Giggles Turns Viral Videos into a Stock Market with $1.2M Backing

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – April 08, 2026

A new social media application named Giggles has secured over $1.2 million in total funding to build what it calls a "stock market for videos," aiming to transform passive content consumption into an active, financialized game. The company announced it closed a pre-seed round of over $1 million led by the crypto-native investment firm 1kx, with participation from Noar Ventures, Bain Capital Scout, and Night Capital, among others.

The platform, founded by teenage Canadian entrepreneurs, allows users to "buy into" videos they believe will go viral, earning rewards if their predictions are correct. This model seeks to formalize a behavior already common on platforms like TikTok, where users leave comments like "investing in this post" or "I'm early" on promising content. Giggles aims to turn that social currency into tangible value, a move that could fundamentally alter the landscape of the creator economy.

The New Viral Economy

At its core, Giggles merges the addictive, scrollable feed of a short-form video app with the mechanics of a prediction market. Users are given "aura points" which they can use to bet on the future success of videos. If a video they've backed gains traction and goes viral on the platform, these early investors profit, earning more points.

"Giggles is designed for a new generation who are already discovering, backing, and amplifying trends across the internet," said Justin Jin, the 19-year-old co-founder and CEO, in a statement. "There's real social currency in being the person who "brought" a trend to a friend group."

The company plans to eventually introduce real-money mechanics, allowing users to convert their in-app points into cryptocurrency, effectively creating a live market for cultural trends. This ambition places Giggles in direct competition with established prediction markets like Kalshi and Polymarket, but with a crucial distinction: instead of focusing on political or financial events, Giggles' market is driven entirely by entertainment and the unpredictable logic of internet culture.

"Users are treating cultural discovery the way investors treat early equity stakes," added co-founder and CTO Edwin Wang, 20. "We're tapping into how people already act... We turned that into something users can actually act on."

The concept has resonated with investors. "Prediction markets show that people enjoy having a stake in outcomes, not just watching them unfold," noted Jakub Rusiecki, a research associate at lead investor 1kx. "We believe the concept of rewarding young people for identifying viral content early is an elegant blend of social participation and financialized incentives."

The Gen Z Founders

The vision for Giggles comes from two young entrepreneurs who are themselves deeply embedded in the digital culture they seek to monetize. Justin Jin and Edwin Wang first met as top players on Hypixel, the most popular server for the game Minecraft. Their first business venture together involved buying and selling items within the game's virtual economy during high school.

Their entrepreneurial paths diverged but remained focused on the digital native landscape. Jin became a YouTuber, amassing over 100,000 subscribers before founding Mediababy, a video publisher that he claims generated over 20 billion views. Meanwhile, Wang co-founded MyBite, a social food delivery app targeted at Generation Z.

Their combined experience gives them unique insight into the behaviors and desires of their target demographic. They are not simply building a platform for Gen Z; they are building it from within, leveraging their innate understanding of meme culture, gaming economies, and the social dynamics of online communities.

Early Traction and High Stakes

Since launching its beta in August 2025, Giggles has shown significant early promise. The app quickly attracted nearly 30,000 daily active users, finding a fervent following in high schools and college campuses across the United States. Beyond its active user base, the company reports that over 400,000 people have signed up for its waitlist, signaling strong anticipation for its broader public launch on iOS, Android, and the web.

This initial viral adoption is crucial as the company prepares to scale and introduce its planned real-money features. The new funding will be used to expand product capabilities and scale distribution ahead of the public launch. The team's ambition is to create a crypto-native app where users spend significant time, driven by what has been described as an "addictive feed" and "dopamine cycles."

The lead investor, 1kx, is known for its deep research and hands-on approach to building sustainable token economies. The firm's portfolio is heavily focused on Web3 infrastructure and applications, and its investment thesis explicitly avoids "pure speculation plays." Their backing suggests a belief that Giggles can create a consequential new market at the intersection of social media and blockchain technology.

The Blurring Line Between Content and Capital

While the concept of rewarding tastemakers is compelling, Giggles' model also raises significant ethical and regulatory questions. By financializing virality, the platform introduces a powerful incentive that could lead to content manipulation and speculative hype cycles, where videos become popular not for their quality but for their perceived investment potential.

The primary concern revolves around its young target audience. Critics worry that blending speculative financial markets with an addictive social feed could have a negative psychological impact on teenagers and young adults, potentially fostering gambling-like behaviors. The gamified nature of "investing" with points, which are planned to become real cryptocurrency, blurs the line between entertainment and high-risk financial activity.

Furthermore, Giggles is stepping into a complex and largely undefined regulatory arena. As it moves toward real-money transactions, the app will likely face scrutiny from regulators overseeing cryptocurrency, financial markets, and consumer protection. Its operation as a prediction market could subject it to laws governing gambling in various jurisdictions. Ensuring market integrity—preventing pump-and-dump schemes or other forms of manipulation—while also moderating content will be a formidable challenge.

As Giggles prepares for its public launch with real-money mechanics, it stands at a critical juncture, poised to either redefine the creator economy or become a cautionary tale in the ever-deepening financialization of online culture.