Capybara Stocks: Beyond Meat’s Meme Leader Speaks

What began as a personal trading exercise for Dimitri Semenikhin has transformed into a phenomenon reminiscent of the 2021 GameStop craze. The 28-year-old Russian, operating under the pseudonym Capybara Stocks, started posting his stock picks on Reddit as a method to understand his own trading strategies and create a system where others could critique his ideas. His $3 million gamble on Beyond Meat unexpectedly catapulted him to internet fame when the stock surged, turning him into an accidental thought leader for retail investors.

The comparison to Keith ‘Roaring Kitty’ Gill, the architect of the GameStop movement, has been circulating widely, though Semenikhin himself calls the parallel ‘ridiculous,’ acknowledging Gill as ‘the godfather of the entire meme stock trend.’ Despite his reluctance to embrace the comparison, the pattern is unmistakable: an individual trader’s public bet sparks massive retail interest, driving extraordinary price movements in a struggling stock.

Semenikhin’s background reveals an unconventional path to meme stock fame. Born in Russia but raised in Monaco, where his father served as the Honorary Consul of Kazakhstan, he previously worked as a science fiction writer and founded several startups before selling them and moving into real estate development with his family’s company. Now based in Dubai, his foray into stock picking represents a side project that unexpectedly took on a life of its own.

The rapid ascent to internet fame has brought unexpected pressures for Semenikhin. What began as ‘tens of messages’ quickly escalated to ‘100 messages an hour,’ making it impossible to maintain his responses while continuing his primary real estate work. ‘I was attempting to reply to everyone,’ he explained, but the volume forced him to abandon the effort, creating a sense of responsibility he never sought.

This sense of obligation has directly influenced his trading decisions. Despite realizing $9 million in profits from his initial $3 million Beyond Meat investment—a 233% return—he maintains a $1 million position partly because ‘I would feel guilty selling my Beyond Meat stock.’ The trader admitted feeling ‘taken hostage by the newfound responsibility to answer to all those people about their Beyond Meat investments,’ highlighting the psychological burden that accompanies sudden influence over retail investors’ decisions.

The irony of his position isn’t lost on Semenikhin, who isn’t vegan and only tried Beyond Meat products during the COVID-19 pandemic out of curiosity. While he found the taste ‘quite good,’ as a meat-eater he ‘would rather have the real thing.’ This disconnect between personal preference and investment thesis underscores the complex dynamics driving meme stock phenomena, where fundamentals often take a backseat to social momentum.

Beyond Meat isn’t Semenikhin’s first successful public investment thesis. He claims to have achieved even greater returns with SharpLink Gaming, an Ethereum treasury company, purchasing shares at $8 and selling around $35 for a 335% return. ‘All of those positions, I did exactly the same thing as I did with BYND: I took the position and made publications on Reddit, outlining my thesis,’ he explained. The difference with Beyond Meat was that ‘instead of being told I was wrong, this happened.’

His investment strategy involves thorough research and public thesis presentation, creating accountability through transparency. However, the Beyond Meat experience has been qualitatively different due to the scale of attention and the emotional weight of influencing others’ financial decisions. Despite his success, Semenikhin expressed feeling ‘pretty bad about himself’ for missing out on the full 1,000% run-up in BYND, as he had been selling his position throughout the rise.

Looking to move beyond his Beyond Meat association, Semenikhin has publicly announced his investment in Ethereum treasury firm ETHZilla, uploading a 20-minute YouTube video explaining his thesis. The stock jumped following the video’s publication, suggesting his influence remains potent. This transition from traditional meme stocks to crypto-adjacent investments reflects the evolving landscape of retail trading and the continued search for the next big opportunity among his growing follower base.