Dogecoin lovers have a habit of criticising bitcoiners for being too serious, even elitist. Since this criticism comes from a group of people who modelled a cryptocurrency around an internet meme, it is not all that easy to dispute.
Bitcoin enthusiasts do tend to be a much more serious crowd, for better or for worse.
However, this does not mean that they can’t let their hair down once a year. After all, dogecoin lovers do it every single day.
There was no shortage of elaborate and downright silly April Fools’ Day stories today, so we decided to compile a small roundup – we’re here to inform and entertain, so let’s see what the cryptocurrency community came up with.
Exchanges need to have fun too
BTC-e offered a healthy dose of Eastern European humour. The homepage was turned upside down, but anyone who cheated their way through school could still read it, along with practical jokers who like to flip their co-workers screens in Windows.
Bitcoinity reintroduced Mt. Gox on its charts, but clicking the link would simply play the Muppet Show theme tune.
As for Mt. Gox, it never really needed an April Fools anyway, since it’s been nothing but a joke all along – and a terrible one at that.
Regulator puns and prank coins
Bitcoin Magazine‘s Vitalik Buterin ran a story on a new People’s Bank of China ruling, which found the central bank banning all jokes on April 1st.
The official notice advised all media institutions to refrain from making statements of “fraudulent comedy” or use the day for whimsical announcements. Vitalik also managed to work in some conspiracy theory comedy, courtesy of BTC China CEO Bobby Lee, or not.
In response the CEO of Bitcoin™ Warren Winkleberg decided to ban China, and naturally CoinDesk got the scoop. We did get a bit of flak for it, as there are many people who believe such headlines could prompt trading bots to go on a selling frenzy, or that the prank could be lost in translation.
This probably isn’t the case, but anything is possible in an unregulated market, so let’s see what happens. If a single prank can negatively affect the price, that’s newsworthy in itself. Consider it a FUD stress test of sorts, courtesy of CoinDesk.
A number of prank coins were launched, too. TechCrunch, which recently awarded bitcoin one of its highly coveted Crunchie awards, launched CrunchCoin.
“CrunchCoin can be purchased with litecoin. Litecoin can be purchased with bitcoin. Bitcoin can be purchased with dollars. Sometimes,” said TechCrunch.
Redditors on fire
Many lulz were to be had on reddit today. Bitcoinnotbombs reported that major US defence contractor Raytheon is now accepting bitcoin, which is good news for dictators and James Bond villains living in hollowed-out volcanoes. They can now buy best-selling Raytheon products, like the BGM-109 Tomahawk and the mighty RIM-161 Standard SM3, anonymously.
Here is a word of CoinDesk consumer advice – give the sleek RIM-162 ESSM a try. It’s not a headline grabber, but it is an excellent and cost effective point-defence missile that can be quad packed in existing VLS launchers, saving precious room for more Tomahawks.
Leah McGrath Goodman, the journalist who named Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto as the real Satoshi in a Newsweek article, also joined the fun, allegedly. The CoinFront reports that McGrath Goodman admitted to creating bitcoin while trying to skim pennies off bank transactions.
“I accidentally put a zero in the wrong place, and the result was bitcoin,” she did not tell CoinFront.
Much dogecoin pranks
Every day is April Fools’ Day in the dogecoin universe, which is one of the reasons we have a soft spot for doge. The Missouri University of Science and Technology went into full doge mode, with too many puns to count. It was truly an elaborate prank with much Comic Sans.
Google’s geekish April Fools’ pranks are legendary and every year the company has a dozen or so different jokes for different tech savvy audiences. Today, it ran a job listing for a Software Dogengineer. Responsibilities include writing much web-based code, very programming, so <script></script> and “so skills in snake programming”.
In fact, the listing is so hilarious that we can safely say Google out-doged many dogecoin lovers out there. However, there was no Comic Sans.