The Signal
Shark Boy joins Threadguy to explain how a year of trenching, a drawdown from buying dips, and a return for the ICM meta turned into a very visible Launchcoin troll account. The jokes about Ben Pasternak are not a bearish call: he still holds Launchcoin, wants faster updates and better launches, and thinks a small, invite-only trading chat is more useful than selling subscriptions.
Key Takeaways
- 01
The troll is still long
Shark Boy says he bought Launchcoin around 160 and is roughly breakeven, not "down bad." The Ben Pasternak jokes began because his chat thought promised updates were not arriving; he says they still support Ben and remain in ICM plays.
- 02
Better launches matter more than a flywheel
He wants a flywheel too, but says the more immediate problem is the scarcity of good coins. Kled stands out to him because he sees Obby Patel as a founder who keeps shipping, the standard he wants more of in the ecosystem.
- 03
Fisherman is a social edge
His roughly 90-person Fisherman group is invite-only, made up of traders and connected to other chats. He frames it as a networking hub, and declines the paid-group model because he thinks it is easy to sell false lifestyle signals and fake P&Ls to inexperienced followers.
- 04
The shark videos came from a liquidation joke
A Launchcoin video asking Ben to act before Shark Boy's liquidation became accidentally prophetic when the market crashed about an hour later. Subsequent videos on the Pump token and the Elon–Trump fight reached roughly 3,000 and 2,500 likes, turning the shark character into a recurring request from followers.
- 05
He trades selectively and avoids CTOs
Shark Boy says he may buy nothing on some days and only one or two coins on others, looking for a good narrative, technology, recognizable name, or TikTok traction. Having CTO'd several coins past $1 million, he says the work brought ad costs, blame, and threats without giving him a clean upside.
On the Record
“I don't hate him, but it's like, bro, so I bought Launchcoin at like 160. Like, I'm pretty break even right now. I'm not even down bad, but I just started hating on him, bro, because it's pretty funny, bro.”
“First of all, I need them to like—okay, flywheel, right? Everybody wants to fly. Okay, we need that for sure. But that's not even the most important part. Like, we just need good coins dropping.”
“So, I think my first shark vid was like about Ben. So, like Launchcoin went from like it was at like 140M, right? And it bottom and I had like longed it and like it went to like 160M.”
“Last winter I CTOed like couple coins, like two or three coins, like over a million — and I hate CTOing.”
The Breakdown
A face reveal after a market break
Threadguy meets Shark Boy on camera for what Shark Boy calls something close to a face reveal: he is known to crypto contacts, but not at this level. He says he bought his first coin about a year earlier, spent the last summer trenching and tweeting, then took a big break after February as the market weakened. He returned a couple of months before the interview for the ICM meta, after getting hurt buying dips in coins that kept falling.
Still in Launchcoin, still cooking Ben
The much-discussed Pasternak antagonism is, in Shark Boy's telling, comedy from inside the trade rather than a short thesis. He bought Launchcoin around 160, remains roughly breakeven, and says his chat is largely positioned in ICM plays. Their irritation was that Ben would announce things and not follow through; the resulting jokes grew from there. A possible job conversation added an obvious punch line: the loudest hater becoming an employee.
What the ecosystem needs: launches and founders
Asked what would improve ICM, Shark Boy says a flywheel would help, but it is not his main concern. He wants good coins to arrive more often, saying the ecosystem rarely gets even a couple of decent ones a month. Kled is his counterexample: he made money trading it, has spoken with its founder Obby Patel, and likes that he appears to be constantly shipping.
Fisherman stays invite-only
Shark Boy describes Fisherman as his roughly 90-person chat of traders, linked into other groups and useful chiefly for networking. It is friends-only, not a paid community. He says he has considered how easy paid groups are to monetize, then sketches the familiar pitch—Miami, a Corvette, lifestyle posts, and fake profit-and-loss screenshots—as exactly why he does not want to run one. He acknowledges that a group making $20,000 to $30,000 a month can be a real business, but says that is not the route he wants.
A liquidation created the shark character
The first shark video came when Shark Boy had longed Launchcoin from around a 140M bottom toward 160M and joked that Ben needed to act before his liquidation level near 110M. About an hour after posting it, the market crashed and he says he was actually liquidated. The post earned about 500 likes, enough to prompt requests for more; a later Pump-token video got about 3,000 likes, and an Elon–Trump video about his cooked bags reached about 2,500.
Selective buys, then a final Launch call
He says he is not a spam trader: some days he buys nothing, and on others one or two coins, waiting for a compelling narrative, technology, famous name, or viral TikTok footprint. He has stepped away from CTOing after taking two or three coins above $1 million, only to absorb ad costs and blame when others sold. Pressed for one full-portfolio coin, he chooses Launchcoin, conditional on Ben delivering, and names Dupe as another coin that would benefit if Launch performs.
Distilled from the episode transcript · Counterparty Recap Desk
