When a meme coin crisis befell Argentine President Javier Milei in February, Gabriel Haines told Decrypt that he was enthralled. Over half a year later, the controversy’s scope is still developing, but the comedian and podcaster is bent on folding elements of it into a TV pilot.
Haines has honed his talents for years on X. But the individual, who often posts videos of himself ranting about crypto-related topics—while shirtless and holding a machete—said that he has raised $150,000 to create the first episode of a series mixing crypto and crime.
Taking inspiration from dramas like "Breaking Bad" and "The Sopranos," the show is being called “The Max Extractor,” according to a pitch deck shared with Decrypt. The plot centers on an entrepreneur who loses everything trading cryptocurrencies on leverage, and while trying to project a successful image that’s actually hollow, makes regretful choices to pay debts owed to shady characters.
Haines said the show’s protagonist is loosely based on Hayden Davis, the 28-year-old CEO of Kelsier Ventures, who helped First Lady Melania Trump introduce a meme coin and advised Milei on the ill-fated Libra token, which plunged not long after the far-right leader’s promotion of it on X.
Milei has distanced himself from Libra, but crypto research firm Nansen said that traders lost $251 million on it, leaving what Haines views as a novel canvas for fiction.
“It’s not exactly clear what happened, but somehow the president of Argentina was promoting this shitcoin, and Hayden was involved,” he said. “I was really inspired by that.”
Argentina’s anti-corruption unit cleared Milei of wrongdoing in June, but a congressional commission pushed forward with an investigation on Tuesday, according to ámbito. Davis, among others, is fighting a class-action lawsuit being led by crypto law firm Burwick Law in New York.
As bizarre as the cryptosphere may be at times, Haines wants the show to feel realistic and authentic, providing an inside look at how scams and hacks propagate. Haines said that goal has gotten some pushback from prospective backers, but it hasn’t made a difference.
“If you want to say that cryptocurrency is this shining horse, ‘an angel from on high,’ you’re bullshitting,” he said. “You have this permissionless open platform that has a lot of different things going on that most people do not understand.”
In the same way that Margot Robbie unpacks subprime mortgages in "The Big Short," Haines wants "The Max Extractor" to capture the intricacies of blockchains in an entertaining way. Documentaries aside, that’s pretty hard to come by, he argued.
Haines tapped Sullivan Slentz, who helped create a commercial for a DeFi project that Haines appeared in, as the show’s director. Its cast is still being decided, but the two are hopeful that their pilot episode will be finished by February.
In recent years, Haines has been an announcer for Karate Combat, a crypto-fueled fighting league. In 2022, following the collapse of crypto exchange FTX, Haines crowdfunded $10,000 through a platform called Juicebox to search for its disgraced CEO in the Bahamas (with his family).
That endeavor drew over 60 supporters. His current effort is being bankrolled by around a dozen, he said. The show is also sponsored by genzcash, which bills itself as the “memetic warfare division” of privacy-focused coin Zcash, he added.
Haines said other backers include Gabriel Shapiro, CEO and founder of MetaLeX, an advisory on crypto governance; Anil Lulla, CEO of Delphi Digital, a crypto research firm; and Solana-based automated market maker DeFiTuna.
The comedian is far from striking a deal with the likes of HBO, but it might not be too long before Haines offers a closer look at what's coming. He plans on turning behind-the-scenes content into a vlog.
“The bottom line is, unless there is an audience for this, there’s no future,” he said. “I'm not an expert in almost anything, but there’s one thing that I can say I have at least a little bit of knowledge in, and that’s video. I’ve made so many.”
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