That's my present to her, paying off

all her bills and all her debt. And for example, my sister, I was able to fly her out from Brazil. We haven't seen her in a few years. So that was fun. But as far as the big picture, I feel like it's still intact. I've got to tell you, after the episode that we did aired, I just got a ton of messages from people like listeners who frankly were just worried about you. They were saying like, I really hope he sells. I really hope he takes some money off the table. I worry that he's going to end up losing most or all of his investments. So I'm just wondering, do you have any regrets about not

selling when the price was so high? Well, here's the crazy part. A lot of people look at these investments and they think, that's all I have going on. You know what I mean? Like, oh, he invested all this money and they're looking at my portfolio like that's all I got. You know, if it goes down, it goes down and I lose everything. Not knowing that I've been working a lot behind the scenes. You know, I've been doing partnerships. I've been having projects coming up that promos, ads, doing commercials for like cereal and coffee and all types of things like these. Like this year alone, I've been able to make over $200,000 outside of Dogecoin. And that's more than I've've been able to make over $200,000 outside of Dogecoin. And that's more than I've ever been able

to make in a single year. You know, so to me, that's still a win. Wow. So you're like a crypto celebrity now. I mean, I don't know. I guess. That's amazing. Well, I'm glad you're in good spirits. It's been a wild year for you.

So I hope you get some time off over the holidays. Yeah, man. Yeah. It's hands down the craziest year of my entire life, man. Like January of this year, I would have never, ever, ever thought anything close to this would have ever happened to me. And it's just like kind of taking it in stride. But like, you got to take the good with the bad, you know what I mean? And right now we're on a little bad patch, but we'll be good pretty soon. Well, it's great to talk to you again. Anyone else have any any producers have any other questions? Nope. Actually, one quick question. Profit wise, what are you still standing at at this point? I'm still standing over $500,000 in profit currently.

And your max profit was? $2.7 million, I want to say. I almost touched $3 million. I was at $2.9 million at the highest. million. I was at $2.9 million at the highest. I was thinking, too, when Dogecoin hits a dollar, you know, I'll take out some, too. If Dogecoin hits a dollar. When? I admire your optimism, and I'm glad you're not my financial advisor. Yeah, man. Thank you. I appreciate you and we'll talk to you soon. Today's episode was produced by Rochelle Banja and Luke Vander Ploeg with help from Diana Nguyen. It was edited by Lisa Chow, Anita Botticello,

and Mark George, was engineered by Chris Wood and Corey Schreppel, and includes original music by Natalie Burdick and Dan Powell. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.