About

Infinite Money Glitch is a slang term describing a scheme that seemingly allows the person using it to earn large amounts of money with little effort. Such schemes often have a caveat like including elements of fraud or exploration, being more labor-intensive than presented or their application being limited by various factors. The term is borrowed from gaming culture, where it has been used to describe easy ways to earn large amounts of money or resources without cheats.

Origin

While the earliest found mentions of "infinite money glitch" online in the context of gaming date back to 2002, it is likely that the phrase originated even earlier. On December 11th, 2002, GameFAQs^[1] user Zach_Keen posted a guide for the 1997 video game Castlevania: Symphony of the Night which mentioned an "infinite money glitch" — a way to quickly farm jewels through an exploit (screenshot shown below).

More "infinite money glitches" (also referred to as infinite money hacks, bugs, tricks, etc.) were posted on GameFAQs^[2][3] and other gaming forums through the 2000s and later, with the phrase usually describing either in-game exploits or simply efficient ways to earn large amounts of money in the game (examples shown below, left and right).

Spread

The phrase transitioned from gaming slang into more widespread use in the early 2020s as it started being used online to describe seemingly quick and easy ways to earn money. For example, on November 18th, 2020, X / Twitter^[4] user @postedinthecrib described opening a fast-food franchise with the phrase, with the post (shown below, left) garnering over 20 reposts and 2,600 likes in three years.

On November 3rd, 2021, X^[5] user @Mlickles wrote that producing Sonic shoes could be an infinite money glitch for SEGA, with the post garnering over 1,600 reposts and 14,400 likes in two years (shown below, right).

In addition to X, posts sharing various "infinite money glitches," as well as videos exposing some "infinite money glitches" as grifts and parodies, went viral on TikTok. For example, on August 14th, 2022, TikToker^[6] daniel_iles posted a video about an "infinite money glitch" that involved exploiting a bank's cashback program, which gained over 720,000 views and 70,000 likes in one year (shown below, left).

Various Examples

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7238215706867780906

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/v2/7244881493795949825

Search Interest

External References