BitDigest April 1 · Issue #627

• Q1’20 ended reporting bitcoin (BTC) down 12% and ether (ETH) up 2%; prices are generally flat overnight
• Trump accuses bitcoin community of propagating financial crisis
• Judge says evidence in Kleiman trial supports claim identifying Craig Wright as ‘anonymous bitcoin founder’

Happy April Fools’ Day! Yes, the Trump and Craig Wright stories above are my poor attempt at prankish humor, but the Trump story is believable isn’t it. Thought I would start the day with some of my favorite April’s Fools Crypto pranks from past years and one from this year:

Bitcoin CEO Ban China – (2014) Coindesk posted a report that the CEO of Bitcoin, Dorian S. Nakamoto, had pre-empted a decision by the People’s Bank of China banning bitcoin, by banning the nation of China itself. The article explained this decision was made with unanimously support of bitcoin’s shareholders, the Bitcoin Board of Directors, HaCkerz4BITZ and the Bitcoin Steering Board.

Former DEA Agent Agrees to Return Coins Stolen from Mt. Gox – (2015) a post appeared on the Bitcoin reddit feed, saying “In a plea bargain, former DEA agent agrees to return 665,950 BTC stolen from MtGOX in 2013.” The posting contains a fake link to the original article and when the reader clicks on the link it brings them to the citation for  “April Fools’ Day” on Wilkepedia.

Leaked Chinese Documentary Shows Bitcoin Mining – (2016) Bobby Lee’s BTCC released a video of a Chinese documentary showing a tour by SNTV to a secret Chinese bitcoin mining operation. The video showed workers with pick axes digging and celebrating when one of their colleagues unearthed a gold bitcoin coin. Unfortunately, this video has been removed from Youtube.

Ethereum to Launch Official Stablecoin – (2018) Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin wrote a blog announcing the launch of the World Trade Francs: The Official Ethereum Stablecoin. Given that “existing stablecoins all have various flaws… we’ve decided to take matters into our own hands, and issue our own officially branded stablecoin, and use this as an opportunity to make another ICO,” the post read.  The team behind the offering were identified as “Twitter scamming veteran” Vitallk Vuterin (with a picture looking like Buterin himself), Barak Obama and a moose. The post concluded that only lizardcoins (a reference to a 2016 Buterin prank) would be accepted as payment for the ICO.

Toilet Paper Token Wipe Paper – (2020) CoinMarketCap updated its frequently used list of cryptocurrencies by market capitalization to include Toilet Paper Token (TPT) as a digital asset using “smut contracts” to keep track of “wiper” usage and a guaranteed level of wiper inventory during the current pandemic.  Instead of traditional metrics, TPT references “market crap” instead of market cap, the circulating supply is “out of stock,” and the 7 day price graph looks similar to a derriere.  According to CoinMakretCap,  “your right to wife [is] now tokenized.” Leading crypto pooling group F2pool responded by tweeting “We’re proud to announce world’s first TPT wiping pool today, with support to the classic getwipe and next generation betterpoop PoW protocols. Happy pooping!”

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