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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Is every memecoin just a scam? Experts on whether Andrew Tate and Trump are fleecing their followers
In November last year, I was turned into a memecoin. Several, in fact. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Someone alerted me that a memecoin called Dork Nerd Geek ($DNG) had been minted with a picture of my face, and it already had a market cap (the total value of all coins in circulation) of $29,000. Twenty minutes later it was $100,000. An hour later it was $800,000. I had no idea what was going on, but I did know that 'Dork Nerd Geek' was the nickname Andrew Tate gave me because I've spent much of my journalistic career investigating allegations of human trafficking made against him. I noticed he was currently livestreaming to his followers. I opened up his live stream and, for the first time, bore witness to the insane volatility of the memecoin market. In the space of 10 minutes, dozens of new me-related memecoins were being minted, including 'Disgraced News Gatherer', 'Matt Shea is a faggot,' and 'Take My Wife Tate (CUCK),' the latter of which included a picture of my fiancee taken from Instagram. Tate was pumping some of these memecoins in value merely by talking about them, with market fluctuations happening in real time on the order of millions, based on his every word. Two seconds after he said the words 'Fuck Matt Shea,' a coin called 'FUCK MATT SHAE [sic]' soared in value. Twenty minutes later, he uttered the words 'Fuck Matt Shea … ' again and it went even higher, only to drop back down to nothing when he finished his sentence with '… is not a generational asset'. He then said he would pump the coin after taking a piss. He walked offscreen to urinate. It rocketed. Soon, there were hundreds more Matt Shea memecoins with similar names, as his followers tried to trick people into thinking that their Matt Shea memecoin was the one Tate was pumping. His words became memecoins, those memecoins shot up in value, and then the value disappeared instantaneously. All in all, about $2m was spent by people on memecoins making fun of me in the span of a few hours, and hundreds of millions more on other coins he mentioned during the stream. By the end of his live stream, the value of all the coins he pumped was back to near zero. All the fans who had invested at his behest collectively would have lost hundreds of millions of dollars. His followers may have felt they were in on the joke, but in the end they mostly lost their money. Only a tiny number of wallets actually profited from the coin including one crypto that made a profit of $240,000. A number of online crypto investigators including Coffeezilla, bored2boar, StarPlatinum and others have found that Tate has manipulated memecoin markets using 'pump and dump'-like schemes, leading to large profits for those within his inner circle. We put the allegations in these investigations to Tate's team, who said they had no comment. What happened on Tate's stream that day felt bizarre but I didn't completely understand what I was witnessing. I thought I basically understood bitcoin, but how do memecoins differ, and why do they continue to be popular when so many people have lost money on them? According to David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: 'Basically, literally, yes.' 'All of this is like a big game of pretend with made-up financial instruments,' he said. 'It's printing your own made-up money. You print your own Monopoly money and then people buy it from you for real money.' The best thing you could possibly say about memecoins is that they initially felt like a funny, countercultural way to participate in internet culture. They satirised a financial system that increasingly looked like a silly game to those on the outside. They encapsulated a humorous generational nihilism. According to Sander Lutz, the nation's first crypto-focused White House correspondent: 'You could consider a memecoin to be a stock in a cultural phenomenon – like Dogecoin and the Doge meme.' 'Another way of defining a memecoin,' Lutz said, 'is a cryptocurrency token that has an acknowledged inherent lack of value. The crypto world, outside of memecoins, is full of so many people who are trying to pitch you on tokens that are 'actually really profound' or 'represent a stake' in some kind of 'useful network', but are equally worthless. What makes memecoins different is that there's none of that noise.' In other words, all crypto is bullshit, but memecoins are consciously bullshit. In their essence, memecoins distill the attention economy into a tradable asset, monetising the ebb and flow of viral internet hype. This has created a system in which the biggest attention-seekers on the planet – Logan Paul, Andrew Tate, Elon Musk, Donald Trump – can bleed their followers for profit. The more controversial they are, the more viral they are; and the more viral they are, the more their memecoins increase in value. Last year, some developers performed attention-seeking stunts on livestreams to pump their tokens, leading to animal abuse and a faked suicide. Chase Herro, the co-founder of Trump's main crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, said about crypto: 'You can literally sell shit in a can, wrapped in piss, covered in human skin, for a billion dollars if the story's right, because people will buy it.' Most memecoins end up making money for the person who makes them as a 'rug pull' or a 'pump and dump'. The term 'rug pull' was actually invented by the crypto community, and it works like this: First, you mint a memecoin, and make sure that you and your mates own most of the liquidity pool (the total number of coins in circulation). The size of the liquidity pool – the amount of that memecoin that 'exists' – is, like everything else in memecoins, a totally made-up number. Second, you generate hype around the coin by convincing people it will 'moon' (shoot up in value). This usually involves getting a celebrity, influencer or the president of the US, to promote it. People then buy the coin, thinking it will be a good investment. Law of demand means that as people buy it, the 'value' of the coin goes up, and since you and your mates own the lion's share, you get richer. Then, at a time known only to you, the creator of the coin, and other insiders, you 'pull the rug', selling off all your stock at the newly high price. You make money, and the value of the coins bought by the masses you manipulated shoots back down to zero. It's basically a way to just trick people into giving you money, dressed up as an 'investment'. A 'pump and dump' is pretty much the same thing, but with the slight caveat that you're doing it with a coin that already exists, rather than creating your own. You buy a cheap coin, 'pump' its value by hyping it so others invest, then 'dump' all your stock, selling it off at a huge profit and causing everyone else to lose their money. 'It's provably negative sum,' Gerard told me. 'The only way you get money is by other people losing money.' The only people really getting rich off memecoins are influencers and their crypto enablers (people like Herro, or Hayden Davis, the guy who helped launch Argentinian president Javier Milei's memecoin and was involved in Melania Trump's memecoin). Despite this, the idea that trading memecoins is a good way to get rich persists on the internet. Is it theoretically possible for someone like you or me to invest at just the rich time and get rich off a coin? Just as with traditional gambling, there are a tiny number of success stories, such as people like the 'Moo Deng whale', who turned $800 of Moo Deng coin (a memecoin referencing the viral pygmy hippo of the same name), into $10m. But only 0.4% of (the main memecoin trading platform) traders have made more than $10,000. About 0.002% have made more than $1m. Lutz told me: 'There are a select number of people who've made quite a lot of money on these tokens, but they tend to be the same people. They tend to be people who are very well-connected, who are in specific group chats, and who have a lot of existing capital.' 'You'll always have more people losing than amounts of winners,' according to Gerard. 'And the winners never shut up, so you think it's a winning environment.' One of the main reasons people keep falling for these coins is that they think they've figured out the scam and invested early, before the rug pull or the dump. But this is never really the case. According to Gerard: 'Crypto has been an ever-escalating series of get-rich-quick schemes, where a whole bunch of people think that they're smarter operators than the previous operator, and generally they're not.' Memecoin traders will often be invited to Discord and Telegram chats that are sold as 'insider channels' where, according to Gerard, 'they think they'll hear about these scams before the rug is pulled – but actually they're the suckers. Crypto is full of people who think they're the scammer, not the sucker.' Despite all this, many people – especially young men – continue to invest in memecoins. Forty-two percent of men and 17% of women aged 18 to 29 have invested in, traded or used crypto, according to a 2024 Pew Research Center study, compared to only 11% of men and 5% of women over 50. 'It's no accident that memecoins are such a phenomenon among young people who have grown immensely frustrated with a financial system that, I think it's fair to say, has failed them,' Lutz explained, 'and where supposedly sure investments aren't likely to give them returns that would give them the quality of life their parents had. Memecoins are nakedly meaningless, but there are many financial products, both in crypto and in the world of traditional finance, that may profess to have meaning, but at their core may be nearly as meaningless to young people.' This, too, is why memecoins have become popular with far-right, manosphere influencers and their fans. 'It's undeniable,' Lutz said, 'that the trend in memecoin popularity among younger people – in particular young men – is part of the same trend where you're seeing a loss of trust in institutions and a loss of confidence that traditional paths to success work out.' 'These are the same tenets that have brought young men into the fold of the Maga-verse or to influencers like Andrew Tate. There's overlap between them because they both stem from the same frustrations affecting so many young people, in particular young men, who feel more anger, bitterness, disillusionment and nihilism than a generation ago.' Some people don't even seem to care that they're being scammed, according to Lutz. 'It's remarkable to see the culture in these ecosystems, because someone will rug-pull a project – what you would consider to be a scam in that they're running you out of the money – but that's kind of an accepted practice and people are like, 'Hey, good for them, I got screwed over, on to the next one.'' 'There are too many cases to count of people who've lost their entire savings gambling on new coins. If you're a gambler at a casino, there's Gamblers Anonymous and an existing infrastructure to deal with people who are addicted to gambling. At casinos you have 'no play' lists in compliance with existing laws. There's no existing infrastructure to aid people who lose all of their savings on memecoins.' Some memecoins try to claim that they're more than just high-stakes gambling, in order to ensnare more willing buyers. These coins are often accompanied by the false promise of some kind of utility, be it 'roadmaps', 'airdrops' ( free tokens given out for marketing purposes), off-chain value mechanisms, games where you can 'spend' the coins, and various incomprehensible frameworks using the coin to vote or create some sort of ecosystem. The utility almost never materialises. $Batman coin promised to integrate 'entertainment, gaming, and real-world utility'. Logan Paul's $ZooToken supposedly allowed buyers to play a Pokemon-like game which never worked. The exception, the one memecoin to offer a tangible benefit in the real world, is the one sold by the president. On 17 January, three days before his second inauguration, Trump launched his own memecoin, $Trump. At the time of writing, the coin's market cap is over $2.5bn, spurred on by Trump offering a dinner and White House tour to the top owners of the coin, which took place last weekend. Unlike other memecoins, it offered something concrete: access to the president. This made its value soar. Right now, only 20% of the token's total 'supply' is currently in circulation. The remaining 80% is supposedly held by Trump and his business partners. Trump and his business partners are supposedly only allowed to sell off their holdings in $Trump when they are 'unlocked' in tranches over time, according to their own made-up rules. As Gerard puts it: 'They own the fake money, but they can't sell it until it's unlocked in tranches. Note that the limits are artificial. I mean, they could just 'print' more.' But already, '58 wallets have made over $10m each from President Donald Trump's meme coin, totaling $1.1bn in profits', while '764,000 wallets of mostly small holders have lost money on $TRUMP', according to CNBC. Gerard said: 'A lot of his own fans bought the coin. They thought it would be a fabulous success because Trump is a 'business genius'. He ripped off his own fans. 'The coins' creators and original sponsors get free $Trump coins and they can dump those on the market at will every time a tranche is released. And they do. And are people ever going to make money on those $Trump coins they bought? Probably not. The money goes to the Trump family, and that's the direction it was created to make it go in. So yeah, it's a memecoin dump. He's just dumping the coins on the suckers and it's a textbook case.' Trump and his business partners also profit in transaction fees every time $Trump is traded, so far earning $100m. Whether this is all legal or not is up for debate, but soon after launching his own memecoin, Trump replaced the head of the regulator responsible for memecoins, the SEC, with a pro-crypto appointee. Lutz said: 'In the last few months, the SEC has either dismissed or withdrawn all of its crypto-related lawsuits against every big crypto company in the United States and closed all of its investigations. I mean, the SEC is hosting roundtables almost every week with crypto companies, asking how it can be more helpful to the industry.' Trump has also enthusiastically supported a legal framework for stablecoins. Stablecoins are theoretically stabilised in value by being 'pegged' to the value of another asset like the US dollar, but in reality have often become 'de-pegged' and therefore unstable. Right now, the Stable Bill and the Genius Bill, which reference Trump calling himself a 'stable genius' in 2018, are trying to make their way through Congress. They pave the way for the US government to use stablecoins to pay everything from housing grants to social security payments. And Trump himself just so happens to have a stablecoin of his own – through the World Liberty Financial company – which would shoot up in value if these bills pass, earning his family trust potential billions. The Trump family has a claim on 75% of net revenues from World Liberty's token sales. 'It is absolutely the government's job to stop mis-selling of investments – that's why ordinary retail mums and dads cannot buy into binary options,' Gerard said. 'It's absolutely open slather for crypto in the US now. This is really bad. A lot of people are going to get skinned. It's going to be terrible.' Is there any cause for hope? According to Gerard, while it may appear everyone is investing in memecoins, this is mainly exaggerated by the media. Sure, lots of young people have dabbled, but only the real crypto geeks are actually buying the things. 'The good news is most people are not falling for it. And our evidence for this is the retail dollar trading volumes at Coinbase, the largest crypto dollar exchange. Coinbase happens to be a public company so that means they have to give accurate numbers to the SEC. So they disclosed their retail trading volumes. They're down 17% in the first quarter of 2025 from where they were in December 2024. They've gone down with the Trump coin regime. That gives hope.' As far as my own memecoins go, even the Tate fans who invested appear to have become aware of the scam they fell for. Shortly after the stream went dead, I received an email from a Tate follower titled: 'MATT SHAE WE NEED YOUR HELP.' He, along with other Tate fans, claimed they were victims of Tate rug-pulling them. They wanted me to help spread awareness of their community's plight – by publicizing a new memecoin they had minted called $RRT (Real Rugger Tate). I didn't write back.
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Upgraded Edwardian redbrick in Drumcondra offers garden office, extension and B3 BER
Asking price: €695,000 Agent: DNG (01) 833 1802 Originally built as two-up, two-downs in the early 1900s, the Edwardian redbrick houses lining Millmount Place were once humble abodes with dark interiors. Over a century later, demand has now seen most of these homes extended and renovated to suit modern lifestyles. As they're on a quiet, residential street within walking distance of O'Connell Street, they're clearly a winner with professionals working in the city. Number 16 is a prime example of the kind of transformation that can – and did – take a previously modest terraced home into the 21st century. Recent upgrades including rewiring, replumbing, high-grade insulation and a mix of double and triple-glazing brought the BER rating to an energy efficient B3. Updated decor, combined with large rooflights and floor-to-ceiling glazed doors, create a contemporary feel throughout. Spanning 1,023 sq ft, living space includes an entrance hall leading on to a sitting room with plantation window shutters, a living room, guest WC, and an extended kitchen/dining room with Range cooker, integrated units and double doors to the back garden. Upstairs are two double bedrooms and a family bathroom. A bonus which is likely to appeal to buyers is the office that has been created by converting a former garage at the end of the garden, with access to a rear laneway. For hybrid workers, this can provide that all-important sense of working away from home, even though it's actually only steps from the kitchen. Drumcondra village is a short stroll away, as is Griffith Park with its flower garden, outdoor gym, riverside walks and playground.
Irish Times
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Times
Crampton-built home on secret street at Sydney Parade for €1.395m
Address : 4 Ailesbury Gardens, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4. Price : €1,395,000 Agent : DNG View this property on On the Sandymount side of the level crossing at Sydney Parade Dart station, this secret street runs parallel to the train line and links to the seafront at Sandymount's Strand Road via St Alban's Park. It is also within a couple of minutes' walk of the Merrion Centre. If you run out of milk, you could put the kettle on and probably be back home before it had boiled. This Dublin 4 road features 1930s Crampton-built homes that come with an unusual added extra: a small plot of land on the far side of the street that abuts the station's granite wall. Number 4 , tucked behind a privet hedge, is a well-maintained four-bedroom house whose entrance is to the side, giving you extra space inside and the full width at the front of this home to inhabit. READ MORE The front door opens into a decent-sized hallway with a nicely proportioned livingroom and a family room immediately on the left and facing out on to the front garden. Some neighbours have opened these two rooms up to create interconnecting spaces. [ Look inside: Superbly designed house and mews with unparalleled views over Killiney Bay for €7.25m Opens in new window ] Livingroom Kitchen and dining area Library Conservatory-diningroom There is a guest WC off the hall and the staircase winds around it. A signature style of homes of this vintage, it means the stairs are visually unobtrusive. The back of the house is where a new owner may look to make some changes. One could, for example, decide to merge the this home's office, conservatory-diningroom and kitchen to take better advantage of the morning sun that streams into the rear of the property. [ Rathmichael home offers rarified retreat in serene, sylvan setting for €3.25m Opens in new window ] The house's dining area opens out to a large garden that extends to about 30m (98ft) in length and is very private. There is scope to extend here subject to the conditions surrounding planning permission governing rear extensions. Bedroom Landing Hall Driveway Rear The detached garage, is set well the back from the house and can also be accessed from the garden. Upstairs there are four bedrooms with a separate WC and bathroom. While many would consider this to be somewhat old-fashioned, it's a practical layout that allows busy morning households to make use of both rooms simultaneously. The property has off-street parking for two cars parked end to end and has a well-planted front garden that gets gorgeous western sun. The semi-d, which extends to a generous 164sq m (1,765sq ft) and has an E2 Ber rating, is seeking €1.395 million through agent DNG. These houses rarely come to market. The last one listed on the property price register was in October 2012, when number 2 sold for €851,000. Now there are two up for sale simultaneously. Three doors up, number 7 Ailesbury Gardens, is on the market through agent Allen & Jacob. It also has four bedrooms, with three bathrooms, and 202sq m (2,174sq ft) of space, and the D2 Ber-rated property is seeking €1.495 million.
Irish Independent
3 days ago
- Business
- Irish Independent
Once burnt-down house in Connemara has risen from ashes with double-height ceilings, A2 BER and mountain views
Asking price: €475,000 Agent: DNG Martin O'Connor (091) 866708 You can pretty much build what you like, subject to planning permission. But the one thing you can't build is a view. That's the reality Kenneth and Rosaleen Kelly will have to contend with when they bid a final slán abhaile to their home in Rosmuck, Co Galway, in the heart of the Connemara Gaelteacht. Since the move here from Newport, Co Mayo, during the Covid-19 pandemic, Kenneth has continued to commute to the neighbouring county for work. 'I'm a butcher by trade,' (part of the renowned Kellys of Newport), he says. 'We always wanted an opportunity to move away from Newport, but still be close enough that I could drive there. So this house came up and the views were just class. 'We look straight over at [the village of] Recess, and then the mountains behind it, and then over to our left we have the 12 Pins. We've got two lakes, and loads and loads of rocks! "We were watching Yellowstone on TV at the time and it reminded us a lot of it, with the panoramic view of the mountains being the first thing you see every day.' Rosaleen adds: 'Also, it was the double-height ceilings that did it for me. It was like, I came to view the house by myself, and as soon as I walked into it, I knew I wanted to live here, even though it was a shell.' When the Kellys first arrived, living in Teach Chnoc Mordán was like a trip back in time. There was no water, Kenneth says, no electricity, no septic tank and there wasn't even a road up to the house. 'There had been an old house there for years and years, and then it burnt down,' he says. 'And then Lisa Kennealy, the lady we bought the house from, fixed it up, to a point.' The Kellys stepped in to employ a skilled army of local tradesmen, led by Peter McDonagh, whose local network supplied all of the other labour and artisanship required. 'Peter was a machine man, so he could get us a road up to the house. And he has been our shoulder to cry on, full of valuable information,' Kenneth says. 'He's a local man over the road, so he helped with sewerage pipes, septic tanks, all that sort of stuff. There's an old cottage up the back of the house where the original family that lived here would have started off, so we put a road up to that.' Kenneth put the floors down himself and did all of the painting, and after about five months of commuting and sometimes staying in digs locally, the Kellys moved into their new A2-rated home – a rating achieved courtesy of high-spec insulation and an air-to-water heat pump system, which Kenneth says reduces their electricity bill to roughly €50 per month over summer. Once in, the couple set about personalising the interior, focusing first on the kitchen. 'It's double-height, so we put a big island in the middle with really functional drawers,' says Rosaleen. 'I like storage and everything has a place.' There are three roof lights directly over the working area and a built-in pantry press, a gas hob, and a feature extractor fan with timber panelling. 'I wanted to put in a hidden door,' Rosaleen says. 'I had the material picked and everything, but then I decided it wasn't going to look right so I went to the kitchen woman, and I said, 'I'd like to use this material in the kitchen if possible'. And she said, 'Yeah, I think I'll use it on the extractor fan'. So we have this massive extractor fan that looks like a church organ. And I was like, 'Oh, great' because we got to use the material that would have otherwise gone to waste.' The house now has a total of 2,170 sq ft of living accommodation including four bedrooms – one of which is currently in use as a lounge – and is set on over two acres of garden. There is a hallway, a living/dining area, the kitchen, a utility and a shower room, and a large landing area on the first floor. Rosaleen says her favourite room is currently the lounge/ TV room. 'It's a totally different style to the rest of the house, and it's very calm. We painted the ceiling and the wall the same colour – Christmas Wreath, I think it's called – but it's a very calm, dark, cool space. Even in warm weather, it's a really calm space to watch TV, relax and eat.' Kenneth will miss the outdoor spaces most, in particular the elevated patio area, which takes in the mountain views. It is a part of the property that saw a lot of use during the unseasonably fine weather in recent months. And there's another big benefit that Kenneth really appreciates. The local pub (7km away), where a pint is very affordable indeed. In fact, it might officially be tied for the title of the cheapest pint of Guinness in the country at €4.50. Last month, the Sunday World newspaper claimed that accolade for a pub in Donegal at the very same price. The couple have always done their best to learn the Irish language and integrate into the tight-knit community, where everything can still be sourced through a grapevine established down the generations. 'We did learn Irish in school,' Rosaleen says. 'But your memory comes back a bit and we found ourselves talking Irish to each other a little bit in the car yesterday. There's a lady over the road, Mary Loftus, and she comes and she gives us an hour-and-a-half lesson every week.' Now Kenneth has changed jobs, taking up a new role based in Galway city, the commute has become too much and so they are hoping to move closer. 'It's an hour and 20 minutes before you even get to the edge of the city, and the traffic is terrible,' he says. 'If we were maybe 10 or 15 years older, we would stay and retire here.' DNG Martin O'Connor is seeking offers in the region of €475,000.
Irish Independent
23-05-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
How design duo behind Kylemore Abbey refit decorated their own home in Offaly
Asking price: €500,000 Agent: DNG Kelly Duncan (057) 9325050 Every creative dreams of the day the phone chirrups to the tune of a fantasy gig. Brendan Treacy and Joe Kirby, interior designers and co-proprietors of Dublin-based Silver River Interiors, can count themselves among that lucky cohort. They were contacted by the sisters in residence at Kylemore Abbey, the magnificent Benedictine monastery in Connemara; who hired them to do the fit-out for their new contemporary accommodation at the Abbey, during the recent redevelopment of the famous nunnery and national tourist attraction. 'So we did the full interior fit-out for the nuns down there,' Treacy says. 'It was amazing. That was huge because it's just the two of us, myself and Joe, involved. The project is still ongoing. "The nuns have been incredible to work with. There were a vast amount ducks to get in line and get past them, as the nuns needed to be in their new home at a certain time on a certain day. And, as is often the case, we didn't have as long as we thought we would need to do the job, but we got it done.' Kirby, for his part at least, had some very appropriate credentials on his resumé, having spent time as a member of the Christian Brothers. 'He was familiar with this type of community in terms of how they live day-to-day, how they have their meals and how they share their community spaces,' Treacy says. When the pair initially met with the nuns, they bonded really quickly because the two felt they understood what the sisters wanted. Treacy says: 'I suppose we weren't just shoving chairs and fabrics down their throats, but actually listening to how they live, which is what we do with all our clients. Except in this case, it was 16 different women.' ADVERTISEMENT Kirby adds: 'Sister Magdalena could run the country. They really knew what they wanted, and we are really proud of how it turned out in the end. They were so excited because quite a few of them had never seen the inside of the place until the day they moved in. Now it has a lovely calm feeling about it.' Treacy has a background in the hotel business where he developed his interest in interior design, completing a one-day per week two-year course at the Dublin Institute of Design on Suffolk Street. The two are mainly influenced by the work of William Morris and take inspiration from places they visit, preferring that to the more modern influences of social media. Treacy says: 'We visited Winston Churchill's home at Chartwell recently and were very impressed. We don't have a formula, as is the case with some interior designers. We prefer to see how the client lives.' He began working from home at first, before he and Kirby decided to open a showroom in Tullamore and then a second in Dublin in the early 2000s – until, as Treacy puts it, 'the world ended' after the collapse of the Celtic Tiger. Their business survived, however, and has gone from strength to strength. The pair mainly work with private clients, and tend to design in a classical style. Treacy and Kirby's own home in Tullamore could double as an additional showroom. From the outside, it is a relatively plain-looking detached house on 0.6 acres, located about 10 minutes from Tullamore town. The only sign from the outside that it may belong to someone with an eye for design is a wire sculpture of a pair of red-setters, Billy and Pauline, guarding the front door. It has a hallway behind the teak front door with glazed side panels, floored in polished marble tiles. There is decorative wall panelling and intricate ceiling coving. Off this is a sitting room with walnut timber flooring, and a polished marble fireplace with a cast iron insert and a black granite hearth. This room is decorated with dark brown wallpaper, offset with colourful velour sofas. Treacy says: 'This room is one of the darkest in our house. So we made it dark and moody by using the textured wallpaper, then following down with the deeper colour sofas.' Glass-panelled doors from the sitting room lead to the kitchen/dining area, which also has polished marble floors. The kitchen is bespoke and was designed by Dermot Bracken, with quartz countertops and a large centre island. There is a solid fuel stove on a marble plinth. Integrated appliances include a hob with feature extractor fan, double oven, dishwasher and a hidden pantry with additional worktop space and storage. There is also a utility with fitted storage, additional countertop space and a second dishwasher. One of the bedrooms is located on the ground floor, which was a boon for Kirby on account of his parents who visit. This has an en suite bathroom, and there is also a guest WC on the ground floor. Upstairs has an additional five bedrooms, including a master suite with a walk-in dressing room/wardrobe and en suite bathroom and a luxurious family bathroom. There is also a detached garage of approximately 270sq ft. Outside to the rear, is a recently completed patio area with raised flowerbeds and uplighters set into the ground for evening entertaining outside. The pair bought a home in Dublin 8 about 11 years ago, close to the city centre, and are now keen to relocate to the capital full-time. 'We have been here for 20 years,' says Kirby. 'It was a great party house and has a lovely atmosphere, and was really convenient when we had the business down there. But we just don't spend enough time there anymore.' DNG Kelly Duncan is seeking offers in the region of €500,000.
