Author: Nian Qing, ChainCatcher
Happy New Year! How will you spend the last moments of 2024?
If you need some Netease Cloud moments tonight, it might be like this:
In April, you encountered a rare rainstorm in the desert of Dubai;
In September, the A-shares broke through 3,300 points and stood up, and you hurried to withdraw gold and cash to buy A-shares;
In November, participants of the Ethereum Devcon were robbed at knifepoint in Thailand;
In December, Bitcoin broke through $100,000, and the news you forwarded attracted the likes of relatives and friends, who said you must have made a fortune by entering the market early, and you replied with tears in your eyes: I didn't make much, just a little profit.
...
This year, your cognitive dimension has been greatly improved, and you have transformed from a crypto farmer to a crypto consumer.
The investment sentiment for 2024 summarized here is:
Year after year, the flowers are the same, I really want to break even in the crypto world.
ChainCatcher has compiled some events other than "financial consumption" for you on this special occasion -
(This article only represents the author's sense of humor, if you have any darker humor, funny, or satirical news, welcome to discuss with us on Platform X and @ChainCatcher_)
Vitalik becomes the foster father of the viral hippo Moo Deng
In September this year, a two-month-old pygmy hippo named Moo Deng (Jumping Pig) at the Khao Kheow Open Zoo in Thailand quickly became a viral meme due to its playful interactions with its caretaker, and various meme coins named after it were born on Ethereum and Solana.
Interestingly, after receiving an airdrop of MOODENG tokens from the deployer, Vitalik sold the tokens for several days, causing MOODENG to plummet more than 70% from its high. However, Vitalik's visit to the zoo to see the little hippo Moo Deng in November caused the MOODENG meme token on the Ethereum chain to hit a new high.
Just recently, Vitalik announced that he has become the foster father of Moo Deng, and will donate 10 million Thai baht over the next two years to help the little hippo grow up healthy and happy, "and maybe even more, because I've set aside 88 ETH for Moo Deng and her friends." The news caused MOODENG to surge nearly 70% in 24 hours.
But by the way, Vitalik has received a total of 61.7 billion MOODENG tokens, accounting for 14.68% of the total tokens, worth several million dollars.
Solana officially releases the Breakpoint ad, satirizing the current state of crypto conferences
On August 1, Solana's official social media platform released a promotional video titled "Breakpoint: not your average crypto conference". This video satirizes the current state of crypto conferences, with powerful and sharp criticism. For example, there are more speakers than audience, participants collect "tons" of project peripherals, the audience cares more about airdrops and token issuance than project innovation, guests are always repeating similar views and forcibly introducing concepts, and the entire panel discussion is confusing. This video has been quickly translated into multiple languages and has sparked discussions (or self-mockery) within the industry, and has now received over 1 million views. Interestingly, Solana's Breakpoint conference in September indeed received high popularity and good reputation.
Watch it again: https://x.com/solana/status/1818718599579943075
On November 5, Solana also released a video titled "Build for users, not VCs", which seems to be a call back to the satirical ad in August. This latest video lists a series of crypto jargon, such as talking about building infrastructure, improving scalability, bridging to the mainnet, re-staking, and establishing partnerships with well-known protocols, quickly getting financing, but never caring about consumers, users, and specific use cases.
Click here to view: https://x.com/solana/status/1853567281630150859
The founders of Bankless and Synthetix had a real-life physical fight
There are many online crypto users who challenge each other to fights, but few are actually brave enough to do it. On October 11, Synthetix founder Kain Warwick and Bankless founder David Hoffman had a real-life physical fight in Salt Lake City, Utah.
The match was co-hosted by Permissionless and the combat live streaming platform Karate Combat, with Permissionless being a crypto conference co-hosted by Bankless and Blockworks.
The reason for the fight was that the two had some disagreements on core issues in DeFi and the crypto industry during an online discussion, and they had previously made a $500,000 bet on the sponsorship size of Synthetix's infinex. This crypto fight was highly anticipated, and Polymarket had opened a betting pool on the outcome as early as September 24.
The real-life fight lasted less than 10 minutes, and the final result was that the Bankless founder David brutally beat the much larger Synthetix founder Kain.
Related reading: "Crypto real-life fight, Bankless founder beats up Synthetix founder"
A spa in New York City chooses to mine Bitcoin to heat its pools
On the surface, Bathhouse in Brooklyn, New York is just an ordinary public bathhouse. But behind these warm pools are dozens of Bitcoin miners running 24/7.
In 2019, two young people who liked to soak in the tub after a workout established the first Bathhouse in Brooklyn, New York, with three hot springs, two saunas, a steam room and two Turkish baths. But the constant temperature environment meant huge energy consumption, with their monthly electricity bill reaching $20,000. In 2021, after seeing videos of using Bitcoin miners to heat pools, they decided to give it a try. By the end of 2021, they had purchased 12 Bitcoin miners to power the two hot springs at their Williamsburg location, generating about 1,200 THz of computing power per second. This year, the Bathhouse's Flatiron District location in New York City will open, with all four hot springs and three Turkish baths heated by 14 larger and better Bitcoin miners generating 2,600 THz per second.
Although the Bitcoin mining revenue does offset some of the costs, the two founders say they see mining as an engineering solution to efficiently utilize energy and capital, and the concept and marketing have actually brought them more fame than the mining profits themselves.
So Bathhouse has never sold any Bitcoin and has no plans to do so in the future, they will keep the mined Bitcoin or Bitcoin paid by customers in the company's long-term savings.
Bitcoin breaks $100,000, Financial Times apologizes
On December 5, Bitcoin broke the $100,000 mark for the first time, and subsequently, the Financial Times published an apology letter titled "Hodlers: an apology: A mea culpa to mark a BTC milestone" with a meme cover. In the article, the Financial Times wrote: FT Alphaville's long-time readers may have formed the impression that the authors, both past and present, have been skeptical about cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. This is correct...
Nevertheless, with Bitcoin's price exceeding $100,000, given our long-standing cynicism, a large number of commentators seem to think we should apologize, so here it is: If at any point over the past 14 years you chose not to buy this continuously rising thing based on our "assessments", we are deeply sorry. When your balance sheet goes up, that's great. If you misunderstood our crypto cynicism as an endorsement of tradfi, we apologize deeply, because we hate that too.
Many in the crypto community may have started "cathartic reposting" after seeing the title, but in fact, this is a self-deprecating or sarcastic "apology", a very typical British "dry humor".
Related reading: Behind the sarcastic "apology" is a cry from news professionals
Airdrop involution upgrade, LayerZero stages "insulting" airdrop
The cross-chain interoperability protocol LayerZero officially launched its airdrop in June this year, with an airdrop value of over $100 million. Prior to this, LayerZero had undergone a witch-hunting activity lasting more than a month, and in LayerZero's view, the best users should receive airdrop rewards, and these best users should be the most "persistent" users.
The reason why LayerZero is called the "witch killer" is that it has introduced a completely new "bounty reporting mechanism", with review even divided into self-exposure, official review, and bounty reporting three stages, which can be described as "multi-angle, all-round" anti-witch. The large-scale cleansing campaign has provoked a lot of shaving party's condemnation - "2.16 million witch addresses, the largest witch pool in history has been born, shaving party is just digital beggars, holding a bowl to beg, zkSync passing by, didn't even look and just left". But more are self-mocking "twelve volumes of military books, each with a grandfather's name", many addresses were innocently caught in the crossfire, honestly interacting and spending real money but getting nothing in return, and a new term was born in the Chinese community: insulting airdrop.
Related reading: The people "witch-hunted" by LayerZero: we are the "tools" who create on-chain false prosperity
More interestingly, in the process of claiming the airdrop, LayerZero also invented the airdrop "donation mechanism" (Proof-of-Donation), which in plain language is "pay to claim the airdrop", i.e. donate $0.10 for each ZRO token. This donation mechanism can actually be seen as a kind of "airdrop tax".
Related reading: Paying to claim ZRO, this round of airdrop has come up with a new "Pay to Earn" trick
Musk gets his wish, finally becomes D.O.G.E Minister
In this year's U.S. election year, Musk has become increasingly active in politics. As early as August, Musk mentioned in an online conversation with Trump that he wanted to set up a government-related department, saying in the talk show: "I think we need a government efficiency committee to look at where we're spending money wisely and where we're not".
This government department was eventually officially named the "Department of Government Efficiency", and the abbreviation of this department is D.O.G.E, which is a special contribution from the DOGE community!
On November 12, Trump officially announced that Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy will lead the Department Of Government Efficiency, "D.O.G.E" has become a reality, and Musk has completed the transformation from "Dogecoin King" to "D.O.G.E Minister".
However, it needs to be clarified that although D.O.G.E and Musk's related Dogecoin $DOGE only have a few more separators, they have absolutely no direct conceptual connection with Dogecoin itself.
Justin Sun eats the "$620 million banana", the "most expensive banana in history"
On November 21, Justin Sun bought Maurizio Cattelan's iconic work "Comedian" - a banana for $6.2 million, making it the "most expensive banana in history".
On November 29, Justin Sun held a press conference at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong with the theme "Justin Sun Acquires the World's Most Expensive Banana: Reshaping the Boundaries of Art and Crypto Culture". At the press conference, Justin Sun ate the $6.2 million banana he had auctioned, and said: The banana, as a decentralized conceptual art, transcends national borders and boundaries. He also revealed in an interview that he made the decision to eat the banana after successfully bidding for it, becoming a part of the history of this banana.
According to reports, the banana was bought by Sotheby's staff from a fruit stall in the Upper East Side of Manhattan that morning. The fruit stall owner, who is from Bangladesh, revealed that the price of the banana was 35 cents. This means the auction price was 1,485,000 times the actual value of the banana.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's conceptual art work "Comedian" aims to explore the value of art, the essence of consumerism and the absurdity of the art market through an ordinary banana, in order to satirize speculative behavior in the market. Prior to the auction, Sotheby's vice president also launched the BAN Meme coin, which successfully preheated the auction event in the crypto circle, with BAN's market value reaching as high as $378 million. It was this Meme coin that caught Justin Sun's attention to the banana auction.
Related reading: After buying the most expensive banana and attracting global attention, we talked to Justin Sun
HBO documentary aims to reveal Satoshi Nakamoto's true identity, related parties have all denied
No one wants to be Satoshi Nakamoto, after all, this identity is too dangerous.
In October, HBO announced that its upcoming documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" will reveal the true identity of the anonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. The film is directed by Emmy-nominated director Cullen Hoback, who also directed "Q: Into the Storm".
Several well-known figures closely related to the Bitcoin and cryptocurrency industry, including Craig Wright (who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto) and Hal Finney (an early Bitcoin developer), have publicly denied any involvement with the HBO documentary.
Craig Wright, although he has publicly claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto since 2016, his claims have not been widely accepted in the past few years. He recently stated on social media: "There is still no conclusive evidence regarding the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. Any claims of knowing the truth are mere speculation." This statement has once again sparked heated 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 they do not want Finney's name to be associated with any unverified theories or speculations. They emphasized that Hal Finney's contributions were more reflected in the development and promotion of Bitcoin technology, rather than the debate about Satoshi Nakamoto's identity.
TON Ecosystem Mini-Game Hamster Kombat Attracts Attention and Opposition from the Iranian Military
This year, the trend of click-to-earn mini-games on Telegram has swept across the world. On the streets and alleys of Iran, in metro stations, taxis, and buses, one can always see people tirelessly tapping on their phone screens. These seemingly leisure-seeking Iranians are mostly users of Hamster Kombat.
According to local media reports on June 24, Iranian government officials and hardliners strongly opposed the blockchain game "Hamster Kombat," claiming it is a tool of Western soft power, aimed at distracting the public's attention from the upcoming presidential election. Against the backdrop of Iran's deteriorating economy and worsening inflation, millions of Iranians see Web3 games as a way to earn money. Hamster Kombat is a click-based game on Telegram, where users earn points by performing repetitive tasks and receive potential airdrops.
Hossein Delirian, a spokesman for Iran's National Cyberspace Center, stated that the use of games for cryptocurrency mining has become a breeding ground for hacker crimes, and people participating in these games need to be aware of protecting their information and accounts. This controversy has also attracted the attention of the religious community, with the famous Shia scholar Ayatollah Nasser Makarem Shirazi describing cryptocurrencies as "the root of many evils" and urging people to avoid playing games like Hamster Kombat involving Bitcoin.
Special Note
In fact, there have been many funny and interesting events in the crypto world this year, mostly happening in the Meme circle, such as:
When Meme Coins Meet Social Hotspots: LUIGI Plays the "Crypto Version of Robin Hood"
How Did a Small Child Who Launched a Coin and Ran Away Become a New Top Influencer?
Meme Angle Appreciation: About How I Launched a Meme Coin Using a Refrigerator...
As a typical "attention economy," Memecoins have taken the integration of the crypto world and behavioral art to the extreme. People find topics, angles, and narratives, using absurd, outrageous, or even vulgar ways to stimulate people's nerves. But I personally don't think this has any direct connection to cryptocurrencies, they just wear the coin-issuing disguise. So in this article, I didn't particularly consider these interesting moments as part of the "crypto" world, but I still believe they are an important part of crypto culture.
