Each Saturday during the college football season ESPN hosts College GameDay, an pre-game show with a bunch of football experts and hundreds of screaming college kids in the background.
Today one of those screaming college kids was Sam Crowder, a student who brilliantly decided to hold up a sign with his Venmo username asking his mom to send him beer money.
Cue the Internet, and instead of of getting a few bucks from his mom more than two thousand people sent him money on Venmo, including $50 from Venmo themselves.
Since Venmo has no minimum transaction amount, it’s possible that a lot of these were just $.01 – but more than likely most were at least a dollar, meaning Sam’s Venmo balance is probably looking pretty good right now.
Even though the internet is going crazy about the brilliance of Sam’s idea, it’s important to note this isn’t without precedent. In fact someone basically did the exact same thing three years ago. Another enterprising student also went to College Gameday carrying a sign with a QR code pointing to their Bitcoin address, and ended up getting $24,000 sent to him that day.
It seems like 3 years is how long it takes for the world to forget about this little trick, so expect to see someone holding up a sign during the 2019 football season asking for donations on whatever the latest payment platform happens to be.