The I Am Rich app is back. This time the board is public.

In 2008, a developer named Armin Heinrich published an iPhone app called I Am Rich. It did nothing. It showed a glowing red gem and a mantra, it cost $999 — the maximum Apple allowed — and eight people bought it before Apple pulled it from the store. At least one buyer said he did it accidentally. The other seven, presumably, did not.

The app is remembered as a joke, but it answered a real question: does anyone value a claim of wealth enough to pay for the claim itself? Eight people answered yes. The problem was that the proof went nowhere. There was no list, no rank, no rival. You paid $999, you showed a gem to your friends, and nobody could verify that the gem meant anything — which is exactly the weakness of every flex on the internet, from the rented Lamborghini to the screenshot of a balance that takes two minutes to fake.

ARE YOU RICH? is the same purchase with the weakness removed. You pick an amount — the ladder runs from $1 to $10,000, one-time, no subscription — you pay it on a hosted Stripe checkout, and the amount becomes your PROVEN total on a public board ranked against everyone in the world. The price is the product: paying is the proof, so the claim can't be faked. When someone passes you, you can pay again and climb back, which is the part the 2008 app couldn't offer. There was no one above or below you; there is now.

What you buy is status and nothing else: a leaderboard position, a public profile at your own handle, a share card for your feed, and a title that gets less flattering the smaller your total is — the first rung reads "Not exactly rich." There are no payouts, no prize pool and no refunds; the no-refund notice sits on the payment screen, in plain text, before you pay. It is a game you can only lose money to win rank.

If the idea sounds familiar, that's because 2026 already ran the experiment on products: pay-to-rank boards for startups appeared over the summer and pulled five-figure bids in their first days. They rank things. This one ranks people — the claim is not "my product is good", it is "I paid more than you to say I'm rich".

The app also holds an odd record: it remains the answer to what is the most expensive app ever — the price ceiling of the stores, spent on nothing.

The board is live and the first spot costs $1. Pick your amount and prove it, or read the board first to see who you'd have to beat.

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