As Jimmy Buffett sings in “Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes” lyrics: “If we couldn’t laugh we would all go insane.” Thankfully, the world of cryptocurrency has enough follies, oddities, and overall weirdness to giggle about for days.
We’ll break down some of the absolute strangest digital currency. While in some cases, lessons were learned, in others, there may have just been laughs. But, for better or worse, here are some of the strangest ways crypto has been used in the past few years.
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PotCoin: Where Cannabis Meets Coins
Since its launch in 2014, PotCoin operates on a decentralized ledger that boasts over $1 billion in transactions and 408,000 users. While numbers are nothing to laugh at, the purpose of this strange market, which offers the buying, selling, and trading of the $POT might cause some to get the giggles, and maybe not for the reason you think.
This first, industry-specific cryptocurrency was also the first to launch in the wide world of weed, marking the first time blockchain technology in the cannabis, hemp, and agricultural industry. This cannabis-focused digital token aims to push for the legalization of pot.
Offering an open-source, peer-to-peer blockchain record-keeping, users are attracted to state-of-the-art features that can be applied to dispensary businesses. Some benefits such as being able to track and certify the origin of your pot supply, automating boring compliance tasks, and allowing for open-source and transparent real-time auditing, occurring directly on-chain, have more than the casual stoner interested in PotCoin’s services.
But Wait For Its Market Cap
No matter your feelings on the legalization of marijuana, you can certainly giggle at the company’s maximum supply cap: 420.
Holler If Ya’ Hear Me: Tupac NFTs
In a market that has seen Twitter Founder Jeff Dorsey sell his first-ever tweet as an NFT for $2.9 million, there is little left to shock its investors. One of those equally bizarre stories was when a hip-hop journalist, Lawrence “Loupy D” Dotson, decided to bring Tupac into the future.
After holding back on the release of photos of rap artist Tupac Shakur taken at the rapper’s “2Pacalypse Now” debut album release party in 1992 for 29 years, Loupy D decided that NFTs was the best way to share them with the world. The photographer said that this media would offer not only the release and ownership of the 18 pictures but would also give him a chance to share the story.
OpenSea hosted the auction, which got press from famed magazines such as Rolling Stone. But the press wasn’t enough. It may have been the sticker shock (Loupy D NFT set each of the 18 pics at a minimum bid of 25 ETH ($100,000 value at the time), but the photos went untouched.
Not one piece in the collection sold, even after leaving the auction open for a full week, forcing Loupy D to take them down for private inquiries only. While no one argues that we should pay photographers, selling a single photo as an NFT seems to have its limits among the cryptocurrency exchanges.
Unobtanium: Not Just For Avatars
If being named after a fictional, high-valued mineral found on the moon of Pandora, ala the 2009 sci-fi classic “Avatar,” isn’t enough to make your scratch your head, then its limited existence might be. Unobtanium, traded as UNO, says it will only allow 250,000 UNO can be mined in the next 30 years.
By limiting the amount of UNO in the circulating supply, Unobtanium hopes to increase in value-based strictly on its rarity. Much like precious metal is highly valued because there is a limited amount on earth, the company is hoping it too will become a standard in value.
Thus far, the future of UNO remains to be seen, but at the time of publication, just a hair over 203,000 UNO have already been mined.
Hackers and Havoc in India
You’ve likely been the victim of hackers attempting to steal or copy your account. Minimally, you’ve probably had countless “friend requests” on Facebook from low-talent copycats, attempting to gain access to you and your friends’ personal information by impersonating you on social media platforms.
As it turns out, even Prime Ministers of India aren’t immune to these troublesome woes. In another very weird incident in December of 2021, Narendra Modi, prime minister of India, was shocked to find that his Twitter account had been hacked, with someone pretending to be him tweeting out that Bitcoin would be the country’s new currency.
“India has officially adopted Bitcoin as legal tender,” read the fake tweet released under Narendra Modi’s Twitter account. “The country has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all of the countries.”
The tweet then directed followers to a phishing website, closing only with “The future has come today.”
The 73.4 million followers of the prime minister’s account only had moments to catch the tweet before it was taken down. This hack was the second time the prime minister fell victim to hackers. The year prior, Modi’s Twitter page had another hack asking for Bitcoin donations to be made.
Not even those running nations of the globe can be free of the weird and annoying antics of hackers of the crypto market.
A Coin to ‘Trump’ Them All
Love him or hate him, with him or against him, there was certainly no shortage of “weird” during the four-year presidency of American leader Donald Trump. The TrumpCoin was launched on Feb. 20, 2016, right before the then-candidate was named to the Republican ticket for the upcoming presidential race.
The coin, simply dubbed TRUMP, claimed to be used for a “worldwide fundraiser and support tool,” but where precisely the money was being used was vague at best. While it was embossed with his logo, later President Trump himself, nor the Trump administration, were allegedly involved in the creation, nor had any affiliation with the TrumpCoin.
It turns out that the PotCoin exchange, or cannabis-focused coins, wasn’t the only internet money used devoted to parties. Whether political in nature or just for fun, parties supported by mining fall well into the “weird” bucket.
Rabbit Finance
We always advise the investors do their own research. And when you visit a company you are considering getting involved with, and the first thing you see is a giant rabbit astronaut floating inside planetary rings … well, handing them my money might not be my first inclination.
If the digital images are not enough to make you question the entire bizarre world, the story of this cryptocurrency website just might. Trading as RABBIT, the core function of Rabbit Finance is to serve as a “lending protocol” allowing leveraged yield farming, which functions on the Binance Smart Chain.
Claiming your yields will multiply “like rabbits,” the network uses a new way to increase the coins available on its blockchain. This model of farming works via over-lending, plus leverage, to get more revenue.
For example, when a Rabbit Finance user has insufficient funds but wants to participate in farming (decentralized finances liquidity farming), the network can provide up to 10 times the leverage to help users obtain the maximum revenue per unit time, while at the same time providing a borrowing pool for users who prefer stable returns to earn profits.
While adorable animations, and fun farming events, make for cute visuals, the RABBIT finance price might be less cute.
Rabbit Finance Price
The price on Rabbit Finance at the time of publication was just “a hare” (oh, I crack myself up) over two cents in value. While the future seemed bright for this fun-filled blockchain, the current prices don’t reflect the hype.
How One Participates in RABBIT
Users on the Rabbit Finance system can operate in one of four ways: as a lender (add assets to your vault and allow others to use at a price), as a farmer (bigger risk, bigger rewards), a liquidator (monitoring the pool), or a bounty hunter (pitches on the pool and reinvests, taking a cut for himself).
A strange labeling system is just one more of the many weird factors when it comes to Rabbit Finance.
The Call of Cthulhu
Traded as OFF and officially named Cthulhu Offerings, the fun with naming did not stop with Rabbit Finance. This crypto, named after the H.P. Lovecraft story, has some fun with its labels, calling its coins “blessings.”
The weird keeps coming as the very act of mining lands the miners the title of “sacrifices” and the staff of the Cthulhu Offerings calling themselves “cultists.” Mostly left to enthusiasts, the cryptocurrency dedicated to the ancient mythos, doesn’t show much sign of great profit margin. However, having its own programming language be so unique, it surely falls into the category of weird.
Dogecoin
Sometimes something can be so weird it becomes serious again, like a strange circle of utter chaos. With an infinite total coin supply, thusly putting it out of the category of “the seriously considered” cryptocurrencies, the Dogecoin started as a joke. Thanks to the boosting of Elon Musk, this coin, which dons the face of a surprised Shiba Inu dog of meme fame, actually got a decent amount of traction in 2021, rather accidentally.
Created initially to be a satirical cryptocurrency, this goof subsequently became a genuine investment prospect with a substantial value. Only in crypto, right?
A True Believer In Crypto
It is being said that the unexplained death of John McAfee on June 23, 2021, will leave several nations’ lawyers busy for years to come.
McAfee: Of Anti-Viral Fame, Ironically Goes Viral
If his name sounds familiar, it should. The famed founder of computer antivirus software named for himself, died in a Spanish jail cell, awaiting extradition to the United States. I am sure that in his afterlife, he is kicking himself of the irony: McAfee’s story went viral. Oh, the pun just had to be made.
Why? Tax evasion. Why? Countless earnings and assets McAfee obtained through cryptocurrency.
McAfee garnered attention from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, who alleged that McAfee owed somewhere around $4.2 million in back taxes for backing initial coin offerings (ICO) and not claiming over $23 million in earnings.
More Than Taxes
Perishing before he faced trial, the suspicions around McAfee are not the only factor landing him on the weird list. It was likely McAfee’s comments that got him into the realm of the strange and unusual.
Tweeting two years before his death in prison, McAfee stated “If I suicide myself, I didn’t. I was whacked,” leaving some to believe that his death was more than natural causes. But, the weird doesn’t stop there.
Well remembered for the early adoption of Bitcoin, McAfee once famously said that he would “eat [his own] dick on national television” if the price of BTC did not reach $500,000 by the year 2020. While the value took until 2021 to reach that price point, no such “meal” was ever televised.
