The story
A gentleman, a trader, and a timeline that refused to let him fall.
Richard E. Ptardio spent more than 35 years on trading desks at Barings, Lehman, Kaupthing and others — on the right side of Black Wednesday and ahead of the Asian Financial Crisis. In recent years he turned his attention to crypto, where his musings on X earned him a following of nearly every meaningful name on the timeline.
Then the market turned. The portfolio evaporated. And, in a development he chronicled with his usual restraint, so did his marriage.
The Solana memecoin community responded the only way it knows how: by launching a token in his honor and pointing every cent of trading fees at his degen wallet. Not a bailout. A thank-you.