In July 2026, a new diet will take effect in California, where Biesk’s family lives, requiring residents to obtain a license to participate in “trading activity on digital financial assets”, including the exchange, transfer, storage or administration of certain cryptographic assets. President-elect Donald Trump also promised new crypto regulations. But for now, no crypto-specific laws are in place.
“We are in a legal limbo where there are no clear laws,” says Andrew Gordon, a partner at law firm Gordon Law. “Once we know what is ‘in range’, we will also know what is ‘out of range’. We hope this will create a climate in which rug pulling does not occur, or when it does, it is considered a criminal offense.
As the evening wore on on November 19, angry messages continued to pour in, Biesk said. Although some celebrated his son’s antics, calling for him to come back and create another coin, others were threatening or aggressive. “Your son stole my fucking money” wrote a person on Instagram.
Biesk and his wife were still trying to understand how their son was able to earn so much money, so quickly. “I was trying to understand exactly how this cryptocurrency trading works,” says Biesk.
Some memecoin traders, sensing there might be money in simulating the turn of events, created new coins on Pump.Fun inspired by Biesk and his wife: WHEN DAD And WHEN MOM. (Both are now virtually worthless.)
Equally disturbed and perplexed, Biesk and his wife came up with a tentative plan: make all public social media accounts private, stop answering the phone, and generally hide until things got worse. (Biesk’s account is active at the time of writing.) Biesk declined to say whether the family had contacted law enforcement or what would happen to the funds, saying only that his son would “put the money aside.”
Hours later, an X account under Biesk’s son’s name was posted on X, imploring people to stop contacting his parents. “I’m sorry about Quant, I didn’t realize I was making so much money. Please don’t write to my parents, I will refund you (sic),” the message read. Biesk says the account is not run by his son.
Although alarmed by the negative reaction, Biesk is impressed by the entrepreneurship and technical abilities his son has demonstrated. “It’s actually a kind of sophisticated trading platform,” he says. “He obviously learned it on his own.”
The fact that his teenager was able to make $50,000 in one evening, Biesk theorizes, speaks to the fundamentally different relationship that children of that age have with money and investing, characterized by an urgency and hyperactivity that clash with traditional wisdom.
“For me, crypto can be difficult to understand, because there’s nothing behind it, it’s nothing tangible. But I think kids identify more with this intangible digital world than adults do,” says Biesk. “It has an immediacy to it. It’s almost as if he understands this better.
On December 1, after a two-week hiatus, Biesk’s son returned to Pump.Fun to launch five new memecoins, seemingly undeterred by the abuse. Disregarding the disclaimers embedded in the very names of some of the new coins, one of them was named test and another do not buy…people joined. Biesk’s son earned an additional $5,000.