For $68,200, you can buy several Rolex Submariner Watches, a couple of 2019 BMWs, or a few hours of gaming with top streamers.
On July 19, V-Tuber Claudia Moneta spent as much as a luxury Sedan at Twitch streamer Connor “CDawgVA” Colquhoun’s 2024 Auction to win some time with creators Pokimane, Ironmouse, and Valkyrae.
Hosted on CDawgVA’s 1.3 million follower Twitch channel, the daylong auction house, which also included a full suit of plate armor and a 3-D printed skull, managed to raise over $500,000 for the Immune Deficiency Foundation.
As for V-Tuber Moneta, she paid $23,500 for a “Hangout/game session w/Ironmouse + Connor,” $14,000 for a “Collab with Valkyrae,” and $30,700 for a “Gaming Session with Pokimane” (which was the most expensive purchase of the entire night.)
“I wanted to donate to a charity that was for a great cause, and also knew it’d be a rare opportunity to collaborate with these content creators,” Moneta told Passionfruit.
Some of the streamers themselves were dumb-struck someone would spend that much money on an opportunity to chill.
IronMouse, who is one of the largest V-Tubers on Twitch with two million followers, called the ordeal “crazy” on X. CDawgVA shared on X, “Got confirmation that this has been paid in full… WHO ARE YOU?!”
Moneta is a self-proclaimed “sexy cyborg” and a small streamer with just 5,200 followers on Twitch. Very few knew who they were before the bids, but spending an exorbitant amount of cash in front of an audience of thousands worked as advertising for their channel.
According to Socialblade, Moneta gained over 8,000 followers on X and 2,000 on Twitch. Their latest Twitch stream after the auction pulled in over 9,000 views, much higher than the 600 to 800 their content normally gets.
To afford this exorbitant purchase, Moneta told Passionfruit that they “have a certain amount of savings that I have built up and wanted to contribute a substantial amount to a good cause.”
V-Tubing can be an expensive hobby since you need motion-tracking tools and the capital to pay someone to make a custom computer-generated avatar for you.
Moneta would not share what they do for a living other than they “beat up nerds and take their lunch money,” which doesn’t sound like a lucrative enough business to even afford five minutes with Pokimane.
“People have been guessing what I do for a living or how I was able to spend this much money,” Moneta said. “A lot of jokes about me being an oil princess, Elon Musk, Joe Biden, a drug kingpin, and all sorts of other random theories.”
As for how Moneta plans to spend their evenings with these creators, they are still undecided. Right now, they are leaning towards just chatting in a regular conversation “instead of getting distracted by a game,” they said.
But for now, they’ve raised money for charity and have more of the world wanting to know about who this cyborg is.
