Funny on purpose: the self-aware shtick that defined the MadBitcoins persona

The serious financial press treats Bitcoin straight, when it treats Bitcoin at all. MadBitcoins, from the first month, was never going to. The 2013 timeline is funny on purpose — a deliberate editorial stance disguised as showmanship.

The clearest example shows up December 26, 2013, the day BBC One aired Matt Smith's regeneration into Peter Capaldi as the Twelfth Doctor. MadBitcoins tweeted:

The joke is a non-joke. There is no actual connection between a BBC sci-fi regeneration and Bitcoin's price action. The pleasure is in the deadpan certainty — the "I think not" landing, which is the rhythm of a TV anchor refusing to admit anything is coincidence. It pulled four favs and two retweets in 2013 numbers. By volume, it didn't land. By format, it was telling the audience what kind of account this was going to be.

The same week, a parallel bit ran around Bitcoin and Apple. On December 9, after Apple removed several Bitcoin wallet apps from the iOS App Store:

The grievance is real — Apple did, for years, treat Bitcoin apps with hostility. But the tweet is framed as comedy: a single user threatening to defect to Android because the platform won't let him hold magic internet money. #MakesNoSense. The hashtag is the punchline.

The game show that wasn't quite a joke

The strangest expression of the funny-on-purpose register is "Who Wants to be a Bitcoinaire." On December 4, 2013, MadBitcoins posted:

The tweet is structured as if it were a real casting call. The format conventions are exact — what the contestant needs (webcam, mic, buzzer), what they have to commit (evenings). The bit only works because it's possible the show is real and impossible it's a network production. The audience has to read the gap between the form (game show casting call) and the content (a Bitcoin podcaster pretending to be ABC) and choose whether to laugh.

This is the persona doing more work than the joke. MadBitcoins is presenting itself as if it were a fully-staffed broadcast institution, posting things that institution might post — game show casting, holiday specials, telethons — at the scale and tone they'd be posted at by a real network. The bit isn't "look how small I am, that's funny." It's "I'm doing the bit at full broadcast scale, and the gap is the joke."

Why being funny was load-bearing

In 2013, Bitcoin Twitter wasn't well-defined as a culture. The maximalists hadn't formed. The Bitcoin Cash schism wouldn't happen for four years. Most people on the timeline were either developers, libertarians, or curious onlookers. The voice you brought to the conversation defined which of those audiences came back.

MadBitcoins, by being funny on purpose, was claiming the curious-onlooker audience. The TV-anchor deadpan, the running grievances, the fake game show, the Doctor Who reference — these are all signals to people who don't yet have a Bitcoin identity that this account isn't going to require them to perform one. You could like MadBitcoins without committing to a Bitcoin worldview. That's why, by 2014's breakout, the audience could grow as fast as it did. The format was funny enough to be safe to share with non-Bitcoin friends.

It's a small editorial choice in 2013. It scales into a persona that lasts 13 years.