“What’s going on guys? Pro the Doge here, A.K.A. SlumDoge Millionaire,” Glauber Contessoto declares to his hundreds of thousands of followers online.
Mr Contessoto has the kind of rags to riches tale that has drawn many people to cryptocurrency.
“It took me two months to become a millionaire.”
According to his own account, Mr Contessoto grew up poor in a family that emigrated to the United States from Brazil and was determined to make money.
He dabbled in the music business, dabbled in the stock market, and then, last year, turned to cryptocurrency — specifically Dogecoin, a digital currency based on an image of a Shibu Inu, a Japanese hunting dog, a popular internet meme.
“It made sense to me to invest in Dogecoin because it’s the very first time you have a meme and a cryptocurrency paired together,” he said.
“I call it the language of the millennials, memes. We send memes to each other all the time, it’s just the way that we communicate, and Generation Z.”
“So, I figured, okay, this is going to be the next play,” he said. “People are going to start investing in Dogecoin and it’s going to take off.
“Obviously, it helped that Elon Musk was also a fan of Dogecoin.”
Mr Contessoto initially backed his hunch about Dogecoin with a small investment.
Then he decided to sell his shares and go all in, as Musk – head of Tesla and Space X, the world’s richest man – got behind the cryptocurrency.
“[Musk] tweeted back-to-back… like on a rant where he’s saying, “Dogecoin is the future, Dogecoin is the people’s crypto. Everyone can own Dogecoin, it’s cents on a dollar,” Mr Contessoto recalled.
“And he posted a picture of a rocket to the moon, Dogecoin to the moon.”
As Musk…
