Books3 creator Shawn Presser receives $4,000 in cryptocurrency routed from a community meme coin

I woke up briefly and saw some crypto person claiming that they could “retire me if I work with them,” which is neither true nor particularly palatable even if true. I wanted to quickly explain the situation I’m in. (Or rather was forced into.)

First, this is a distraction from my main goal, which was to not become homeless. When a bunch of crypto folks showed up, I had no idea what they were talking about, and I tried ignoring them. The message from multiple people was “look! We have free money for you. Nearly $4k. Isn’t that great? All you do is link your GitHub and you can have it, no strings attached.”

This has the form of a scam, but to my amazement it was true. I cautiously linked my GitHub, and in exchange their website gave me about 50 SOL, aka around $4k.

So I was left sitting there like, what the hell just happened? The answer is that this happened:

One of them said to their community “Hey, let’s help Shawn. We’ll create a Shawn coin. Every time we trade this coin with each other, Shawn gets a cut. It goes into a piggy bank labeled “Shawn”, and only he can claim it.”

Then, shockingly, that turned out to be true. I now have $4k.

I have no idea how to feel about this. There are so many implications here. And this came at exactly the wrong time. I have 5 interviews lined up for today, some on the weekend, and on Monday an interview with Apple. I have at least a hundred DMs I haven’t been able to reply to yet, and this is the first moment I’ve had to breathe.

I’m grateful for the money, and I think they deserve a shout out. But I’m wary of becoming a Jake Paul. My reputation is all I have, and sacrificing it for $4k would be a massive mistake.

So, community, how do you feel about this? By acknowledging their existence, am I promoting gambling addiction via meme coins? Or is it the opposite, and I should go around saying “wow, look at that. They covered my mortgage right when I desperately needed it”? Both seem true, and this seems like a distraction from my actual duty right now, which is to respond to all of the kind folks that DMed me.

It boils down to: keep the money, promote coin; keep the money, disavow coin; or give the money to charity.

I woke up briefly and saw some crypto person claiming that they could “retire me if I work with them,” which is neither true nor particularly palatable even if true. I wanted to quickly explain the situation I’m in. (Or rather was forced into.)

First, this is a distraction from my main goal, which was to not become homeless. When a bunch of crypto folks showed up, I had no idea what they were talking about, and I tried ignoring them. The message from multiple people was “look! We have free money for you. Nearly $4k. Isn’t that great? All you do is link your GitHub and you can have it, no strings attached.”

This has the form of a scam, but to my amazement it was true. I cautiously linked my GitHub, and in exchange their website gave me about 50 SOL, aka around $4k.

So I was left sitting there like, what the hell just happened? The answer is that this happened:

One of them said to their community “Hey, let’s help Shawn. We’ll create a Shawn coin. Every time we trade this coin with each other, Shawn gets a cut. It goes into a piggy bank labeled “Shawn”, and only he can claim it.”

Then, shockingly, that turned out to be true. I now have $4k.

I have no idea how to feel about this. There are so many implications here. And this came at exactly the wrong time. I have 5 interviews lined up for today, some on the weekend, and on Monday an interview with Apple. I have at least a hundred DMs I haven’t been able to reply to yet, and this is the first moment I’ve had to breathe.

I’m grateful for the money, and I think they deserve a shout out. But I’m wary of becoming a Jake Paul. My reputation is all I have, and sacrificing it for $4k would be a massive mistake.

So, community, how do you feel about this? By acknowledging their existence, am I promoting gambling addiction via meme coins? Or is it the opposite, and I should go around saying “wow, look at that. They covered my mortgage right when I desperately needed it”? Both seem true, and this seems like a distraction from my actual duty right now, which is to respond to all of the kind folks that DMed me.

It boils down to: keep the money, promote coin; keep the money, disavow coin; or give the money to charity.

I woke up briefly and saw some crypto person claiming that they could “retire me if I work with them,” which is neither true nor particularly palatable even if true. I wanted to quickly explain the situation I’m in. (Or rather was forced into.)

First, this is a distraction from my main goal, which was to not become homeless. When a bunch of crypto folks showed up, I had no idea what they were talking about, and I tried ignoring them. The message from multiple people was “look! We have free money for you. Nearly $4k. Isn’t that great? All you do is link your GitHub and you can have it, no strings attached.”

This has the form of a scam, but to my amazement it was true. I cautiously linked my GitHub, and in exchange their website gave me about 50 SOL, aka around $4k.

So I was left sitting there like, what the hell just happened? The answer is that this happened:

One of them said to their community “Hey, let’s help Shawn. We’ll create a Shawn coin. Every time we trade this coin with each other, Shawn gets a cut. It goes into a piggy bank labeled “Shawn”, and only he can claim it.”

Then, shockingly, that turned out to be true. I now have $4k.

I have no idea how to feel about this. There are so many implications here. And this came at exactly the wrong time. I have 5 interviews lined up for today, some on the weekend, and on Monday an interview with Apple. I have at least a hundred DMs I haven’t been able to reply to yet, and this is the first moment I’ve had to breathe.

I’m grateful for the money, and I think they deserve a shout out. But I’m wary of becoming a Jake Paul. My reputation is all I have, and sacrificing it for $4k would be a massive mistake.

So, community, how do you feel about this? By acknowledging their existence, am I promoting gambling addiction via meme coins? Or is it the opposite, and I should go around saying “wow, look at that. They covered my mortgage right when I desperately needed it”? Both seem true, and this seems like a distraction from my actual duty right now, which is to respond to all of the kind folks that DMed me.

It boils down to: keep the money, promote coin; keep the money, disavow coin; or give the money to charity.