A 19-year-old Canadian entrepreneur Justin Jin has raised $1,234,567 in pre-seed funding for Giggles, a meme-driven prediction market app that lets users bet on whether short videos will go viral. The round was led by blockchain-focused venture firm 1kx, which confirmed the investment on X on April 7.
From Minecraft YouTuber to Prediction Market Founder
Justin Jin, born October 5, 2006, in Vancouver and now based in San Francisco, dropped out of Babson College to build Giggles with co-founder Edwin Wang. The duo previously ran an in-game Minecraft marketplace that was shut down for violating monetization rules. Jin is no stranger to building large audiences: from 2020 to 2022, he ran the Minecraft YouTube channel 50mMidas, accumulating billions of views. He also founded Mediababy (formerly Poybo Media), a Gen Z media production and marketing company that was acquired for roughly $3.8 million.
From a Joke Landing Page to a Working Product
Giggles started in 2023 as a fake landing page Jin built to mock rumors of a TikTok ban. The page mimicked a Google product and drew 100,000 visits in a single day after spreading across TikTok. Jin turned the joke into a real product. The app combines short-form video feeds with prediction market mechanics: users post clips and others invest “aura points” early on content they believe will go viral. If a video goes viral, early investors profit. Jin describes it as putting a trading app and TikTok together.
Targeting Gen Z and Gen Alpha with 'Brainrot' Culture
Giggles is currently invite-only with approximately 450,000 users on the waitlist. The eight-person team ranges from age 19 to 38. The company plans to convert aura points into real cryptocurrency as the product scales. Jin frames Giggles as high-risk but not extractive, comparing it to gambling but arguing it differs from lotteries because the underlying content carries entertainment and informational value. The app targets a Gen Z and Gen Alpha audience drawn to nihilistic, absurd short-form content often called “brainrot.” Jin’s stated goal is to build the first crypto-native app where users spend more than 30 minutes per day, using market mechanics to filter out bots, AI-generated content, and low-quality posts.
Crowded Field: Competing with Kalshi and Meme Coins
Giggles enters a market already crowded with prediction platforms like Kalshi and speculative meme coins. Giggles attempts to merge both categories inside a social media wrapper. 1kx framed the investment as a bet on a new model where users can buy into content early and share in its upside. Notably, Jin’s fundraising announcement included a Rickroll in the launch video.
With half a million users waiting and a clear focus on the young audience, Giggles adds a fresh variable to the competition among crypto social apps. The real test will be whether the conversion of aura points to crypto feels smooth enough and whether the content curation can keep bots and low-quality posts at bay.