Mark Longo
Appearances
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
So I kind of just sat down and was like, you know what, let's give this a shot. If this turns out to be something, then here's the start of a new chapter of our life. If it gets shot down or it doesn't work, I'm naked on the internet. Everybody's got the same parts. Like, so what?
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Within minutes. Literally, we launched it at like 10 o'clock in the morning, and within the first 20 minutes, I had a couple thousand subscribers. Because I already had kind of that group of people that were just waiting for me to open that door, and when I did, it just, everybody just flowed in. We call that pent-up demand. Yes, yes, and it very much was.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And when it came to Mark's OnlyFans business strategy? My thing was like I kept my subscription price low. You could come and see kind of highlights, but also you could incentivize people to buy the more X-rated stuff, kind of pick from my so-called menu of what you liked. Like, for instance, like put a cowboy hat or put my construction hat on. You know, do a striptease or whatever you want.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
You know, I'm willing to sell my underwear. So literally anything that I was putting out turned to gold. How much did the underwear go for? I think it was like between $50 and $200, but it ranged. Like if you wanted me to wear them three times at the gym, you know, it was a little bit more.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Peanut has millions of followers. And we just went, OK, if we can get a dollar, we can get $5, we can get $20 from a fraction of those people. We already have the following. We have the kind of the foundation of what we need here.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Until, finally... I was midway on the staircase. I had three cops to my right. I had three to my left. And one of them yelled, I found Peanut. I found the squirrel. And I said, listen, guys, like, I'll take Peanut. I apologize. I'll put him in the car and I'll drive him to Connecticut. You'll never see him again.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
You know, I had the owner of the Yankees reach out. I have Quentin Tarantino on my DMs. I have my favorite bands reaching out going, what can we do to help?
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
How the hell are we going to continue this nonprofit without our star and our golden squirrel? Those are the things that are going through like, wow, you know, Instagram's going to go down. TikTok, I'm not going to be able to build this stuff. You know, where am I going to get the funding for these animals? I already have the animals.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
What is what are going to happen to the animals if I can't feed them? This place is going to ultimately shut down. Mark was in a kind of anxiety spiral thinking about where all of this might lead. Then I'm going to be just reamed in the news and PR, like Mark, you know, failed at his nonprofit. You know, all of this is now transpiring. And I'm like, I got to figure this out.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
I'm sitting in the gym working out. I get a phone call from my lawyer and she's just instantly, Mark, what is this peanut coin on crypto? It's at 2 billion. Are you involved in this? And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And the guy to my right, I'll never forget this to the day I die, he looked at me dead in my eyes and said, it was a squirrel, now it's a raccoon. When is this snowball effect going to stop?
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, it's, you know, we're not talking about like you made a thousand bucks. You made a hundred million dollars off of this story and you didn't include me in my family.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Because you go on their website, the first photo on there is me with peanut. People were representing this coin as if it was mine. So I can't even tell you the amount of thousands of people reached out like, bought your peanut coin, made money off your peanut coin, hope you're doing well, I hope all this works out for the farm. And I'm like... have any clue what you're talking about.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
People started calling him a scammer. And that's when it started to flip. Like, oh, we donated money to Mark in coins. He sold the coins. He ruined the chart. Still, Mark was not deterred.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
Day three comes around, I get a phone call from our local news station from a gentleman that's in tears. And he's like, Mark, I don't know how to tell you, but they're gone.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
You go on their website, it literally has a photo of me. It literally had my sanctuary. It literally had my photos. And they used this to base their whole project on my story. So I was like, you have two options. Either include me... Or I sue you guys to get everything taken back. And they're just like, you, you have no power here. We made Peanuts story. We did this.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And I'm like, your crypto game didn't do to my story. The story was already here and you're using it to make money.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And I remember just like feeling nothing, not even anger, like nothing, just sitting there as a shell of a human being, not really believing it because This is a movie story, right? This is just straight out of a, you know, a f***ing film. And I found out, and I remember hanging up the phone, and there was a couple of volunteers there, and they killed them.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
I never thought I'd be somebody who has to fight trauma. Like, I'm about—I cried before you guys came here. I don't have enough time in my day to focus on grieving, so— You know, I have to focus that anger into motivation and positivity because if I don't, I'm going to just mentally break down myself.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
My phone started buzzing. TMZ's calling. You know, every major news outlet wants this story. And that's when it just went nuts. And then you're hearing Elon Musk talk about it. And you're hearing, you know, J.D. Vance and now Trump Jr. And it turned into like a political stunt.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
But it also turned into one of the biggest tragedies in 2024. You know, my squirrel sits next to Harambe now. And I always tell people, like, this shouldn't have been a story.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
No, I didn't even know what the blockchain was. Had no clue. But you would find out. I would soon find out.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
The most iconic piece is in here, and it is your cowboy hat.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And now I'm seeing this baby squirrel walk in the middle of the street and he's looking at me. He's only got one eye open. And then he just made one hop and was down on my pant leg and just started to crawl up my leg. So as he got closer, I kind of like brought him up into my hands and I put him in my hoodie.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
The only way I can get him to eat was through, you know, mashing up an avocado in the powder. And he would just stuff his face into it. Classic millennial. Yeah, literally like avocado toast. It was 100% his menu the whole time.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
You know, I played video games, he's in my pocket. You know, I went to go to CVS, he's in my hoodie. You know, I remember bringing him to PetSmart and put him in one of the hamster balls and he's running down the hall and the woman's like, oh, what do you have in there, a gerbil? And I was like, yeah, sure, it's a gerbil. You know, and there's Peanut running around, this little baby squirrel.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
You know, and then we just started to, you know, take photos and videos of him.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
We went on British TV and they deemed him the world's most famous squirrel. And that's when his TikTok blew up. And that's where, you know, 100,000 followers became a few million. And we just kind of rolled with the wave.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
I fist pumped that squirrel so many damn times because he just nailed these interviews like it was something that he was meant to do. Peanut knew how to turn on the charm. Did he ever. You know, especially with ladies. Like, he was a ladies' man.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
My wife DM'd me on Peanut's page. And that's how we met. She ended up calling me wearing a flying squirrel costume.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
So nuts.com is just a website where you can buy a variety of different nuts. So it definitely worked out perfectly.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
And I remember I got a call off to my wife to say, they're here, hide the animals. And I tried to buy myself some time to maybe figure out what's going on here.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
They were just happy to be there. The coolest part about it was they were classifying Peanut as the same as like a lot of the celebrities that you see in movies.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
The internet did what the internet does best and sexualized every ounce of that page, you know, and it's like, oh, you hike up your pants. I like where my pants are. Again, it's just you're turning this story into something it's not. They're accusing you of like thirst trapping? Oh, 100%. I'm like, guys, you can go on any social media platform and literally see people naked.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
If you're going to put me in the realm of thirst traps with a squirrel, I'm fully clothed, not showing off anything, and I'm just jumping around with a squirrel. Get your head out of the gutter. Enjoy the squirrel.
Planet Money
The Parable of Peanut the Memecoin
They were like, listen, you might not understand your value on social media, but we do. And you come off as a very innocent man with an animal. Could you imagine if we were to kind of shift from A to Z and put you on OnlyFans, what you can make?