The first trade Ovie Faruq ever made wasn’t in Bitcoin or Ethereum. It was a penny stock for a nutritional company called Provexis that had rocketed 1,700% in three days.

“There were rumors that Coca-Cola were going to buy them,” he recalls with a laugh. “I ended up buying three grand of it, which was all the money I had from my part-time jobs.”

The trade imploded almost instantly. The stock sank 95%, and he never sold. Nearly fifteen years later, the shares still sit in his account like a time capsule of naïve conviction.

“It’s probably down like 80% still,” he admits. “Sometimes I get emails about shareholder voting. But I just hold it for the sentimentality.”

In crypto parlance, Ovie got “rekt.” Today, under his initials OSF, he’s turned that memetic shorthand for financial ruin into one of the fastest-moving consumer product stories in crypto history. Rekt Drinks has sold more than 760,000 cans in under a year. The first drop moved 222,456 in 48 hours. Binance’s recent collaboration? Gone in three minutes.

The path from anonymous NFT artist to beverage mogul isn’t in any business school syllabus. It was forged in the trenches of a brutal bear market, sustained by a community that had nowhere else to go, and scaled just as traditional finance began taking crypto seriously.

From Trading Floors to JPEGs

OSF grew up in a small UK village, the son of first-generation Bangladeshi immigrants. His father, a mechanical engineer who could code, and his mother, who moved to the UK at 17, instilled the classic “Asian parent” mandate: excel in school, excel in sports, aim for something extraordinary. “You had to be the best in school, you had to be the best in sports, you had to become the next world leader,” he recalls.

By 15, he’d already decided he wanted to be a trader, an unusual ambition sparked by the chaos of the 2008 financial crisis and a forgettable British reality show called “Million Dollar Traders.” “It was pretty shit,” he laughs, “but it was about these random people coached by a pro trader, trying to make money. After I watched that, I was like, man, that’s what I really want to do. I just want to trade stuff.”

He tailored his education accordingly: math and economics at the London School of Economics, a summer internship on Barclays Capital’s trading desk, and a full-time offer after graduation. Within a year, he was running his own book. By 2018, he had moved to New York to join the ex-Lehman Brothers team that had brought him over.

“After I watched [“Million Dollar Traders”], I was like, man, that’s what I really want to do. I just want to trade stuff.”
OSF

It was in the lockdown winter of 2020 that crypto finally clicked. After years of skepticism, he bought his first Bitcoin in January 2021 and ETH the following month. The gateway was his Barclays desk-mate and future Rekt co-founder, Michael “Mando” Anderson, who was flipping NFTs.

When OSF watched Mando buy a Hackatao piece for about $20,000 and sell it to collector Seedphrase for $200,000 in three weeks, he knew he had to dive in. “As soon as you’re on crypto Twitter, the rest of it really kind of falls into place,” he says.

What followed was a rediscovery of his teenage passion for digital art. Growing up, OSF had spent countless hours on DeviantArt, trying to draw in Photoshop with a mouse because graphics tablets were too expensive. When he realized he could now create that art on an iPad with Procreate, he started minting pieces for fun. Each featured the same recurring character: a hoodie-clad skull that would eventually become known as Rektguy.

The original Rektguy doodle. Credit: Courtesy of Rektguy

When Rektguy launched as a free NFT mint in May 2022, the market was already imploding. “People were like, ‘Oh yeah, I feel rekt, I get it. I understand what this is,'” OSF recalls.

The collection featured stark black backgrounds with neon colors, a deliberate rejection of the pastel-colored “cute vibes” that dominated successful PFP projects like Pudgy Penguins and Doodles. OSF wanted something more punk rock, more aggressive, more honest about what crypto really felt like.

When Snoop Dogg bought a couple of pieces, the project exploded. But what really set Rektguy apart was the community that formed during the subsequent two-year bear market.

“People weren’t in it because they were expecting to make money. They were in it because they had nowhere else to go.”
OSF

“The community that we have is basically four years strong, and it’s people who formed during a two-year bear market,” OSF explains. “People weren’t in it because they were expecting to make money. They were in it because they had nowhere else to go. Somewhere to drown your sorrows, banter with people, laugh about how much money we’re losing.”

This trauma-bonded community would become the foundation for everything that followed. While other projects withered during the bear, Rekt’s Discord remained active daily. The brand’s merchandise drops sold out quickly. IRL events were consistently oversubscribed.

But OSF and Mando kept asking themselves: What actually is Rektguy?

“It doesn’t generate any revenue. What is it?” OSF remembers thinking. “I guess it’s IP, right? But what does IP actually mean?”

Liquid Brand Equity

The answer turned out to be hiding in plain sight, in Rektguy’s skeletal hand. In the art, he was already holding a drink. Why not make it real?

“We liked the idea of ‘rekt’ as a brand. People identify with this word or resonate with it quite a lot,” OSF explains. “Even though it’s supposed to mean something negative, I think the connotations of it are actually positive. People like getting rekt.”

Sparkling water made sense. It was cheap to produce, easy to ship, and perfect for IRL events. But when they pitched the idea to crypto conferences, the response was crushing.

“Pretty much every crypto event was like, ‘No, we don’t have a budget for it,'” OSF recalls. “I was like, man, no one’s going to buy these drinks.”

“Instead of rewarding people for onchain activity, let’s reward people for offchain activity, which is buying drinks.”
OSF

The breakthrough came from an unlikely place: Solana’s Saga phone. The device had sat on shelves for 18 months until people discovered it came with a $500 BONK airdrop. It sold out in 24 hours. That flipped a switch.

“In Web3, people say, ‘Come use my L2, do some trades, and I’ll reward you with an airdrop,’” he realized. “So I thought, let’s do the same thing, but instead of rewarding people for onchain activity, let’s reward people for offchain activity, which is buying drinks.”

The launch of the $REKT token alongside the drinks created what OSF calls “liquid brand equity,” the idea that a brand’s intangible value can be tokenized, traded, and shared with its community.

“When a company acquires another company, it creates an asset on the balance sheet known as goodwill — but that’s illiquid, you can’t trade it,” he explains. “I view our coin as that same intangible brand value, except it’s liquid. It trades on sentiment alone, with millions of dollars of volume every day.”

The model turned traditional consumer goods economics on its head. Early supporters who bought drinks earned REKT tokens that have since appreciated over 1,000%. The Rekt treasury holds 34% of the supply, now worth roughly $70 million, which OSF sees as “a marketing budget that came out of nothing.”

This alignment of incentives created a flywheel effect. NFT holders received equity in Rekt Brands Inc., converting them into what OSF calls “turbocharged marketers.” By leveraging crypto-native rewards like XP points and token allocations, Rekt turned every purchase into an investment opportunity.

The results accelerated with each drop: The first drop of 222,456 cans sold out in 48 hours. An Abstract collaboration moved 223,456 cans in 40 minutes. OpenSea’s 180,000 cans were gone in 17 minutes. Binance US sold 80,000 cans in three minutes.

“People have been rewarded for being early supporters and having faith,” he notes. “That’s how things should work. You should be rewarded for supporting your favorite startup brands.”

The crypto-native success opened doors in the traditional beverage world, though not without friction. Before Trump’s 2024 election and crypto’s mainstream embrace, conversations with distributors were grueling.

“You get off these phone calls like, ‘Man, we got grilled,'” OSF recalls. “It was really demoralizing.”

Everything changed as the drinks kept selling out and crypto gained institutional legitimacy. The same CPG executives who wouldn’t return calls were suddenly eager to understand the model.

“Everyone hated Prime,” he reveals. “No one got it. Everyone was like, ‘Why the hell would anyone want to buy this Logan Paul drink?’ Then Prime absolutely killed it. Now everyone says the same thing: ‘We don’t want to miss the next Prime.'”

“I want it to be a proper drink that’s everywhere. We need to get that big distribution deal, be across multiple states, thousands of stores.”
OSF

A breakthrough came through a community connection to a beverage industry veteran who’d spent 20 years in the space. He helped orchestrate a test in three Los Angeles 7-Eleven stores, where Rekt sold 2,500 cans in three days.

“The store owners were like, ‘What the hell’s going on?’” OSF laughs. “Our community was queuing outside, buying hundreds of cans, and walking out with trays.”

The goal now is one million cans in 12 months, a feat last pulled off by Red Bull in the 1990s. With more than 760,000 sold, they are on pace. But OSF’s aim is bigger.

“I want it to be a proper drink that’s everywhere,” he says. “We need to get that big distribution deal, be across multiple states, thousands of stores.”

Rekt at 7-Eleven. Credit: Courtesy of OSF

From Trader to Builder

OSF’s path to Rekt wasn’t paved with venture checks. It was financed through a string of high-conviction trades that showcased both his appetite for risk and his knack for timing.

“I’ve had a few big wins in the space that have allowed me to work on Rekt,” he says. One of the most decisive came in February 2023, when he and Mando sold nearly $10 million worth of Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs. The call proved prescient as the NFT market collapsed weeks later.

His memecoin bets read like a degen highlight reel. He bought $MOG the day it launched at a $1 million market cap, holding “a really big bag” all the way up. At $20 million, he remembers thinking, “Either they’re going to dump on me or we’re all completely deluded thinking this is going to a billion dollars.” The delusion won.

Then came $WIF. “I didn’t have my wallets on me at the time. I only had access to my NFT wallets, so I sold two Fidenzas to fund it.” He went all-in at a $20 million market cap and rode it to nearly $4 billion.

OSF speaking at NFC Summit Lisbon. Credit: Courtesy of NFC Summit

The wins were balanced by painful misses. He put seven figures into $RTR and “lost basically all of it.” Worst of all, he faded $TRUMP entirely. “I literally had seven-figure liquidity in my Coinbase account, I could have plowed it in straight away,” he says. Instead, he went to bed and awoke to a $20 billion market cap.

“If I’d had two drinks, I would have aped it,” he laughs. “People underestimate how much luck is involved.”

What’s remarkable about OSF’s approach is how deliberately he’s narrowed his focus as Rekt has gained momentum. The same trader who once juggled multiple positions and angel investments has gone all-in on a single bet.

“I don’t trade anymore. I don’t manage other positions anymore,” he says. “Sure, I could sit here and trade and make money, but that’s missing the forest for the trees. Rekt is a massive opportunity and I should be all in on it.”

“OSF has built a brand that’s just like himself — genuine, relatable, relentless — and proof that you can always bounce back from adversity. You won’t find a better person in crypto.”
MANDO

This laser focus shows in his social media, where he now tweets almost exclusively about Rekt, and in his daily routine, where he says he’s always thinking about the brand — even on the golf course.

“It just feels like we’re on something really good,” he reflects. “It makes me a bit anxious sometimes. I’m like, ‘Just don’t fuck it up.'”

The results speak for themselves. Rekt has ascended to the upper echelon of Ethereum memecoins, currently sitting at a $484 million fully-diluted market cap without any major exchange listings. The brand has secured collaborations with major crypto projects and is fielding interest from traditional distributors eager to capture the next generation of consumers.

“OSF has built a brand that’s just like himself — genuine, relatable, relentless — and proof that you can always bounce back from adversity,” says Mando. “You won’t find a better person in crypto.”

Rekt at 7-Eleven. Credit: Courtesy of OSF

Playing the Long Game

OSF’s vision extends beyond just selling drinks or pumping token prices. He sees Rekt as a case study for how crypto can reshape corporate finance and consumer brands.

“I think crypto has a place in modern corporate finance,” he argues. “It’s experimental finance. We’re going to see more of this stuff where it’s like, okay, we weren’t taught this at business school. This wasn’t in our textbooks. But this is unique and new.”

His thesis on “brand coins” — a term he coined to distinguish Rekt from pure meme plays — is already gaining traction. While critics might dismiss it as simply renaming memecoins, OSF sees it as fundamental reframing that helps people understand the value proposition.

“The real definition of a memecoin is something that doesn’t have any utility or generate cash flows,” he explains. “It’s just a coin that trades on sentiment. But with Rekt, the value comes from the brand.”

“I think CryptoPunks will absolutely rip. Then every single NFT will go up a lot. Then Punks will continue to go higher, but everything else will go back down again.”
OSF

Looking ahead, OSF is remarkably bullish on crypto’s trajectory, rejecting the traditional four-year cycle narrative in favor of a prolonged rally driven by institutional adoption and regulatory clarity.

“Crypto is now basically a completely approved asset class where the significant majority of both individuals and institutions are underexposed,” he notes. “That’s going to change a lot over the next few years.”

He’s “very bullish on Ethereum” and believes “people are not bullish enough on it,” citing the influx of treasury companies and institutional capital. But his NFT predictions are more sobering.

“I think CryptoPunks will absolutely rip,” he says. “Then every single NFT will go up a lot. Then Punks will continue to go higher, but everything else will go back down again.”

It’s the pattern he’s seen before: capital flows to blue chips while everything else gets a temporary pump before bleeding out. His advice to holders is blunt: if you get a pump and the team isn’t strong and engaged, sell. “There’ll be some dead stuff that will rally, then just die again. It will be painful.”

On the Rekt front, he’s preparing for all outcomes and moving with urgency. The goal is building a weatherproof business before any potential bear returns, one that maintains the community-first ethos that got them here while scaling beyond crypto-native distribution.

“We have this window now to transition from limited drops to thousands of stores,” he says. “Manufacturing takes time. New products take time. If we miss this window, we might not get another.”

There’s a poetic irony in building a successful brand on the language of loss. In a market that whipsaws between euphoria and despair, Rekt works because it says what most traders hide: everyone gets rekt at some point. That kind of risk-taking is a necessary part of finding outsized success.

OSF has alchemized wreckage into equity, turning a bear-market lifeline into crypto’s first CPG giant. Maybe that’s the ultimate trade: proof that in this market, survival itself can be the most valuable asset.

“I want Rekt to be a lasting example for future brands and companies,” he says. “Like, wow, these guys just created crypto finance, and this is a case study forever.”