One night in May, Mikol Ayala stood in an empty parking lot in Florida with his arms outstretched and legs propped up while two people doused him with isopropyl alcohol. “Get ready to kick me out,” Ayala told them. Then the fireworks started.
The scene, lit by a pair of car headlights, was broadcast live on X. The goal was to promote Ayala’s crypto token, Truth or Dare. “Don’t get FOMO, drop a bag on $DARE!” read a graphic overlaid on the feed. Ayala had filmed himself performing stunts all week—drinking bong water, smashing his TV, and so on—but this one went too far.
Ayala dodged the first volley of roman candles fired in his direction, but soon his entire torso was engulfed in flames. “Oh shit,” said a voice behind the camera who clearly hadn’t considered the possibility. The group threw water at Ayala, but it quickly ran out. He buckled down on a patch of grass and started screaming.
Meanwhile, the price of the $DARE coin rose, reaching a total combined value of $2 million the next day. The denizens of the internet seemed to be pleased with what they saw.
Ayala suffered third-degree burns over a third of his body, doctors later told him. But from his hospital bed, he continued to promote his coin in X videos, promising to return to halting growth as soon as he could. “I’m the most spontaneous wildcat in the fucking world,” he said. “You tell me to go, I’m there.”
Although hard to believe to the average ear, Ayala’s story is not unique in the world of so-called meme coins, where marketing ploys now routinely range from ridiculous to dangerous to sexually degrading.
This year, to put their coins on the map – as noted by the crypto media Decrypt – one creator filmed himself punching himself so hard in the face that he lost a tooth, another turned black after smoking drugs, two creators rubbed against each other in their underwear , and another group detained a person in a suspected kidnapping.
