Crypto was dumb in 2024—like, really dumb. This year’s meme coin supercycle spawned the most bizarre characters the industry has ever seen, which is saying a lot, and conferences had us cringing weekly, all while politicians begged on their knees for the crypto vote (or at least its money).
And with this, we’ve enjoyed some of the dumbest moments ever inscribed on the perfectly distributed, immutable, uncensorable Blockchain of Life. From a meme coin developer setting himself on fire to promote his meme coin (#6, below) to FARTCOIN itself piercing a billion-dollar market cap (a late breaker that we didn't even count, but Stephen Colbert did), this year was truly something all of us can be proud of. These are the moments that define us, and which we can retell endlessly to our children, and our children's children, all of whom will doubtless be basking in the generational wealth we created in 2024, and beyond.
To commemorate crypto's awesomely idiotic year that was, we’ve randomly gathered an unranked list of 69 of the Dumbest Moments of the Year.
An alleged mother joined her alleged son on a livestream to shake her boobs, begging viewers to invest in her son’s real meme coin.
“Do you wanna see him pour milk over these 36DDs?” she asked, noting—in case we weren’t already horrified enough—that her son “actually suckled on these. Now he’s going to get to pour milk on them.”
The viral success of LiveMom kick started a live streaming meta where meme coin devs would do stupid shit to boost their Pump.fun tokens—some would call it performance art.
One dude tied his hands so he couldn’t dump on investors, another claimed to have no arms at all (before he revealed them and sold everything), and a third dev said he had kidnapped someone. We wish that was the worst of it, but it definitely wasn’t: one guy lost his tooth while boxing, and another genius simply streamed their spread ass cheeks.
Since the release of the Bitcoin whitepaper in 2008, people have wondered who Satoshi Nakamoto is. In October, one man stepped forward claiming to be the real deal.
British-Asian macroeconomist Stephen Mollah said he had been trying to reveal his true identity for some time but people kept stopping him. At the event (which he charged an entry fee of £500 for) he also claimed to have created the Twitter logo, ChatGPT, and the Eurobond, a type of debt.
Mollah rambled for over an hour, eventually claiming that he would move Bitcoin from the Genesis block “very soon” but he had to prepare for it. (Sadly, this still hasn’t happened.) When diving through his Twitter account, we found a spree of 2018 posts calling out all of the “Faketoshis” out there accompanied by some interesting images.
Solana meme coin factory Pump.fun has been the home to some of the most jaw-dropping, idiotic moments in crypto. A case in point was when degens started trading a coin based on an “invisible cat” called Kieth… it’s just a photo of an empty room. And yes, it’s spelled that way.
A developer accidentally burned $10 million worth of pre-sale tokens raised for the about-to-launch Slerf meme coin—rather than sending them to pre-sale participants. What happened next? The token shot up to a market cap over $700 million, of course.
A Florida meme coin dev set himself on fire in an attempt to pump his token. It worked, and the token spiked over 2,000% to a market cap of $2 million in just a few hours. But he was hospitalized with third-degree burns and couldn’t sell, due to the intense medical attention he immediately required. Once he recovered, he couldn’t properly use his hands and claimed his phone’s face ID didn’t recognize him.
Months later, he quit the project claiming he was taken advantage of. His biggest regret? Not selling.
A Gigachad investor decided to get his Solana meme coin’s contract address tattooed… but he spelled it wrong.
A crypto degen started to collect his girlfriend’s hair, one strand at a time, placing them on a styrofoam mannequin head. As day two dawned, budget airline Ryanair reposted the account suggesting that the owner ought to fly to Turkey for a hair transplant, which apparently is a thing there. Of course, the token skyrocketed over 470% as it garnered more mainstream attention.
A tour of the “Solana Villa,” part of a crypto reality TV show, went viral this year simply because it was so obnoxious.
“Check out this helipad. If you don’t have this, you’re poor. HA HA speed tour!” the influencer said, showing off an Airbnb property.
Remember Joe Exotic (the Tiger King)? Remember when he joined an NFT community called “Retardio” out of the blue? And then got airdropped a DeGod? Nah, didn’t think so.
Caitlyn Jenner (inventor of the tokenized Olympic medal ploy!) kick-started a whole celebrity meme coin meta. What was particularly dumb was that Jenner launched a token on Ethereum the same week she launched her initial meme coin on Solana. The new token claimed to have the goal of supporting Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Months later, both tokens had crashed below $1 million market caps.
Part of the reason Caitlin Jenner wanted to relaunch her celebrity project was because she claimed to have been “scammed” by the person who helped her create it: Sahil Arora. Arora made a name for himself this year as the mastermind behind countless short-lived celebrity projects and the odd Twitter hack.
That’s why it was so dumb that people fell for his trap by sending $380,000 to a pre-sale wallet for an Iggy Azalea token that that disavowed by Ms. Azalea. One pre-sale participant said that Arora had “lost all his rep” as a result.
Who can forget the heartwarming story of Andrew Tate, who in July was allowed to leave Romania while he awaited trial on charges of alleged human trafficking, rape, and forming a criminal gang to sexually exploit women? (All of which he denies.)
Upon hearing the news, Tate immediately announced a “global tour” for DADDY, a Solana token he’d been promoting to flip Iggy Azalea’s token MOTHER. Problem was, though Tate announced his tour would take him to “Tokyo, Dubai, [and] Miami,” he wasn’t allowed to leave the European Union.
Tate, who’s still awaiting trial, has denied the charges.
OK, we love Iggy Azalea, who is our SCENE Person of the Year, because she launched her own token and could be the only celebrity to actually keep supporting her project (MOTHER) months after launch. But it's not all been smooth sailing for her.
In response to criticism from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, the Australian singer questioned what he’s doing with ETH gas fees. This caused Crypto Twitter to clown Azalea since these fees don’t touch Buterin’s wallet—they feed back into the Ethereum ecosystem. She was younger then and we believe better educated now!
Azalea upped the ante by hosting a stripper-filled party in Singapore, where some of the most degenerate clips of the year were born… which is saying a lot. Some examples:
Crypto conferences are usually serious events, filled with lengthy talks about blockchain technicalities and ever-imminent mainstream adoption. But at Token 2049: Singapore, Buterin decided to spin it up with a little crypto sing song—very much reminiscent of his 2019 rap.
“It’s mathematical. No more double spend, it's encryptable,” he sang onstage. “A new form of wealth begins.”
Insane Labz, an Arkansas-based supplements company known throughout the MMA and Barstool Sports world, allegedly paid a group of online trolls to impersonate celebrities, fool its investors, and pump its token. And the scheme worked—until it didn’t. The trolls impersonated UFC President Dana White, MMA legend Nate Diaz, and social media sensation Hasbulla to hype up the LABZ token in the company’s Telegram group.
“We just did it for a laugh that got a bit out of hand,” one of the impersonators told Decrypt.
As an industry full of incels, virgins, and generally lonely men, it's no surprise that thirst trap pump-and-dumps became commonplace this year. The recipe was simple: be a girl or know a willing one, create a Pump.fun token, wear few clothes, livestream, then sell all your tokens once a few people buy in. Easiest money you’ll ever make.
It was a banner year for drug addicts using the blockchain. First we had Meth’d Up Dev that, you guessed it, did meth on a livestream to pump his token. Then, we had Crack Head Dev who—actually, you didn’t guess it—overdosed on fentanyl while livestreaming. He later faked his death before becoming a full right-wing, racist Twitter personality. Who says there are no second acts in life?
Finally, we wrapped up the year with Meth Girl, who struggled to gain much traction since her Twitter accounts kept getting banned. Still, you go Meth Girl!
An enterprising fellow set up a meme coin for a curry stall in Lahore, Pakistan. But Decrypt did some digging, and it turned out the stall owners weren’t getting any money made from the token. So the streamer stopped the stream, and the CURRY coin tanked 92% in just a few hours. You're welcome, Curry Guy.
Flog the Frog (FLOG) was one of the most-hyped meme coin launches of the year due to its impressive artwork and influencer support. But its core team accidentally dumped on investors after an embarrassing miscommunication.
“DUMP IT,” project manager Breezy said in the leaked team chat, meaning to sell just a small percentage. Once he saw the token crash 91% in just one minute, he wrote, “Bro, did you sell it all?” Pyro, who was in control of the team funds, responded, “YES YOU SAID DUMP MY BRO.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Breezy explained. Fortunately for the artist, Flog relaunched as Fwog, ultimately becoming one of the more successful meme coins of the year.
Poor, Peanut the Squirrel. Only the good die young: The rodent, suspected of having rabies, was a general election meme—and, of course, meme coin. PNUT saw $150 million in daily volume in November, and became one of the largest meme coins by market capitalization.
In a tragic post-mortem twist, it was revealed that Peanut never had rabies and was murdered for nothing. RIP little buddy, may your meme coin live on and your memory be a blessing.
Less than a month after the story of the not-rabid but very dead Peanut the squirrel captivated a world gone mad, the rodent’s owner—apparently miffed that carpetbaggers got rich off his personal tragedy—launched his own token. Never mind that “the PNUT community” supposedly donated $50,000 to the owner.
"The fact that people wanna make money off this is nothing short of despicable," the bereaved owner stated in a Twitter video, before pivoting to launch the token called JUSTICE. Sadly, there was no justice for the JUSTICE token, which died deader than the fucking squirrel.
This year spawned a religion with followers worshipping a raw chicken with a fish head smoking a cigarette called “Lord Fishnu.” But that’s not the dumbest moment.
Known as the Church of the Smoking Chicken Fish, the meme coin-based religion baptizes followers in what’s called a “brothism.” Normally this is just done by reading out the “10 chickemandments” on Twitter Spaces, but one follower took it a step further by reading them aloud in a bath, while fully dressed, and with raw chicken on his head.
And that’s not even the dumbest moment: the church was planning on opening a physical space in Marfa, Texas.
A few months later, the church’s leader Pastor Kelby went rogue and started using his influence over the religion to take payments and shill micro-cap meme coins. In turn, he got banished from the church.
Does this throw the physical church plans into turmoil? 🙁
A Colorado pastor faced fraud allegations after he and his wife created, then sold “illiquid and practically worthless” crypto tokens to investors to fund their “lavish lifestyle,” authorities there alleged. In response, the pastor admitted that he made $1.3 million, but said that he was instructed by God to sell the tokens.
"God is not done with this project; God is not done with INDX coin," he vowed.
The CFTC filed a lawsuit against the former pastor of a Washington-based church of a multilevel marketing scheme that allegedly took more than $5.9 million in cash and digital assets for a fake “Solanofi platform.” The ex-holy man allegedly targeted “unsophisticated investors,” promising they could earn up to 34.9% monthly through a so-called leveraged staking platform, according to the complaint.
Meme coin devs, promising a massive “social experiment” on Solana, tried to jumpstart a spike in a token called CABAL after airdropping $10,000 worth to 10 Crypto Twitter influencers in August. Within a couple days, most of the influencers had dumped the thing. It now sits at a market cap of less than $15,000.
“I don’t know why they expected to hand someone $10,000 and have them not sell,” said one of the influencers. Notably, the list of influencers included Beaver, the person who said he paid Crack Head Dev (#16, above) to fake his own death.
As Dogwifhat (WIF) was establishing itself as a “blue-chip meme coin,” a group of investors—including one of the CABAL influencers, Ansem—decided to raise $700,000 to put the doggie meme coin on the Las Vegas Sphere. Eight months later, this still hasn’t happened… with Bitcoin even beating WIF to the punch. As time passes, more pressure mounts on those in control of the funds.
Meme coin enthusiasts started putting pink beanies on everything they could, thanks to Dogwifhat’s popularity. “The hat stays on,” applied to pets, celebs, every meme coin in existence, and even cars.
Polymarket, one of the most successful crypto projects of the year, not to mention a source of truth during the U.S. election, fired its intern for shilling an NFT project called “Retardio” on its Twitter.
Once there was enough backlash—against Polymarket that is—the intern was brought back into the fray.
UNRELATED: The UK’s Conduct Financial Authority subsequently issued a scam alert about the token, causing one to wonder: WHY JUST THAT ONE?
When Trump went on a rant about Haitian migrants eating pets during his debate with Kamala Harris, degens rubbed their hands hungrily. That’s because there were already meme coins about the wild rumors, of course.
But their excitement was short-lived: The shitcoins quickly fell in value when the ABC debate moderator fact-checked the baseless claim in real time.
As the rumor spread that Kamala Harris was picking Tim Walz as her running mate, we watched as meme coin communities that had formed around other potential VP picks began to tank. Sad!
Take for instance SHAPERO, the intentionally misspelled Josh Shapiro meme coin, which quickly dropped 94% as the Walz news started to spread across social media. Unbowed, the project’s anonymous leader urged followers on Telegram to stay the course and claimed that FUD (not the coin, but honest to god fear, uncertainty and doubt) was being orchestrated to push down the price.
Literally four minutes later, CNN reported that Walz was Harris’s VP pick.
“Oh my fuckin’ god, who rugged my bag?” one SHAPERO investor wailed in lament.
Before he dropped out of the Presidential race, crypto degens were convinced that Joe Biden had died. Naturally, a flurry of meme coins hit the blockchain, though they were surpassed by a two-month-old token that predicted the exact date he would pass; it touched a market cap of $660,000.
All of these tokens tanked once the rumors were debunked. At the time of writing, Biden is still allegedly alive.
Remember when Trump was nearly assassinated? No, not the second time, the first time.
Well, Pump.fun traders somehow identified the shooter hours before the FBI confirmed who had shot at the former president. While this was an impressive feat from our beloved degens, there were also countless coins that got it painfully wrong—including a popular token claiming it was an Italian journalist who, as it turned out, was peacefully sleeping at the time.
Also, just to add a bonus layer of crypto stupidity to the pile, then-popular Telegram tap-to-earn game Hamster Kombat turned Trump’s defiant fist pump into an absolutely bizarre tribute.
While crypto was a talking point—not to mention a massive source of funds—in the U.S. election, with Trump running on a number of pro-crypto policies, not a single U.K. political party mentioned crypto in their manifestos.
This was called a “missed opportunity” by a U.K. lobbying firm, as it ignored 10% of U.K. adults who own cryptocurrency, and, presumably, bet on foolish things. To make matters worse, the leader of the Tory party, Rishi Sunak, had previously made pro-crypto stances… but failed to bring it into the election. He went on to lose miserably.
Once you’re invested in a meme coin, you can’t take your eyes off the chart—so much so that one trader posted a photo of them looking at DEX Screener next to their dying Grandma in a hospital bed.
“RIP Grandma,” they posted on Twitter. “Onboarding her estate though, it’s what she would have wanted.”
Dr. Disrespect, popular streamer and co-founder of the studio behind crypto shooter Deadrop, admitted to inappropriately chatting with a minor on Twitter only to subsequently claim he didn’t.
In fact, he claims to have made the admission via a tweet to intentionally catch journalists out. Well, consider us caught, Doc. If that’s something you want to say in black and white, go ahead.
A teenage Solana meme coin creator rug-pulled holders after his token hit a $1 million market cap. Exhilarated from the $30,000 he’d pocketed, the punk gave the punters a one-finger salute in a home video and yelled, “Thanks for the 20 bandos,” while skittering around his bedroom.
Humiliated but vowing retribution, our degens bravely fought back, massively trading the shitcoin until it surged to a $85 million market cap. Had the kid held on and treated his elders with respect, his little coin would have been worth more than $4 million. Take that, insolent child!
When the fine specimen of a canine we all know as Doge (the mascot for Dogecoin) went to heaven in May, the owner got a replacement dog—a rescue Shiba Inu named Neiro. Predictably, the new, old Shiba spawned a raft of Neiro-themed coins, with major in-fighting and accusations of scams, cabals, and hatred. All of this despite the owner refusing to endorse any of them. Is nothing sacred?
Months later, in December, it was announced that members of the Own the Doge DAO will be voting on which meme coin will get the Neiro IP. “This is not wholesome,” the Twitter post said.
In January, the SEC’s official account tweeted that all 13 spot Bitcoin ETFs had been approved. But in fact, the SEC’s account had been hacked and none had been approved just yet.
SEC Chairman Gary Gensler’s revelation that the tweet was fake sent the price of Bitcoin plunging from $47,680 to just above $45,500. It was a good opp for someone to fill their bags, probably MicroStrategy’s Michael Saylor. (The actual ETF approval came one day later FYI.)
Scottie Pippen, the legendary NBA star, claimed to have several dreams this year wherein he met the legendary Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
In the first of the year, Pippen claimed that Satoshi was “proud” of his work for tokenizing the basketball used in game five of the Chicago Bulls vs. Los Angeles Lakers 1991 finals. Then in September, Satoshi visited him in a dream again to tell him that Bitcoin would be worth exactly $84,650 on November 5—which was about $14,000 off.
Pippen also claimed that Satoshi was sending him photos in his dream, that he kept laughing at the price of Bitcoin, and that Bitcoin, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos are on Santa’s list—he did not specify if it was naughty or nice.
Who among us hasn’t loaded up on ayahuasca, had a vision about the sanctity of alt assets, and given a commencement address shilling Bitcoin at Ohio State University? Chris Pan, the commencement speaker who was rudely (!) booed when he brought up crypto, spoke truth to power nonetheless.
His moving address ventured beyond digital currencies, too: “I didn’t go to give a speech,” he said later in an Instagram story. “I went to share truth so we stop funding wars. We have to stop the bloodshed.” Oh, he also gave a Michael Scott-esque karaoke rendition of “What’s Up?” by 4 Non Blondes.
Malaysian authorities crushed 985 Bitcoin mining rigs as part of a countrywide crackdown on electricity theft. Yes, yes, extravagant use of electricity is, on occasion, sometimes associated with crypto miners. But had they simply invested in Bitcoin instead of destroying those precious miners, perhaps it would rank higher among the world’s countries by GDP. Actually, it is 37th of 195, which isn’t all that bad.
This one seems a bit unfair: After centralized exchange Crypto.com mistakenly refunded a woman $6.8 million—instead of $65! LOL!—she (and her erstwhile partner) apparently spent $4.42 million of the money. Among other things, such as artwork, the couple apparently bought four homes in Australia. The woman was arrested while she was waiting to fly to… wait for it… Bitcoin-hating Malaysia!!! She served 209 days in prison and had to give back the money and other ill-gotten gains.
In 2017, Christian Langalis, a 22-year-old Cato Institute intern, scrawled “Buy Bitcoin” on a yellow legal notepad, then photobombed Janet Yellen with it during a televised House Financial Services Committee hearing.
Obviously the price of Bitcoin spiked by 3.7% right after the broadcast, making Langalis a BTC hero. In April, our man auctioned off his 15 minutes of fame for $1.019 million. Said he: “It’s good to finally liberate this number from my sock drawer and offer it back to the Bitcoin public.”
If anyone is looking for evidence of the decline of Western civilization—indeed, civilization in general—look no further than the biohacker Bryan Johnson and his long-suffering penis. Johnson, a multi-millionaire who wants to live forever, makes your average health nut look like Homer Simpson.
In December, Polymarket bettors wagered on whether he could maintain a nighttime stiffy for more than two hours during sleep. Nighttime erections are “a significant biological age marker representing sexual, cardiovascular, and psychological health," Johnson said, citing research that correlates a higher risk of death for men who don’t get wood in the night. As if you didn’t have enough to worry about.
It’s a good thing Polymarket became popular enough to allow degens to bet on anything, even Johnson’s johnson. In June, deep in the doldrums of a lifeless market, they were so bored that the poor bastards were actually betting on coin flips. Yep, just connect your wallet to a site called Degen Coin Flips. What could possibly go wrong?
In August, degens, apparently tired of betting on coin tosses, found a new obsession: Betting on live hamsters racing in little plastic cars. It was the second straight year that the premise had been tested, but the added cars arguably juiced the appeal.
One of the largest DEXs on Solana, Raydium deployed a meme coin on a new token launchpad, but it backfired and “didn't exactly go as expected,” with two identical tokens created and the first dropping 92% in just 10 minutes. The token initially had spiked to a $7 million market cap, before plummeting to $488,000. “Is it rug?” asked one well-trained Discord user.
Imagine a meme coin that failed to pump before it could be dumped. That was the case with a celebrity coin apparently promoted by Brazilian footballer Neymar Jr, bassist and lyricist for Pink Floyd Roger Waters, and a number of other highly-followed accounts, including the CEO of a luxury lifestyle brand.
Despite the celeb tweets reaching over 3 million people, the token barely hit a market cap of $19,000. In fact, it was held by just two dozen holders, and had a scant $4 worth of liquidity. You’ve probably guessed by now that those luminaries had nothing to do with the token, and their X accounts had been hacked.
“It was the saddest launch I’ve ever seen,” said the CEO of on-chain analytics company Bubblemaps,
Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange, posted a meme to X in June that appeared to suggest that it was discriminating against its users based on skin color. The exchange, of course, blamed an intern on its social media team who “lacks the corresponding cultural background” needed to understand what racism is.
“When they saw this MEME image in the community, they did not understand its meaning and posted it on X. This is our fault, and we will make sure to rectify this issue,” Binance wrote. The solution, the firm said, was to hire a new intern.
Some genius attempted to access a Kraken account in June by trying to talk a customer service rep into giving him access. The guy was literally wearing a cheap Halloween mask.
“Our agent was like: This is absolutely ridiculous. This is a rubber mask the guy's wearing,” Kraken Chief Security Officer Nick Percoco told Decrypt.
The Solana-based meme coin TrumpCoin—which launched in June amid a flurry of boasts over its claimed but still unproven connection to former U.S. President Donald Trump—lost 92% of its value after a hearty rugging.
The DJT token, inspired by the President-elect, went into freefall after the largest whale and owner (20% of the supply) sold off $2 million in tokens—some 2 billion of the suckers—in one massive dump. The token's market capitalization plummeted from $55 million to $3 million in minutes. Ah, but who’s laughing now? The token nearly doubled its all-time-high price after Trump won the election, before plunging back to the floor.
Haliey Welch, aka the Hawk Tuah Girl, launched a HAWK token. Faster than you can say “spit on that thang,” the token climbed to a market capitalization of $490 million… before immediately collapsing by more than 93% in value. Some $3 million was pocketed by persons unknown.
“Haliey’s team has sold absolutely no tokens whatsoever,” her people said, denying they orchestrated a rug pull.
Welch attempted to answer questions from heartbroken investors in a Spaces, but when the going got tough, Welch got going: “I’m gonna go to bed” she said, and quit the chat, seemingly never to return to Crypto Twitter or our hearts again. Finally, on December 20, Sleeping Beauty awoke from her 372-hour slumber to proclaim that she's working with the law firm that sued the HAWK token’s creators.
Who knew that those personal massage devices were good for something other than sex toys? Russian gamers, that’s who!
Online retailer Wildberries reported a 179% month-over-month sales spike for percussion massagers in June, which was attributed to players of the massively popular Telegram game, Hamster Kombat.
Apparently someone figured out that they could jack up their in-game coin earnings by using the thing, which pulses rapidly to deliver faster screen taps than a human player can. But given that the game’s broadly disappointing airdrop delivered “dust,” we’d be surprised if they earned enough to even cover the cost of the vibrating device.
It’s baaaack: Enron, the symbol of fin de siècle dotcom excess, announced via X in early December that it was returning to “solv[e] the global energy crisis” with the aid of decentralized technology. Whether it’s a parody, real attempted comeback, or real attempted comeback that ends in parody remains to be seen. In the meantime, the firm says "permissionless innovation” will be central to its comeback.
We don’t know anything about art, but we know about dumb. And it is debatable what’s dumber: Buying a high-concept piece of art—a banana duct taped to a wall—for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction, or eating the banana later. Both of which Justin Sun, the P.T. Barnum of crypto, did in November. That said, he was encouraged to routinely replace the banana anyway.
As a gesture of good will, Sun announced that he would purchase 100,000 bananas from the same New York sidewalk stall where the original banana came from—claiming he’d distribute them worldwide for free. But it was quickly revealed that this just isn’t possible. The vendor said they’d barely make any profit, and even then the logistics are a nightmare.
Heather “Razzlekhan” Morgan, notorious for her role in the infamous $10.8 billion Bitfinex hack in 2016, has written a song! It is, apparently, a rap dedicated to the love of her life, husband and partner in crime, Ilya Lichtenstein, whom she hasn’t seen outside of a courtroom for three years. The song, which she says was written during a stint in solitary confinement, was released in a video and ends on an upbeat note: “Keep on praying for what the future brings. Inshallah.”
A meme coin based on a dog in a ski mask pumped this month, apparently because U.S. Congressman Mike Collins (R-GA) acknowledged that he bought as much as $30,000 of it.
“I liked the coins, so I bought them,” the no-nonsense Collins told Decrypt. “Washington and Wall Street have stigmatized emerging technology in the crypto ecosystem for far too long, and it’s about time that we start treating this industry with the respect it deserves.” This is not dumb.
Remilia Corporation took $20 million in a pre-sale for its CULT meme coin, then nothing happened for six months. Anyone who expressed concern was flooded with comments of “Don’t worry about it” from CULT members, despite those same people spreading fake news that the token launch had been cancelled.
Community members told Decrypt that they found it “humorous” that people were worried. The token did eventually launch in December.
Popular battle royale game Off the Grid added player skins inspired by Donald Trump and Kamala Harris via its November “Save Democracy” content pack. The pack included two "Epic" weapons, as well as character emotes that show the faux politicians either building a wall or tossing a molotov cocktail. Best of all, the skins use true-to-life voices, with Trump saying “I feel like a Democrat” when he’s injured, or Harris quipping “Tax that fucker” when shooting at an enemy.
Don't have the ‘nads to create a meme coin, pump it up to a billion market cap, and then rug the poor schmuckos holding it? Then Rug.fun is the game for you! It simulates all the fun—and dumbnasity—of the real deal. Built on Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 network Base, players gamble on 10 tokens, eight of which will be rug pulled.
Tapos is a “tickle-to-earn” game on the Aptos network that prompts users to tickle an on-screen cat for HEART tokens, helping the network record over 200 million transactions during two days in May. The Notcoin-esque cat clicker game records every click on-chain.
In August, the site claimed to have surpassed a total of 500 million transactions. But weirdly, it has since stopped giving updates.
Guys, despite the unusual “X” in its name, X Empire has absolutely nothing to do with X the social platform—despite it being previously called Musk Empire. Got that? In October, the Telegram tap-to-earn game X Empire revealed airdrop allocations to users, prompting a bunch of dim, ineligible players to tweet their complaints to Elon Musk.
“Totally scam project backed by your name,” tweeted one player. “X Empire. Elon Musk. Musk Empire. Do interrogation on X Empire team. They are just like scammer.”
Needless to say, the owner of X and master of all he surveys did not reply. Note, lads: In the future, do not vent at Musk for x-rated movies or anything having to do with x chromosomes. He is not responsible for those either. Yet.
When Fantasy Top, a SocialFi game that incentivized influencers to farm Twitter engagement, went viral this summer, a degen known as Franklin decided to post every five minutes to maximize his points. Deadpan and consistent, gotta respect it.
Franklin, for those who were around for the NFT bull run, is also well known for sharing his Ls, including losing $150,000 in a “prank” NFT bid that he admitted was the “fumble of the century.”
For a while, it looked like Kamala Harris was actually taking an interest in crypto and might reconsider the Biden administration’s clueless crypto policies. It also appeared like she might even speak at Permissionless, Blockworks’ annual conference. And for a while, it even looked like she might win the General Election.
None of these things came to pass.
The President-elect, by contrast, embraced the crypto community. Notably, he delivered a rambling speech in July at the big Bitcoin Conference in Nashville, where he exposed how little he knew about crypto. His connection to crypto hardly stopped there.
In an interview with Rug Radio (like Decrypt, a wholly owned subsidiary of Dastan), Trump shilled his new "World Liberty Financial" project, which appears to be headed toward some kind of stablecoin offering. This seems very much in keeping with the whole ethos of crypto!
After years of establishing itself as a legitimate decentralized digital currency, Litecoin’s Twitter intern decided to rebrand the project into a meme coin.
“Due to current market conditions I now identify as a meme coin,” the Twitter account posted, followed by a spree of shitposts including the creation of a stickman mascot called Lester. Ironically, this preceded a 79% price bump. Gosh, what a dumb—and lovable—industry this is!
Decrypt had a metric shit ton of dumb errors last year, but delicacy prevents us from printing them all again. Here's to many more in 2025.
