TBG + Pandemic — 2019–2021

30,759 tweets · 8,201 originals · The everything-at-once years

These three years are the second-largest cluster in the archive, and the most internally varied. 2019 is the Mad Tour — Hunt physically traveling to conferences and broadcasting from the road. 2020 is the highest single-year volume of any year except 2014 (15,620 tweets), driven by the pandemic confinement and the corresponding social-media intensity. 2021 is the Curio Cards rediscovery year, when an obscure 2017 art project becomes a Christie's auction lot and the account narrates it live.

What he was talking about

• Mad Tour 2019. Real-world reporting from conferences in Europe — Stonehenge, Berlin, Vienna. The "almostArrested #bitcoinFlag" tweet (189/24) captures the genre: Hunt brings a giant Bitcoin flag somewhere it doesn't belong, and the photo is the tweet. This is travelog reporting where the locale matters.
• The pandemic's pressure-cooker year (2020). Volume jumps. The interview show takes over — "27 people at @unconfiscatable #bitcoin conference. 8 hours and 46 minutes #live streamed" (Feb 2020, 78/21). The pandemic compressed everything into video, and MadBitcoins met it head-on.
• Tesla buys Bitcoin (Feb 8, 2021). "Today in #Bitcoin (Feb 8, 2021) — $44,777 All Time High — #Tesla Buys $1.5 Billion & Accepts Bitcoin" — 411/83, the era's top tweet. The daily-news format returns, but with an audience that's now actually waiting for it.
• CurioCards goes mainstream. September 2021: "#CurioCards prepares for their auction at @ChristiesInc" (204/66). Five days later: ".@garyvee just mentioned #CurioCards on @CNN" (152/45). October: "So, I guess we're in @Sothebys #curiocards #nft #art 2017" (119/32) — wry. The project Hunt built in 2017 with no fanfare is suddenly trading at Sotheby's and being called out on CNN.
• Las Vegas as a permanent beat. Pinball Hall of Fame opening (250/31). Marijuana dispensary at Fremont Street. The Indy 500 #bitcoincar. Vegas isn't background anymore; it's content.
• Bitcoin obituaries. "Sad farewell today to #Room77 in Berlin, a legendary #bitcoin bar where much of our history and even some of our code was written." (Oct 2020, 153/27). The account is now old enough to memorialize.

What landed

The format diversifies. Photo-led tweets (Vegas, CurioCards screenshots, museum installations) lead the engagement. Single-line declaratives still work — "Which is the best #bitcoin?" (Feb 2019) hit 85/48 with no other context. The audience supplies the punchline. The Mad Tour photos performed strongest when the geography was unlikely (Stonehenge, not another conference center).

Threaded posts work for the first time. The August 2021 CurioCards "(1/2) THANK YOU INTERNET!" thread captures the moment Hunt realized something he'd built had become canonical.

What flopped

Pure link-out daily-show tweets continue to underperform photo-and-opinion tweets. The accumulated audience now treats MadBitcoins as a place to see something, not just a redirect to a YouTube link.

Voice characteristics

The voice gets more confident, more elliptical, and more self-quoting. Hunt now references his own history — "Remember when we fought bearwhales?" (110/9) — and the audience remembers, because they were there. The hashtag stack settles: #bitcoin, #curiocards, #nft, #live, #lasvegas. The mention graph widens beyond Bitcoin Twitter into Vegas culture (@LasVegasLocally, @VitalVegas), the NFT scene, and mainstream press.

A new quiet motif: short observational tweets that don't even have a hashtag. Hunt is comfortable enough now to just tweet a photograph of something and let it stand.

Series + recurring concepts

• Mad Tour 2019 — geographic series across European conferences
• Today in #Bitcoin (date) dailies, now in a higher-engagement environment
• CurioCards milestones — owner count, auction listings, museum placements
• Vegas weeklies — running observational beat
• Bearwhale callbacks — self-mythologizing references

Why the era matters

This is the era where MadBitcoins demonstrates it can outlast a hype cycle. The early audience (2014–2016 Bitcoin maximalists) is still there. The mid audience (2017–2018 SegWit veterans) is still there. The new audience (2020–2021 pandemic-era newcomers and NFT-curious) shows up — and the account doesn't flinch tonally to chase them. Curio Cards' Christie's moment is the validation: the project nobody covered for four years is suddenly the project everyone is calling about, and Hunt has the tape.

Flagship tweets

• 1358771000000000000 (2021-02-08) — Tesla buys $1.5B Bitcoin (411/83 — era max)
• 1436109619974205468 (2021-09-09) — CurioCards prepares for Christie's auction
• 1437805610683142148 (2021-09-14) — Gary Vee mentions CurioCards on CNN
• 1119497560186662912 (2019-04-20) — "Mad Buddha" (Facebook find)
• 1190642311086198790 (2019-11-02) — "This is great!!!!!"
• 1427112926272397316 (2021-08-16) — "Remember when we fought bearwhales?"
• 1399085816027127XXX (2021-05-30) — #bitcoincar at Indy 500