Top 10 Funny News in the Cryptocurrency World 2024

Author: Nianqing, ChainCatcher

Happy New Year! How do you plan to spend the last moments of 2024?

If you need some NetEase Cloud moments tonight, it might look like this:

In April, you encountered rare heavy rain in the desert of Dubai;

In September, the A-shares broke through 3300 points, and you quickly cashed out to buy A-shares;

In November, Ethereum Devcon attendees were robbed at knife point in Thailand;

In December, Bitcoin broke through $100,000, and the news you shared attracted likes from friends and family, saying you must have made a fortune by entering early, to which you replied, choking back tears: "Not much, just a small profit."

……

This year, your cognitive dimension has greatly improved, completing the transformation from a crypto novice to a crypto consumer.

Here’s a summary of your investment sentiments for 2024:

Year after year, the flowers are similar, and I really want to break even in the crypto world.

On this special occasion, ChainCatcher has compiled some events beyond "financial consumption" for you—

(This article only represents the author's personal sense of humor. If you have darker humor, funny, or satirical news, feel free to discuss with us on X platform and @ChainCatcher_)

Vitalik Becomes the Foster Father of Internet Celebrity Hippo Moo Deng

In September this year, a two-month-old pygmy hippo named Moo Deng (Bouncing Pig) at a zoo in Chonburi, Thailand, quickly became famous due to its playful interactions with its keepers, turning into a well-known internet meme with various meme images created. The hippo craze also swept through the crypto circle, with several chains launching their own memecoins named after it, including Ethereum and Solana.

Interestingly, after receiving the MOODENG airdrop from the deployer, Vitalik sold off the tokens for several days, causing MOODENG to drop over 70% from its peak. However, in November, Vitalik visited the zoo to see little Moo Deng, which led to the Ethereum chain's meme token MOODENG hitting an all-time high.

Recently, Vitalik announced that he has become Moo Deng's foster father, pledging to donate 10 million Thai Baht over the next two years to help the little hippo grow up healthy and happy, and "maybe even donate more because I have reserved 88 ETH for Moo Deng and her friends." Following this news, MOODENG surged nearly 70% in 24 hours.

But to put it in perspective, Vitalik received a total of 61.7 billion MOODENG tokens, accounting for 14.68% of the total supply, worth several million dollars.

Solana Officially Releases Breakpoint Advertisement, Satirizing the Current State of Crypto Conferences

On August 1, Solana's official social media released a promotional video titled "Breakpoint: not your average crypto conference." This video satirizes the current state of crypto summits, hitting hard with sharp critiques. For instance, there are more speakers than attendees, participants collect "a ton" of project merchandise, audiences care more about airdrops and token launches than project innovation, guests often repeat similar points, and discussions are often nonsensical. The video quickly got translated into multiple languages, sparking discussions (or self-mockery) within the industry, and has garnered over 1 million views. Interestingly, Solana Breakpoint indeed delivered, as the Breakpoint summit held in September received high popularity and acclaim.

Revisit here: https://x.com/solana/status/1818718599579943075

On November 5, Solana also released a video titled "Build for users, not VCs," seemingly calling back to the satirical advertisement from August. This latest video lists a series of crypto jargon, such as discussing building infrastructure, improving scalability, bridging to mainnet, re-staking, establishing partnerships with well-known protocols, and quickly securing funding, but never inquiring about consumers, users, or specific use cases.

Click here to view: https://x.com/solana/status/1853567281630150859

Founders of Bankless and Synthetix Engaged in an Offline Real Fight

There are many online brawlers in the crypto community, but few dare to fight in real life. On October 11, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and Bankless founder David Hoffman engaged in an offline real fight in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA.

This match was co-hosted by Permissionless and the fighting live-streaming platform Karate Combat, with Permissionless being a cryptocurrency-themed conference co-hosted by Bankless and Blockworks, which offered free tickets to the fighting event to ticket holders.

The reason for their fight stemmed from some disagreements during an online discussion about core issues in DeFi and the crypto industry. They had previously reached a $500,000 betting agreement regarding the sponsorship scale of Synthetix's Infinex. This crypto fight attracted significant attention, with Polymarket opening a betting pool on their duel as early as September 24.

The real fight lasted less than ten minutes, with the final result being Bankless founder David decisively defeating Synthetix founder Kain, who was significantly larger than him.

A Spa in New York Chooses to Mine Bitcoin to Heat Its Baths Due to High Electricity Costs

On the surface, Bathhouse, located in Brooklyn, New York, appears to be an ordinary public bathhouse. However, behind its warm baths are dozens of Bitcoin mining machines running 24/7.

In 2019, two young men who enjoyed soaking after workouts established the first Bathhouse in Brooklyn, featuring three hot spring pools, two saunas, a steam room, and two Turkish baths. However, the constant temperature environment meant high energy consumption, with their monthly electricity bill reaching $20,000. In 2021, after seeing videos online about using Bitcoin mining machines to heat pools, they thought it was the most meaningful thing in the world and decided to give it a try. By the end of 2021, they purchased 12 Bitcoin mining machines to power the two heated pools at the Bathhouse Williamsburg location, generating about 1,200 THz of computing power per second. This year, Bathhouse opened a location in New York City's Flatiron District, where all four hot spring pools and three Turkish baths will be heated by 14 larger and better Bitcoin miners at a rate of 2,600 THz per second.

Although the income from Bitcoin mining does offset some costs, the two founders stated that they view mining merely as an engineering solution to effectively utilize energy and capital. Compared to the profits from Bitcoin mining itself, this concept and marketing approach have significantly increased their visibility.

Thus, Bathhouse has never sold any Bitcoin and emphasizes that there are no plans to sell in the future; they will store the mined Bitcoin or the Bitcoin paid by customers in the company's long-term savings.

After Bitcoin Surpasses $100,000, Financial Times Issues an Apology

On December 5, Bitcoin first broke through the $100,000 mark, and shortly after, the Financial Times published a letter with a meme as the cover titled "Hodlers: an apology: A mea culpa to mark a BTC milestone." In this article, the Financial Times wrote: "Long-time readers of FT Alphaville may have formed the impression that the authors have been skeptical about cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, both in the past and present. This is correct…"

Nevertheless, as Bitcoin's price exceeded $100,000, given our long-standing cynicism, many commentators seemed to think they should apologize, so here it is: If at any point in the past 14 years you chose not to buy this continuously rising asset based on our "evaluation," we sincerely apologize. It's great when your account balance rises. If you misunderstood our crypto cynicism as a declaration of support for tradfi, we apologize for that too, as we dislike that as well.

Many in the crypto community likely started "venting" by sharing the title, but in reality, this article is a self-mocking or sarcastic "apology," a very typical example of British "dry humor."

Airdrop Competition Escalates, LayerZero Performs "Insulting" Airdrop

The LayerZero cross-chain interoperability protocol officially launched its airdrop in June this year, with a value exceeding $100 million. Prior to this, LayerZero underwent a month-long witch hunt activity, believing that the highest quality users should receive airdrop rewards, and these top users should be the most "persistent" ones.

LayerZero earned the nickname "witch killer" because it introduced a brand new "bounty reporting mechanism," which included three stages of scrutiny: self-reporting, official review, and bounty reporting, making it a "multi-angle, all-around" anti-witch initiative. The large-scale cleansing movement attracted a lot of backlash from hair-pulling parties — "2.16 million witch addresses, the largest witch database ever created, hair-pulling is just electronic begging, holding a bowl to ask for alms, zkSync passed by, not even looking." However, more self-mockery emerged, with many addresses innocently caught in the crossfire, honestly interacting and spending real money but receiving nothing in return, leading to the emergence of a new term in the Chinese community: insulting airdrop.

Interestingly, during the airdrop claiming process, LayerZero also invented a "donation mechanism" (Proof-of-Donation), which simply means "pay money to receive airdrop," specifically donating $0.10 for each ZRO token. This donation mechanism can actually be seen as a form of "airdrop tax."

Musk Gets His Wish and Becomes the Minister of D.O.G.E

In this election year in the United States, Musk has become particularly active in politics. Back in August, Musk mentioned in an online conversation with Trump that he wanted to establish a government efficiency committee, stating, "I think we need a government efficiency committee to examine where we are spending money wisely and where we are not."

Ultimately, this government department was officially named the "Department of Government Efficiency," abbreviated as D.O.G.E, thanks to the special contribution of the DOGE community!

On November 12, Trump officially announced that Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy would lead the Department of Government Efficiency, making "D.O.G.E" a reality, and Musk completed his transformation from "Dog King" to "Minister of D.O.G.E."

However, it should be noted that although D.O.G.E and Musk's related Dogecoin $DOGE only differ by a few separators, there is no direct conceptual connection between them.

Sun Yuchen Eats the "Most Expensive Banana in History" Worth $6.2 Million

On November 21, Sun Yuchen purchased Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work Comedian banana for $6.2 million, making it the "most expensive banana in history."

On November 29, Sun Yuchen held a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong themed "Sun Yuchen Wins the World's Most Expensive Banana: Redefining the Boundaries of Art and Crypto Culture." At the press conference, Sun Yuchen ate the $6.2 million banana he had auctioned, stating that the banana, as a concept of decentralization in art, transcends borders. He also revealed in an interview that he made the decision to eat the banana right after successfully bidding for it, wanting to become part of its history.

Reports indicate that the banana was purchased by Sotheby's staff that morning from a fruit stand in Manhattan's Upper East Side. The fruit stand owner, originally from Bangladesh, revealed that the banana was priced at 35 cents. This means the auction price was 14.85 million times the actual value of the banana.

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual art piece "Comedian" aims to explore the value of art, the nature of consumerism, and the absurdity of the art market through an ordinary banana, satirizing market speculation. Before the auction, the BAN Meme coin launched by Sotheby's vice president also successfully generated buzz for this auction event in the crypto circle, with BAN's market cap reaching as high as $378 million. It was this Meme coin that drew Sun Yuchen's attention to the banana auction.

HBO Documentary Aims to Reveal Satoshi Nakamoto's True Identity, All Related Parties Deny Involvement

No one wants to be Satoshi Nakamoto, as this identity is too dangerous.

In October, HBO announced that its upcoming documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" would reveal the true identity of Bitcoin's anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The film is directed by Emmy-nominated Cullen Hoback, known for "Q: Into the Storm."

Several well-known figures closely associated with Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency industry, including Craig Wright (who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto) and Hal Finney (an early Bitcoin developer), have publicly denied any connection to the HBO documentary.

Craig Wright, who has publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016, has not gained widespread acceptance for his claims over the past few years. He stated on social media recently: "There is still no conclusive evidence regarding Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. Anyone claiming to know the truth is merely speculating." This statement reignited intense discussions on social media platforms.

On the other hand, the family of the late Hal Finney has also publicly stated that they did not participate in the production of this documentary and do not wish to associate Finney's name with any unverified theories or speculations. They emphasized that Hal Finney's contributions are more reflected in the development and promotion of Bitcoin technology rather than in debates about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity.

TON Ecosystem Mini Game Hamster Kombat Draws Attention from Iranian Military and Official Opposition

This year, the trend of click-to-earn mini-games has swept across the globe. On the streets of Iran, in subway stations, taxis, and buses, and even in various locations, one can often see people tirelessly clicking on their phone screens. Most of these seemingly leisurely Iranians are users of Hamster Kombat.

According to local media reports on June 24, Iranian government officials and hardliners strongly oppose the blockchain game "Hamster Kombat," claiming it is a tool of Western soft power aimed at distracting the public from the upcoming presidential elections. Amid the deteriorating Iranian economy and rising inflation, millions of Iranians view Web3 games as a way to make money. Hamster Kombat is a click game on Telegram where users earn points by completing repetitive tasks and potentially receive airdrops.

Hossein Delirian, spokesperson for the Iranian National Cyber Space Center, stated that using games for cryptocurrency mining has become a breeding ground for hacker crimes, and participants in these games should be cautious about protecting their information and accounts. This controversy has also attracted the attention of the religious community, with prominent Shia scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi describing cryptocurrencies as "the source of many ills" and urging people to avoid playing games like Hamster Kombat that involve Bitcoin.

Special Note

In fact, many funny and interesting events in the crypto world this year have occurred in the Meme circle, such as:

"Girlfriend Hair Collection Battle: When Performance Art Meets Meme, Rapidly Reaching a Market Value of Tens of Millions in Two Days"

"When Meme Coins Meet Social Hotspots: LUIGI Stages 'Crypto Version of Robin Hood' Drama"

"How a Kid Who Live-Streamed a Token Scam Became the New Top Streamer?"

"Meme Perspective Awards: About How I Launched a Meme Coin with a Refrigerator…"

Memecoins, as a typical "attention economy," have developed the combination of the crypto world and performance art to the extreme, with people finding themes, angles, and narratives, provoking people's nerves in absurd, bizarre, and even vulgar ways. However, I personally do not believe this has any direct relationship with crypto; they are merely dressed in the guise of token issuance. Therefore, these interesting moments are not specifically considered part of the "crypto world" in this article, but I still believe they are an important part of Crypto culture.

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Top 10 Funny News in the Cryptocurrency World 2024 | Annual Review