Who founded the subreddit r/wallstreetbets?

Jaime Rogozinski founded the subreddit r/wallstreetbets on January 31, 2012. He created it as a place where people could discuss unusually risky trades and pursue short-term gains with money they could afford to lose.

Rogozinski was not the celebrity investor Keith Gill, also known online as “Roaring Kitty,” whose GameStop commentary later made the community famous. Ryan Cohen and Vlad Tenev were likewise unrelated to the subreddit’s founding: Cohen co-founded Chewy and led GameStop, while Tenev co-founded the brokerage Robinhood.

The community initially grew gradually, reaching roughly 100,000 subscribers by the end of 2016. Its profile expanded dramatically during the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, when posts and discussions from the subreddit became part of a broader retail-trading phenomenon.

Rogozinski’s relationship with the community later became contentious. Reddit removed him as a moderator and banned him from moderating in April 2020, after he attempted to trademark the subreddit’s name. That later dispute does not change who originally founded it.