# Permissionless crypto launches can turn a reputation into bait

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/permissionless-crypto-launches-can-turn-a-reputation-into/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Shaan Puri](https://realalpha.app/people/shaan-puri/) · Co-host, My First Million · Sold Bebo to Twitch in 2019; co-founded the crypto newsletter Milk Road.
- Host: [Chris Williamson](https://realalpha.app/people/chris-williamson/) · Host, Modern Wisdom
- Show: Modern Wisdom
- Episode: [Crypto Scams, Dopamine Websites, Tasteful Slop & Vape Shop Energy - Rabbit Hole #6](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/), Oct 26, 2026
- Moment: 1:56 to 8:09 of the episode (6 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/permissionless-crypto-launches-can-turn-a-reputation-into/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=116

## Quote

> “your crypto wallet, it's like your email address. It's public. People know, they can't take your money, but they can know where to **send you money**.”
> — [Shaan Puri](https://realalpha.app/people/shaan-puri/) at [5:43](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=343) · Modern Wisdom

## Takeaways

1. A coin can be tied to someone’s name without their approval.
2. Unsolicited tokens can create misleading signals of endorsement.
3. AI makes it easier to generate and track token activity.

## About this segment

They describe fake AI likenesses, unsolicited coin launches and the pressure to endorse a token. Permissionless transfers can make someone look involved without their consent.

From “Crypto Scams, Dopamine Websites, Tasteful Slop & Vape Shop Energy - Rabbit Hole #6”, Oct 26, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[2:03](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=123) That's not the etymology of that one. That's what I was told. That's retroactive. I thought it'd be like a tip. Yeah, that might be a retro. I mean, it definitely works. All right, Jack, I've been needing to ask you about this. What the fuck is happening with this Jean Phil guy? You know what? I'm actually not as clued up on this as I should be, but the initial analysis of that was this is like a completely unique one-of-a-kind in person creating content in was on instagram originally do you see i think so it's on air we got a ton of it on x i think we've like we've crossed the charism you guys have seen this right i know none of this i saw this yesterday oh you've been in android for too long this is the whole thing that's george at the private equity yeah that's you that's you trying to get good

[2:59](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=179) service off a guy that's giving you water um and from this he's like doing a coin but yeah i i i'm actually maybe i'm maybe i'm uh ill-informed in here but he doesn't exist does he he's ai right yeah it is ai but the initial launch of that people assumed he was real for a long enough period of time for it to become this big thing and yeah there's infinite number of cryptocurrencies attached to his likeness that people are and then there's derivative content now where people are making like counterfeit AI of that AI.

[3:34](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=214) And it's, I guess, you know, you can say, do you own your own likeness? But do you own your AI's own likeness is much more of a difficult question. Like fake Gucci bag of this guy. Yeah, well, it's the fake Gucci bag of the fake Gucci bag. It's like, you've made a mockery of my mockery. I don't know, between this and Hunter Biden's laptop coin, it's not looking good, you think? It's really, really the world of crypto.

[3:56](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=236) i'm holding diamond hands with my melania coins so let's wait and see yeah let's wait and see well you know what's interesting in the last like 24 48 hours there's this thing that's uh taken over twitter sean you've probably been familiar enough with this but they're like there's this mechanic shall you say in like crypto trading where people will try and get somebody to attach themselves to a coin that gets launched right it's like it gets permissionlessly launched off the back of some conversation or trend and then the person that started that trend uh gets continually harassed to like attach themselves to it basically like say this guy had a twitter account somebody launches a coin they'll be in the comments of that everything he posts until he makes a decision one way or another to say just nagging this is

[4:42](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=282) yeah this is i'm attached to this or i'm not and this in the last couple weeks this uh x money you know the like payment infrastructure on x so in the u.s you can you can create an x money account which allows you to like send and receive dollars and now there's these sort of systems that have been built where people are permissionlessly sending the proceeds of the trading volume of these coins to Twitter accounts.

[5:11](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=311) I saw someone talking about this. So in the last 24, 48 hours, you've seen like people that are just like opening their Twitter and being like, I've got 13 grand. I have 70 grand sitting here because like I made this video and somebody like attached my name to it and then it became this, there was momentum. But those people are doing it as a honey trap or like a thin-ended wedge to try and reel them in.

[5:30](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=330) Ooh, imagine how much money you could get if you were properly involved with this. So you're liquidating your reputation. They did that with a billion dollars, actually. Remember when the dog coins, like Shiba Inu and all those dog coins? Yeah, it was Doge, it was Shiba. People started creating more Doge coins, because why not? And they realized, well, people's, your crypto wallet, it's like your email address.

[5:53](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=353) It's public. People know, they can't take your money, but they can know where to send you money. and uh so they just sent it to vitalik the creator of ethereum and they were like look it's in his wallet he believes and this is very early on so people like they just airdropped it to him because it was worthless they created it that night and then the next morning they're like vitalik is all in on this oh it's the most like guerrilla form of charity yeah it's like aggressive guerrilla charity but what he did was brilliant he actually turned it into charity so it the thing started to go up he's like and he you know he instead of just being like guys i don't endorse this is bullshit and then people are just like losing money on the way down too he just donated it all to india and gave a billion dollars to like an indian non-profit and that was the end

[6:33](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=393) of it and so they like a lot of good actually happened from one of these at the beginning so could you if some you if somebody sends you um you can't be you can't reject it on you can't set up a piece of code which is like only transactions i've approved can come through No. And that's, you know, free money doing not for me. Thank you. But the, like the downstream effects of that is like tax return with like 10 million transactions for half a cent, because all of this stuff is like, I want to identify everybody that owns this thing. And then, and, and now you can do that with like one line of English prompt, right? Two or three years ago, it's like, there's actually some like technical lift to make this happen now it's just like it's kind of like the you know dead internet like you're interacting with like complete like mirages of people and

[7:27](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=447) now this is just like the cat the you know horse has left the stable, whatever analogy you want to use. It's just like, how are we even going to begin to like wrangle this stuff? The amount of information that's just being, just exploding every second. And, and like, weirdly you have the, I guess you could make the argument that the AI can take, like handle it on the other end, like do the accounting of the like 10 trillion things that are happening every second and going straight to your address.

[7:54](https://realalpha.app/v/n9NhSWUrm38/?t=474) Or it all just goes back to cash. And you then get swing so far the other way. I'm very down for a cash-based society again. As an ex-club promoter, I love the idea of that, Cash Williamson.