Working Class Immigrant Became a Crypto Millionaire (on Paper) From an Elon Musk Tweet

You’ll see why sometimes it pays to follow the smart money, and most of the time, it doesn’t.

Photo By Koinbox on Flikr

I cringed writing the headline for this blog.

Not that there’s anything wrong with aspiring for a better life.

Headers like this are common in the media. They insinuate that quick gains are possible, and if, despite the odds, an immigrant could do it, so can you.

It’s everything that’s wrong with Crypto.

Or maybe it’s society.

Promises of quick gains overnight give writers a bad name. I receive my fair share of the “you’re pumping this Crypto so you can dump on your followers.”

Well, full disclosure. I have no exposure to Dogecoin. And I don’t have that kind of clout.

But I’m with you, and these crypto influencers are bad news. I believe some, like Logan Paul and Kim Kardashian, have the best intentions to protect their brand and innocently sell to make a profit but end up dumping on their communities without knowing the impacts.

They’re blissfully unaware. It’s the only way to explain it. They already have all the money they need.

Your everyday person who works a regular job will have a gold rush mentality when they see a headline like this, but you must try not to be that person.

The market always takes back its gains, and as you’ll see in the rest of this blog, you never hear from the people who are down by 90%.

If you’ve been around the Crypto market and were on social media, you’d have come across Glauber Contessoto.

He describes himself as someone from a low-income family who emigrated to the United States from Brazil but was determined to live the American dream by earning big money.

Well, he did just that.

Contessoto hit media headlines when he became a Dogecoin millionaire from what he says was Elon Musk’s tweet.

Source — Elon Musk Twitter

What it typically takes the average person a lifetime to earn, Contessoto managed in two months, becoming a cryptocurrency millionaire investing in Dogecoin.

You may have heard of Dogecoin, but the lesser-known story is that the software developers who founded the Cryptocurrency in 2013 created it as a joke.

It was a way to poke fun at some wild speculation in cryptocurrencies which is completely ironic because it’s become the 11th largest Crypto by market cap and the 2nd most significant proof of work chain after Bitcoin.

With a market capitalisation of $13 Billion, the jokes are wearing off, and people are speculatively buying DOGE, which, if you look at the token dynamics, has an unlimited supply and no actual use case. Yet.

Contessoto Earned Notoriety Turning $180,000 Into $3 Million in 2 Months — On Paper.

Today, you see people put on a pedestal for luck, and we dream it was us.

Following Musk’s tweet, Contessoto stumped up his initial investment by selling everything he owned of value. He drained his bank accounts, got two credit cards, sold his stocks and took out a cash advance.

The worst part, he borrowed money from his family.

Contessoto had a target sale price of $1 before selling his Dogecoin, heading off into the sunset, and living happily ever after.

While the token brought him incredible short-term gains, it never exceeded $0.68

And according to him, he never sold a single Coin.

Contessoto has now watched his potential fortune vanish in front of his eyes, with the token dropping 90% since all-time highs, all the way to a 6-dollar low.

A man with morals enamoured with his newfound fame as the Dogecoin millionaire felt like selling would be selling out on the Dogecoin community and dumping on his followers.

So the Dogecoin millionaire isn’t a millionaire. Because he didn’t sell, and by the looks of it, he still holds all of his Dogecoin.

Here’s a tweet with a screenshot showing that he’s down 45% just in the last month (from the time of posting)

Contessoto has a reported 5 million dogecoin, again, according to him and his recent Twitter post bringing his estimated holdings to $467,942.58, which, if you work the math backwards from his reported $3 Million high, is an 85% drop. So the math checks out, given where Doge is today.

Final Thoughts.

Sensationalising the rags-to-riches tale through a high-risk approach of borrowing money from family and using credit cards is beyond irresponsible.

People copy and paste this stuff.

Galuber Contessoto is one needle in a massive haystack of other people who got burnt buying into Dogecoin and probably saw the same Musk Tweet.

Those weary about the space see Crypto as a giant pyramid scheme where you have to get in early. But that could be said for every investment.

The truth is culture is being tokenised. Whether you like it or not, people will buy Crypto if they resonate with those communities and the coins they think will increase in value. Regardless of how useful the technology or blockchain is.

You can learn some significant lessons from Contessotto.

Mainly on what not to do. Like borrowing money for a highly volatile investment. Or price-anchoring yourself to an imaginary $1 target you have no control over.

I don’t think media headlines are even accurate. Contessoto’s brand building and PR understanding he used to develop his social profile suggest to me he’s less gung-ho than he’ll have you believe.

One, he brilliantly marketed himself as the underdog who took a considerable risk, and now he’s the people champion in the Dogecoin community. He has nearly 250 thousand followers on Twitter, doing regular brand deals with major crypto companies and has a Youtube channel with 113k subscribers, from which he earns ad revenues.

So when people look at his story, they see the wrong message entirely. They’re seeing someone who fumbled generational wealth after making media headlines.

If the screenshots are correct, he hasn’t sold a thing.

I see someone who cleverly arbitraged our attention and created a living for himself through his brand.

If I’m honest, his brand unknowingly plays off people’s quiet desperation for quick riches, which is wrong with crypto and society because 99% of people following this strategy will get burnt.

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