Origin — 2013

1,269 tweets · 519 originals · May → December 2013

The account is born already in character. The very first tweet on May 1, 2013 — "Bitcoin prices are up — bitcoin mining is more difficult — Cypress? — MadBitcoins!" (tweet 329399145494355969) — is a broadcast slug, not a person tweeting. The show exists before the account does. From day one, MadBitcoins is a newscaster, and the timeline is a marquee for the daily YouTube show.

What he was talking about

Daily Bitcoin headlines: price moves, regulatory blips, the Cyprus haircut still echoing, the first wave of "altcoin" projects (Litecoin, Feathercoin, Dogecoin), and grassroots crypto culture. The grammar is dependable: three or four bullet-style hooks separated by --, then "MadBitcoins!", then a bit.ly to the YouTube episode. It works like a TV crawl.

Two parallel threads run alongside the daily slugs:

1. Charity + community building. "Hoodie the Homeless," BitcoinNotBombs, the Philippines relief drive (61 donors, 8.1 BTC — Nov 2013). These get the same megaphone as price news. 2. Self-aware shtick. The "Who Wants to be a Bitcoinaire" game show, the "Doctor Who regenerating, Bitcoin and Litecoin climbing, Coincidence?" tweet on Dec 26, the running "Apple is killing Bitcoin apps" callouts. The MadBitcoins persona is funny on purpose.

What landed

Tweets that landed in 2013 were tiny by later standards — top originals hit 6 retweets, 4 favs — but the kind of tweet that pulled engagement is already clear:

• Cultural-bridge tweets that make Bitcoin legible to outsiders ("#Bitcoin on Jeopardy. We've hit the big time now people!" — Dec 13)
• Aphorisms that age into catchphrases ("When Bitcoin is a million dollars a coin, a million dollars won't be worth that much. #FutureProblems" — Nov 26)
• "First-day rule" wisdom ("first day you hear about it will be the cheapest and your best chance to buy the most. #learnedthehardway")
• Show shout-outs to the bitcoin people who would become canonical — @rogerkver, @LetsTalkBitcoin, @aantonop

Voice characteristics

The "—" separator, the all-caps slugs, the cheerful exclamation-point landings, the "via @YouTube" trail. Already a format. Hunt is not yet personally visible: this is the MadBitcoins newscaster, doing the bit. Engagement is low because the audience is small, but the persona is fully formed.

Why the era matters

The catchphrase, the format, the comedy-with-headlines tone, and the willingness to mix charity drives with price reports — every later era is a variation on what's already in place by December 2013. The dataset's first 1,269 tweets are the genome.

Flagship tweets

• 329399145494355969 (2013-05-01) — The very first MadBitcoins tweet
• 412112812569640960 (2013-12-13) — "#Bitcoin on Jeopardy. We've hit the big time now people!"
• 405302849797287936 (2013-11-26) — "When Bitcoin is a million dollars a coin, a million dollars won't be worth that much. #FutureProblems"
• 408548050823327744 (2013-12-05) — The "first day rule" of Bitcoin