A college dropout starts posting NFT threads from his parents’ basement. Four years later, he runs the biggest daily markets stream on the internet, interviews mainstream celebrities, and survives one of crypto’s ugliest controversies. That is the Threadguy story in one paragraph.
Full disclosure before we start: I had some interactions with him on X back in early 2022, when he was still rocking a Mutant Ape PFP. He seemed like a funny kid finding his lane. Watching that kid become one of the most influential voices in crypto has been strange, impressive, and occasionally uncomfortable. More on that later.
First, the facts.
Who Is Threadguy?
Threadguy is the online name of Michael Jerome, a crypto streamer and content creator who posts as @notthreadguy on X. He rose to fame through NFT Twitter threads, then reinvented himself as a livestreamer covering crypto, meme coins, and now stocks.
The short version:
- Crypto and markets streamer, active since 2021
- Best known for his daily live show covering market opens, meme coins, and trader interviews
- Former NFT commentator during the 2021–2022 bull run
- Central figure in the “LA Vape Cabal” era of meme coin influencers
- Now runs Counterparty, a finance media studio, with a weekday stream on pace for 240 million impressions per year
His audience skews young, extremely online, and very active in exactly the corners of crypto where attention moves prices fastest.
How Did Threadguy Become Famous?
His rise happened in distinct chapters, and each one tells you something about how crypto fame works.
The dropout. In 2021, Michael Jerome was a sophomore at business school in Virginia. He reportedly left a Zoom accounting class after ten minutes, then dropped out the next day to go all-in on crypto. As a teenager, he had already flipped sneakers and trading cards, so speculative markets came naturally.
The threads era. He started as an anonymous account posting pure information threads about NFT projects, with zero personality or shitposting. Those threads grew the account from nothing to thousands of followers and gave him his name. In December 2021, he minted an XCOPY piece on Nifty Gateway and traded it for a Mutant Ape, which became his profile picture and his entry ticket into ape-era NFT culture.
Community jobs. By 2022, NFT projects noticed him. Jenkins the Valet, a Bored Ape ecosystem project, brought him on with the half-joking title “Director of Vibes.” He also co-hosted daily Twitter Spaces, interviewing NFT founders from his basement studio.
The Pivot
The streaming pivot. When NFTs cooled, Threadguy made the move that actually made him famous: daily livestreaming on Twitch and X. Market opens, meme coin trenches, trader interviews, all with a webcam and a whiteboard background. The timing was perfect. Meme coin mania needed a daily show, and nobody else was doing it live.
The celebrity era. His breakthrough beyond crypto came in July 2024, when he landed a three-hour interview with Andrew Tate, timed around Tate’s controversial $DADDY meme coin launch. Threadguy flew to Eastern Europe to record it in person, since Tate could not leave Romania at the time. One of his first genuinely big interviews, it went viral far outside Crypto Twitter and pulled in an audience that had never watched a crypto stream before. The bookings only escalated from there: an episode teaching streaming giant Adin Ross how to trade meme coins, an interview with viral personality Haliey Welch of Hawk Tuah fame. His circle of LA-based influencer friends, including FaZe Banks and Frank DeGods, became known as the “LA Vape Cabal.”
The reinvention. After the LIBRA disaster (next section), he relocated to New York and rebuilt. In mid-2025, he launched Counterparty, a finance media studio, with his flagship weekday show streaming every market open. The content now spans stocks, crypto, prediction markets, and collectibles. He interviews everyone from veteran fund managers to anonymous trench traders.
The LIBRA Controversy
You cannot write an honest Threadguy profile without this chapter.
In February 2025, Argentina’s president Javier Milei promoted a token called LIBRA. It hit a multi-billion dollar market cap within hours, then collapsed as insiders pulled liquidity. Thousands of buyers were left holding losses.
Threadguy streamed himself trading it live. He said he bought around a $2.5 billion market cap and exited at a loss near $1.2 billion, losing roughly $250,000 by his own account. During the stream, FaZe Banks called in mentioning his own early LIBRA position. Threadguy muted the stream and covered his mouth for about thirty seconds.
That clip went everywhere. Critics called it evidence that the LA Vape Cabal had insider knowledge of the launch. Threadguy denied it completely, saying he had “zero insider information” and that talk of an Argentina coin was an open secret on Crypto Twitter for days. He posted a ten-minute response, removed his profile picture, and disappeared from the internet for roughly three weeks.
My own loss
On this specific point, I back him, because I lived it from the outside. LIBRA is my biggest meme coin loss to date. For about two weeks before launch, the group chats buzzed with talk that another president would launch a coin, and Argentina was the highest-probability guess. I spent those two weeks scanning DexScreener for country-related coins myself. When LIBRA dropped, at least five different guys DM’d me the same message: “this is the one.” They were right, technically. A real president coin. It also got rugged that same day, while I was out at a swimming class with my kid. I lost 80% of my clip in a few hours, on probably the biggest size bet I ever took on memes. My point: you did not need insider access to be positioned early. Half of Crypto Twitter was hunting for that exact coin. Being early and being informed are not the same thing, and LIBRA punished both groups equally.
Important context: no charges were ever filed against him, and he has consistently denied any insider involvement. The actual LIBRA insiders, by most reporting, were connected to the token’s creators, not the streamers who traded it. Still, the episode became the defining stress test of his career, and the “covering his mouth” clip follows him to this day.
The comeback is arguably the more interesting part. Plenty of influencers vanish after a scandal. He returned, rebuilt his show from scratch in a new city, and grew bigger than before.
Why Does Threadguy Move Markets?
The mechanics resemble what we described in our Ansem profile, with one key difference: Threadguy’s influence is live.
Real-time attention. A tweet takes time to spread. A live stream with thousands of concurrent viewers moves money the second he pulls up a chart. When he opens a coin on screen, some viewers buy before he finishes his sentence.
The platform effect. Beyond his own trades, he decides who gets interviewed. A founder or trader appearing on his stream reaches an audience that most crypto projects would pay serious money to access. Attention flows to whatever he points the camera at.
Culture, not analysis. His edge was never technical analysis. He translates crypto culture for a young audience and makes markets feel like entertainment. That parasocial connection converts viewers into followers who act on what they see.
As always, attention cuts both ways. Coins pumped on stream can dump just as fast when the segment ends, and viewers late to the move often become someone else’s exit.
Has Threadguy Been Right?
Depends what you measure. As a trader, his public record is mixed, and he is unusually open about losses, including the LIBRA loss. He often frames himself as a participant documenting the game rather than a guru issuing calls.
His genuinely great call was a career one: betting in 2021 that “making money on the internet” would become the dominant content niche, and betting again in 2023 that crypto needed a daily live show. Both proved right. His stream reportedly generates hundreds of millions of impressions per year, and finance streaming is now a crowded category he helped define.
Judge him as a stock picker and you will find plenty of misses. Judge him as a media entrepreneur and the record is hard to argue with.
Criticism
Threadguy attracts more criticism than most, partly because of his reach and partly because of the company he keeps. The recurring themes:
- The Vape Cabal era. Critics accused the LA influencer group of profiting from their audience during meme coin mania. The LIBRA and Hawk Tuah episodes turned that criticism into open hostility, even though no charges resulted from either.
- Platforming pump culture. His streams gave meme coin gambling a fun, accessible face. Detractors argue that this onboarded young viewers into a casino where most lose.
- Influence without accountability. When coins featured on stream collapse, viewers blame him. He has acknowledged this tension himself, admitting that few people in these markets make money and that he played an invisible role in promoting the casino.
- The usual copy-trading problem. Viewers who buy whatever appears on screen consistently buy attention peaks.
To his credit, he addresses criticism on stream rather than ignoring it, and his pivot toward stocks and interviews has softened the pure meme coin gambling angle.
Should Beginners Follow Threadguy?
His content is genuinely entertaining, and the interviews with veteran traders can be educational. Following him to understand crypto culture makes sense. Trading what he trades does not.
The framework we gave in the Ansem guide applies here too:
- Watch for narratives, not signals. His stream shows you where attention is flowing in real time. Treat that as market information, never as a buy button.
- Do your own research. Before touching any coin featured on a stream, check liquidity, holders, and fundamentals. Our guide on what makes a good meme coin covers the checklist.
- Assume you are late. By the time a coin appears on a stream with thousands of viewers, early money is already positioned. Manage size accordingly.
Live content compresses the attention cycle. That makes the entertainment better and the copy-trading worse.
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My Take
I will be straight about this one, because I watched it happen in real time. When we had those interactions in early 2022, he was a funny kid with a Mutant Ape avatar, genuinely enthusiastic, hustling threads for a community he clearly loved. I liked him. Rooting for him was easy.
The bigger he got, the less impressed I became. The LA era, the cabal branding, the celebrity coin circus around LIBRA and Hawk Tuah — watching that arc was sad more than anything. Not because he became successful, but because the game he chose to play was the one where his audience pays for the lessons.
Credit where due, though: the podcast era is his best work. The daily show is well produced, the interviews are real, and pivoting from meme coin trenches to broader markets was the mature move. Whether the reinvention is conviction or just reading which way the wind blows, I honestly cannot tell you. Probably both. In crypto, those are usually the same skill.
Would I trade off his streams? No. But as a case study in how attention becomes money on the modern internet, there is no better character to watch.
Final Words
Threadguy’s story is the creator economy and crypto colliding in one person: a college dropout who turned threads into a following, a following into a stream, and a stream into a media company, surviving a career-threatening scandal along the way. Whatever you think of him, he understood before almost anyone that markets themselves would become content.
Understand how his attention machine works and you understand how modern meme coin markets work. Just remember which side of the camera the money flows toward. For the full picture of this influencer era, read our profile of the other defining voice of this cycle: Who Is Ansem?
If you enjoyed this one, check out our other meme coin related content.
As always, don’t forget to claim your bonus on Bybit EU below. See you next time!
FAQ
Who is Threadguy in crypto?
Threadguy is the online name of Michael Jerome, a crypto and markets streamer who posts as @notthreadguy on X. He became famous for NFT Twitter threads in 2021, then built the biggest daily live show in crypto, now run under his media company Counterparty.
What is Threadguy’s real name?
His real name is Michael Jerome. He dropped out of business school in Virginia in 2021 to pursue crypto full-time.
What happened to Threadguy?
After the LIBRA token collapse in February 2025, Threadguy faced insider trading accusations, denied them, and disappeared from the internet for about three weeks. He later returned, moved to New York, and relaunched his stream under the Counterparty banner.
Did Threadguy have insider information on LIBRA?
He says no. Threadguy stated he had zero insider information, lost roughly $250,000 trading LIBRA, and called the accusations baseless. No charges were ever filed against him.
What is the LA Vape Cabal?
The LA Vape Cabal was a nickname for a group of Los Angeles-based crypto influencers, including Threadguy, FaZe Banks, and Frank DeGods, who dominated meme coin content in 2024–2025. The label turned hostile after the LIBRA and Hawk Tuah controversies.
What is Threadguy’s stream?
Threadguy Live streams every weekday from New York, covering market opens, stocks, crypto, prediction markets, and interviews with traders and founders. The show is produced by Counterparty, the media studio he co-founded, and reportedly generates over 200 million impressions per year.
How old is Threadguy?
Threadguy was born in the early 2000s and is in his early twenties. He was a college sophomore when he dropped out in 2021.
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