2025 Crypto Circle Magical Event Log: From Founder's Mysterious Disappearance to Meme Coin Frenzy

In 2025, the crypto market staged a series of jaw-dropping real-life dramas. These events are not just gossip or rumors but reflect a microcosm of the industry’s trust crisis, regulatory vacuum, and runaway speculative culture.

The Founder’s Bizarre “Disappearance” and Marketing Boundaries

Northern Myanmar Lost Wallet Incident

In February, the DIN project issued a bizarre announcement on TGE day: founder Harold went missing in northern Myanmar, claiming that the multi-signature wallet holding the main project tokens and his laptop were lost together. It sounds like the opening of a sci-fi novel, but the craziness continued— the project announced that even with the founder missing and the core wallet gone, token issuance would proceed as usual because it had received approval from 2/3 multi-signature consensus.

Investors exploded. Some thought this was a clever marketing stunt, while many others asked the hard questions: if even basic asset security cannot be guaranteed, what hope is there for the project’s future? This incident starkly exposes the chasm between promotion and reality in some projects.

“Pseudo-Death Exit” and Moral Bottom Line

The May Zerebro incident shattered industry imagination. Co-founder Jeffy Yu’s “suicide” video circulated on social media, causing the meme coin LLJEFFY’s market cap to soar to $30 million instantly. But soon after, Jeffy Yu privately admitted to investors— it was all a carefully crafted “pseudo-death exit” strategy, aimed at resolving personal disputes and maintaining the coin’s price.

This was not just a moral lapse of an individual but a manipulation of market sentiment using death as a tool. It was the first time in crypto history that someone used such an extreme method to “harvest” investors, plunging industry trust in project teams to a new low.

The Ironic Life and Identity Exposure of Hackers

Hackers Repeatedly Victimized

An absurd scene in April: a hacker who previously stole a large amount of funds from zkLend, while laundering money through Tornado Cash, accidentally clicked a phishing link, resulting in the theft of 2,930 ETH. Even more bizarre, this hacker proactively left an on-chain message apologizing to zkLend and “pleading” for cooperation to track down the phishing site operators and recover the funds.

zkLend responded rationally, expressing willingness to cooperate in monitoring related addresses. This “black eats black” drama turned into a strange collaboration, ironically illustrating a fact: in the anonymity of crypto, even hackers cannot fully control their loot.

Offline Glance Reveals Identity

In May, the Base chain project Clanker announced parting ways with developer proxystudio, not due to complex on-chain analysis but because they were recognized by an old colleague at the FarCon offline conference. This proxystudio is actually the “on-chain detective” Gabagool.eth, who in 2022 ran off with $350,000 from the Velodrome team and then “voluntarily” returned it.

From hunter turned fugitive, then to new project developer, and finally exposed because of a face recognition offline—this comedy fully demonstrates that anonymity is not a permanent armor; past actions will eventually surface in tight-knit circles.

Project Teams’ “Self-Destructive” Operations

Wallet Service Provider’s Arrogance

In June, Bitcoin Lightning wallet Alby, due to users not migrating from the old shared wallet in time, directly zeroed out the balances of long-inactive accounts according to the terms of service. What logic is this? Forcibly imposing custodial control on a decentralized wallet, the community exclaimed that “Alby redefined what a wallet is.”

A sharp question looms: if wallet providers can freeze or seize user assets at will, what does “self-custody” even mean?

Algorithmic Mistakes and Financial Disaster Drills

In October, stablecoin issuer Paxos, due to operational errors, suddenly minted $300 trillion worth of PYUSD out of thin air, more than twice the total global GDP. Although they destroyed these “phantom assets” within 22 minutes, the scare was akin to a financial nuclear simulation, vividly demonstrating the terrifying potential of human error in large on-chain transactions.

Slacking Off Becomes Official Marketing

Layer2 project Eclipse, after founder scandals and management changes, recently started “stirring the pot” on social media again. First, a post claiming “Harvard sociology research completed in 36 months” mocking their community, then an official comment during ecosystem introduction saying “we have no users.” This self-deprecating humor is no longer cute but reveals a sense of despair after a lackluster ecosystem development and collapsing community trust.

The Ultimate Carnival of Traffic Monetization and Market Manipulation

Tokenization Feast of Political IP

After Trump launched a meme coin bearing his name, his wife Melania also released a similarly named token MELANIA. No technological vision, purely a fame-to-cash move. This fully demonstrates a fact: in the traffic economy, any identity can be quickly tokenized into a speculative tool, just like the recent Gabagool Meme coin craze.

K-line Becomes a “Canvas”

Leaked chat records of market manipulators this year show that the K-line trends of certain altcoins are not market-driven but carefully “drawn” artworks by manipulators. They can freely “paint” expected patterns, crushing quantitative trading models. This nakedly reveals that the small-cap crypto market has degenerated into a pure capital game, with price discovery mechanisms completely broken.

Reflection: What Are We Building?

From the moral lapses of founders, the collapse of security boundaries, the erosion of project trust, to bottomless traffic monetization and blatant market manipulation, each incident questions the ultimate purpose of the crypto world: is this promising new system building the future or creating the next bubble? The answer in 2025 is thought-provoking.