Introduction
My name is Zeus Damora Astono, and at the young age of 13 years old, I made my very own crypto token.
Some of you might be wondering why I created one so early in life—or even why I made one at all. In this modern world, cryptocurrency has gotten a bad rep in recent times. It’s been affiliated with rugpull scams, “self help” gurus, and young kids around my age who know nothing about crypto but still babble about their views on just about every platform.
This reputation gets even worse when we dive into the world of meme coins. Often, the face of crypto is recognized as tokens such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, or maybe even Solana. But on the opposite side of the spectrum, a few lesser known tokens could fit the bill. Including the likes of Doge, Pepe and WIF. The latter is widely known and regarded as “Meme-coins”.
Meme coins are tokens based on, you guessed it, popular memes. Like Doge for example, was inspired by the popular internet dog, named Kabosu.
The Problem With Meme-coins
On the surface the world of meme coins looks and is fairly cute. With memes of furry animals like dogs and cats dominating the market. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Below the water, the meme coin world is pretty dark. Communities are filled with people constantly spamming swears and slurs, graphic images are used, and it seems as though there is possibly just a single ounce of respect shared between the multiple parties.
The mindsets of some of the traders on these tokens have been warped and twisted into something I’d call a gambler’s mindset. They constantly buy new tokens without doing anywhere near the amount of research needed, afterwards they pray and hope that they’ll be able to make it. This routine repeats and repeats with the only light at the end of the cave being running out of money to spend. This situation leads me to my next point.
Rugpulls. There have been so many rugpull scams, I don’t think I could even count them using my fingertips. Logan Paul with his Cryptozoo, the ‘Hawk Tuah’ girl, FaZe clan. There have been so many of them.
This occurs far more frequent in meme coins, and especially on the website Pump.Fun . I’d suggest that this is also something that helps build and kick-start the gamblers mindset that so many traders have. Essentially, a rugpull is when you create a token, and once it reaches a specific market cap, you, (as the developer and holder of most of the tokens), immediately dump all of your tokens. A worthwhile example would be a pirate, gathering a crew of people, setting off into the sea, then once in the middle of two islands, the captain jumps off into a safety boat with his crew’s treasures and runs away, leaving his crew stranded.
This is a problem.
There have been many accounts of people getting financially hurt in this process. Hoping that they hopefully somehow bought and successfully scouted the next big thing as soon as it launched.
What Makes $DIDID Different
With $DIDID, even from the start I’ve had no supreme motives to somehow benefit from the loss of the community.
In fact, the journey all started with a simple YouTube video.
Sometime in the month of May, I watched Baird Business’s video about ‘How To Create Your Very Own Meme coin’. Whilst watching his video I was starstruck, in just a few hours or so Baird had made his own crypto token, then his token, $HAMI, skyrocketed to it’s all time high of $30.55 million.
This video inspired me. I had previously expected crypto token creating to have been worth at least a couple of months worth of coding. But in today’s world, all you need is a device, and 0.02 $SOL.
Not long after that I started gathering my ideas, hoping to land on something that sounded right. I went through multiple different names and phases, including a character named Turd The Turtle. Afterwards, I finally came across the character I was seeking, Didi The Duck. A cute duck from the popular ‘Duck Song’ meme. I felt as though he was perfect, because I’ve always loved ducks, and I felt as though I needed to inject something that felt like me into the project.
But the road that followed wasn’t easy. There was absolutely no traffic. 2 hours, 3 hours, 5 hours went by, there was about 5 total transactions in the token. I was frustrated—surely I’d made a wrong step somewhere along the way.
This is when my father lent me his hand, one final chance.
The Turning Point
With his help the token finally started to garner interest. It wasn’t much, but even a little momentum was better than none at all. The official Telegram community was also growing exponentially. This slow growth continued until around a few weeks later when suddenly we went from a market-cap of about $30k to $1.9 million overnight.
I saw people’s reactions to this, and I felt obliged to start taking things seriously, I understood that $DIDID wasn’t just a fun side project, it was the grand enchilada now.
From here the team and I started injecting projects into every corner. We settled to create something for a greater cause.
With $DIDID I want to educate and to inform the younger generation to go and pursue their dreams. Because children, teens, young adults, we have all been dealt one of the best hands; time. If people start chasing their goals early, it’d enable them to have more time to create mistakes, learn, and grow. We need to start taking advantage of this fact, the younger generation have to start from now.
And one of my plans for the future is to help grant help to those children willing to take a chance to pursue their dreams, especially in the crypto market. I want to give them the best foundation possible to start with.
But I also have a lot of plans for the now. Currently, we’re in the development process of creating our very own community-based crypto ‘social media’-esque application, where people can discuss and bond over crypto tokens. We’re also preparing to launch our very own collectible $DIDID plushie collection, based around the basis of creating something made by Indonesia, rather than something just made in Indonesia. Every doll we create has been willingly handcrafted with love by the mothers and the people of Indonesia.
And don’t worry, the community is given every penny from the revenue we generate.
Why Everyone Should Start Early
$DIDID is just an example of something created by someone starting early. It’s just a mere example of the power hidden within starting early.
Sadly, I fear most of the young generation forget that nowadays. They forget about their advantage; being young.
We are given the opportunity to make mistakes and to get something wrong, but to escape just the mere thought of making a mistake we end up not doing anything at all. In Finnish education systems there is a saying that is commonly used, “We cannot afford to waste a brain”, in our situation, a fitting substitution of words would be, “We cannot afford to waste the early spark of our brain”.
Because in these early years, we have the most amount of time to experiment, to try new things, and to bounce back stronger than we started. Whether it’s starting a shoe re-selling business, a YouTube channel, a crypto token, it doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to begin.
The truth is, when we’re young, our mistakes cost less. We can afford to trip, to pivot, to try again without the weight that adulthood of us are often brings. But too many paralyzed by the fear of failure, not realizing that failure is actually one of the best teachers we could ever have.
When I created $DIDID, I didn’t have all the answers, in fact, I didn’t have a clue about anything I did. Everything I did was a first in my life. I wasn’t backed by a million-dollar team or some big strategy. I had an idea, a duck, and the courage to take a chance. And that chance became something real, not just because of luck, but because I acted. I did something when most would only think about it.
And so finally, to you, readers. If you are still young, and even if you aren’t, don’t be afraid of failure. The fun in life is making mistakes, and being able to come back up after you’ve been knocked down and staring life in the eyes and saying “is that all you got?”
You are never too young to start something real. And you’re never too small to make an impact.
