With the advent of AI, crypto has begun to feel like an afterthought in the story of our nascent tech dystopia, a receding whiff of last year’s bullshit. But never fear, while AI bros’ world-ruining antics occupy the spotlight in 2026, crypto bros remain more than capable of some ghastliness of their own.
Take, for example, the launch of “GO”, a marketplace launched last week by memecoin sewer pump.fun. As per pump.fun’s own X account, the marketplace lets users “Pay ANYONE to do ANYTHING … create [and] complete bounties for ANY task.” The announcement came with some cursory language about empowerment and changing the world and etc, promising that the marketplace would “leverage the power of humans and money across the globe.” Instead, in news that will surprise precisely no-one, it devolved almost instantly a sort of sub-Pewdiepie race to the bottom, with users trying to outdo one another in commissioning oh-so-outrageous stunts from people to whom a few hundred dollars could make a real difference.
The nadir—so far, anyway—arrived when a user going by “ayushquant” offered up a bounty promising the princely sum of 40 Solana (worth about $2,500 at the date of publication, always assuming you can find a rube to buy them.) The task at hand? For the claimant to get the name of $bountywork, a coin that Ayush launched six days ago, tattooed across their forehead. This was one of a load of similar bounties offered to promote the coin, and it’s probably fair to say that Ayush never expected anyone to actually claim it.
He should have expected otherwise. After all, it’s not like such stunts are unprecedented: over two decades ago, a long-forgotten online casino called GoldenPalace.com paid $10,000 to have its URL inked on the face of Utah woman Kari Smith. It’s unclear what’s happened to Smith, who said at the time that “to me, $10,000 is like $1 million… I only live once, and I’m doing [this] for my son.” Today the Golden Place URL hosts a “free guide to the most trustworthy US casinos on the internet,” an undertaking about which the jokes write themselves.
Anyway, this most recent piece of forehead tattooing took a darkly comic turn when the bounty was in fact claimed. The claimant, a gentleman from Tamil Nadu by the name of Arivu, posted a video of himself having the token’s name inked on his face, as well as a photo displaying the completed tattoo. Unfortunately, there was a problem, and… oh, go on, see if you can spot it.
The original exchange has disappeared from X, but as per Yahoo! Finance’s report on the case, Ayush wanted to withhold the bounty because of the spelling mistake; Arivu “countered that he had inked the exact text in the prompt.” And, indeed, he had, because the original post also contained the spelling mistake. Arivu argued that he was only following the wording of the task to the letter: it called for getting “$boutywork” tattooed on your forehead, so that was what he got tattooed on his forehead.
Inevitably, someone quickly launched a memecoin called $boutywork, which hit something like $500,000 in market capitalisation before crashing back to earth over the weekend. The coin’s creator fees were set to accrue to Arivu, who just happened to have opened an account on Pump.fun. As of publication, those fees were in excess of $40,000, which is certainly better than the $2,500 he was originally promised—though it’s unclear whether he ever received any of this money. As ever with crypto, it’s unclear how much of this is readily convertible into actual real money and not internet magic beans.
Meanwhile, Ayush—the person responsible for the whole depressing stunt in the first place—has pocketed a shitton of cash: he’s earned almost $174,000 in creator rewards, a great deal of which has come as a result of the tattoo stunt. There’s also something deeply depressing about how this is offered up in LinkedIn-style writing as some sort of admirable piece of clever hustle.
Regardless, it’s certainly not the first spectacularly unethical stunt in the world of crypto and it’s unlikely we’ll ever know the whole story: Arivu’s X account has been suspended, though the recently-opened account in his name on pump.fun does remain live, and contiunues to accrue $boutywork creator rewards.
Ayush, meanwhile, is now offering another bounty—46 Solana this time!—to Arivu and Arviu alone. The task? “He must get the correct ticker fixed on his tattoo on his forehead, the correct ticker is $bountywork.” In the world of crypto, things can always get worse.
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