Tampa man wants his money back for license plate, among other things

Barry Maniwurst of South Tampa, a self-described “former crypto-genius and stonks wiz” is seeking a refund from the state of Florida Department of Motor Vehicles for a personalized vehicle license plate he purchased in 2021.

“It says ‘CRYPTO1’ and that, well, that doesn’t really hold relevance for me anymore,” he said while lying in bed at 2pm on a Tuesday because he had nowhere to be, cradling the plate and staring at a framed portrait of a monkey smoking a cigarette that he purchased around the same time for some reason. “I quit my day job when I was a bitcoin millionaire for about four days and that does hold relevance for me now.”

“Either way, I don’t feel I should be held responsible to hang on to something that reflects my personal failure to act responsibly,” he said. “Although, now that I think about it, who else would be held responsible for that?”

He was holding the plate because the Jaguar XF it was once attached to was sold to a tomato farmer in Plant City via an ad Maniwurst posted to Craigslist.

“Ads on Auto Trader.com are really expensive, by comparison,” he said.

Asked if he would do anything differently if he had the chance, he said, “Uh, yeah. Like, everything. Every. Single. Thing. Starting with the fact that I had no way of knowing that investing everything I had into a brand-new form of currency, rooted in someone making fun of traditional commodities, with no actual financial backing could ever possibly be a bad idea.”

“Okay, now that I hear it aloud, I guess there were some red flags.”