Culture · meme hall
HODL started as a drunk typo. “Magic internet money” was a homemade wizard ad. Every meme here has its origin story, a date and a link to the original post. Where the origin can't be pinned down, the card says so.
Michael Saylor, his quotes and memes →
Satoshi Nakamoto
Satoshi put that day's front-page headline of The Times (London) into the very first block. It proves the block was not mined before 3 January 2009, and it reads like a comment on the bank bailouts Bitcoin was built to route around. It is now printed on T-shirts, mugs and the occasional tattoo.
Source: Block 0 on mempool.space · 21 BTC museum
Hal Finney
Two words from cryptographer Hal Finney, a week after the genesis block. He was one of the first people to run the software and received the first bitcoin transaction from Satoshi. Finney died of ALS in 2014; “Running bitcoin” became a tribute and a fundraising challenge for ALS research.
Source: X, 11 Jan 2009 03:33 UTC
Laszlo Hanyecz
On 18 May 2010 programmer Laszlo Hanyecz offered 10,000 BTC on BitcoinTalk for two large pizzas. On 22 May another user (jercos) ordered two Papa John's pizzas to his door and got the coins, then worth about $41. It is remembered as the first purchase of a physical good with bitcoin and is celebrated every 22 May.
Source: BitcoinTalk #137 · the 10,000 BTC transaction
Bitcoin has died 477 times.
99bitcoins tracker
Every crash brings headlines declaring Bitcoin dead. The website 99bitcoins keeps a list of these obituaries, starting with a December 2010 blog post; on 11 October 2026 it counted 477. The joke writes itself: the patient keeps producing a block every ten minutes.
Bitcoin. Magic Internet Money.
u/mavensbot, r/Bitcoin
When r/Bitcoin asked for ideas for a Reddit ad in February 2013, user mavensbot sent an MS Paint wizard with the caption “Magic Internet Money”. The ad went live on 6 November 2013, weeks before bitcoin first crossed $1,000. Critics meant the phrase as an insult; bitcoiners wear it proudly. (We recreate the idea in text here rather than copying the original drawing.)
Source: Know Your Meme
GameKyuubi, BitcoinTalk
During a crash, a BitcoinTalk user admitted he was a bad trader, a little drunk, and simply holding. He misspelled “holding” in the title. The typo became the word for not selling, later back-filled as “Hold On for Dear Life”, which is not where it came from.
Source: BitcoinTalk #375643
popularized by Andreas Antonopoulos
If an exchange holds your private keys, you hold an IOU, not bitcoin. Andreas Antonopoulos repeated the idea in talks and in Mastering Bitcoin until it became a slogan; every exchange collapse (Mt. Gox, FTX) proved it again. Even regulators say it now: on 8 October 2026 the CFTC chairman opened a post with “Not your keys, not your coins.”
Partly verifiedNo single first use is documented.
Source: Mastering Bitcoin (GitHub) · CFTC chairman on X, 8 Oct 2026
Number go up.
started by skeptics
The broken grammar began as mockery: skeptics on the SomethingAwful forums parodied how they imagined bitcoiners think, and critic David Gerard spread it on Twitter in December 2017. Bitcoiners adopted it anyway, half joking (“NGU technology”), because the long-term chart kept doing exactly that.
Source: David Gerard, 2019
Wen moon? Wen Lambo?
“To the moon” means a huge price rise; the Lamborghini is the cliché reward. Asking “wen moon?” or “wen lambo?” (misspelled on purpose) became the way to mock impatient get-rich-quick traders during the 2017 boom. The joke is on the asker: the people who are still here are the ones who stopped asking.
Origin unverifiedOrigin not verified: we found no reliable first use.
No original source found
Tick tock, next block.
Brady Swenson (@CitizenBitcoin)
Whatever the news, price or politics, a new block arrives about every ten minutes. The phrase is credited to Swan Bitcoin co-founder Brady Swenson, who uses it as his tagline; it became Bitcoin Twitter's way of saying “ignore the noise”.
Partly verifiedAttribution per secondary sources; first use not dated.
Source: @CitizenBitcoin · live blocks
CZ (Binance) + Bizonacci
During an unscheduled Binance maintenance in 2018, CEO Changpeng Zhao kept telling users “funds are safe”. YouTuber Bizonacci turned it into a viral video with the misspelling “SAFU”, and Binance then named its emergency insurance fund the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). Bitcoiners use it ironically: a reminder that exchange promises are not self-custody.
Source: Binance Academy · CZ on X, 4 Jul 2018
Pierre Rochard (@BitcoinIsSaving)
On 23 February 2019 the @BitcoinIsSaving account posted a chart of one bitcoin priced in bitcoin, a perfectly flat line, captioned “This is the ideal stablecoin and store of value.” The tautology became a calm answer to price panic: measured in itself, your bitcoin never changes.
Partly verifiedThe chart post is verified; the exact first use of the text “1 BTC = 1 BTC” is not.
Source: X, 23 Feb 2019
Stay humble, stack sats.
popularized by Matt Odell
A sat is one hundred-millionth of a bitcoin. The advice: buy a little, regularly, keep it yourself and don't brag. Podcaster Matt Odell made it his sign-off; it ended up on hats at every Bitcoin conference.
Partly verifiedOdell is credited as popularizer; no single first use.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine · DCA calculator
Stephan Livera
Reply to any problem in the world with “Bitcoin fixes this”: half serious (sound money changes incentives), half self-parody. Podcaster Stephan Livera announced it on 26 July 2019 with “New meme born: Bitcoin Fixes This”; Jimmy Song later named a podcast after it.
Source: X, 26 Jul 2019 · Jimmy Song
Have fun staying poor.
popularized by Udi Wertheimer
The rude cousin of “stay humble”. Developer Udi Wertheimer started replying it to altcoin and DeFi promoters in September 2020 and repeated it hundreds of times until it stuck, often shortened to HFSP. Funny on Twitter, not great for actually convincing anyone.
Partly verifiedThe phrase existed before; its Bitcoin use is credited to Wertheimer.
Source: CoinDesk, Mar 2021 · Jameson Lopp
Few understand.
Posted under anything from a halving chart to a photo of a sunset. Half an inside joke about early adopters feeling smug, half a real observation: most people still do not know how Bitcoin works.
Origin unverifiedOrigin not verified: we found no reliable first use.
Source: fix that: Orange pill
@CHAIRFORCE_BTC and friends
As bitcoin crossed $50,000, a few accounts added red laser beams to their profile pictures with the rule: keep them until $100K. Soon members of Congress, Saylor and much of Bitcoin Twitter joined; El Salvador's president followed. Bitcoin first crossed $100,000 on 5 December 2024.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine · Know Your Meme · CNBC, 5 Dec 2024 · @saylor #NewProfilePic, 10 May 2021
attributed to Max Keiser
The idea: prices in dollars keep rising because more dollars keep being printed, while there will only ever be 21 million bitcoin. Knut Svanholm's cousin of the meme, “Everything divided by 21 million” (∞ ÷ 21M), says the same with math. A catchy line, not a price forecast.
Partly verifiedEarliest we found: Anita Posch quoting it as Max Keiser's on 16 Feb 2021; his original wording not located.
Source: X, 16 Feb 2021
Fix the money, fix the world.
popularized by Aleks Svetski
The big claim behind Bitcoin culture: many problems, from short-term thinking to debt, start with money that can be printed at will. Aleks Svetski's June 2021 Bitcoin Magazine essay and Miami talk made the phrase a slogan. Economists argue about how much money alone can fix; it is a thesis, not a proven law.
Partly verifiedPopularization is documented; the idea and similar wording are older.
Source: Bitcoin Magazine, Jun 2021
Take the orange pill.
A riff on the red pill from The Matrix (1999), in Bitcoin orange: the moment someone “gets” Bitcoin, or the act of explaining it to a friend (“I orange-pilled my dad”). We built a whole page for doing it kindly.
Partly verifiedFirst use not dated.
More history: Bitcoin museum · People · Orange pill
21 BTC