The crypto market in 2025 was extraordinary, from the US President issuing coins to epic liquidations. This article reviews the most absurd and outrageous moments of the year, including founders going missing, hackers getting hacked, fake deaths, scams, and more laughable incidents.
(Background recap: 2 million USD evaporated in 45 days: A crypto OG’s darkest hour and rebirth declaration)
(Additional background: Scams mocked by police with “How are you still alive,” mother and daughter devastated and took their own lives! Behind it all is an old jewelry dealer laundering USDT)

Table of Contents

• On TGE day, founder went missing, claiming to have lost the main multi-signature in northern Myanmar
• zkLend hacker accidentally clicked on a phishing site, leading to a second theft of stolen funds, hacker requests cooperation with zkLend to recover funds
• Zerebro founder fakes death and releases a timed suicide note
• Previously stole project funds, Clanker partner drops off during offline conference
• A certain Bitcoin wallet wipes out user balances
• Paxos mistakenly mints 300 trillion PYUSD, then urgently destroys them, equivalent to more than twice the total global debt
• An artist who can’t draw K-lines isn’t a good market maker
• Eclipse: We have no users
• Trump’s wife issues coins

The crypto market of 2025 officially ended. Many thrilling events happened this year—whether it was the US President issuing coins or epic liquidations—making 2025 destined to be extraordinary. Looking back, we pick up those outrageous and absurd moments of the year as Easter eggs at certain milestones, and also as memories of us surviving until the end in this “casino,” amusement park, or experiment. We hope to see the very end, which is the origin of all the absurdity this year—more absurd than “hot weather turning cold wallets into hot wallets.”

TGE day, founder went missing, claiming to have lost the main multi-signature in northern Myanmar

In February, the DIN team announced that they had been unable to contact the project founder Harold for several hours. The team was seeking assistance from venture capital firms and media to locate him. According to Harold’s previous social media posts, he was suspected to be in Myanmar, claiming he lost the multi-signature wallet and his laptop. Despite the founder’s temporary disappearance, the DIN team stated that $DIN token issuance plan was unaffected. Currently, TGE has received approval from over two-thirds of the multi-signature, and is expected to launch on schedule. Some community members believe this incident brought unexpected attention to the project, while others questioned the “founder missing, wallet lost but project still running” scenario, suspecting deliberate hype.

zkLend hacker accidentally clicked on a phishing site, leading to a second theft of stolen funds, hacker requests cooperation with zkLend to recover funds

In April, the zkLend hacker ( originally involved in the February incident) clicked on a phishing website while attempting to use Tornado Cash, resulting in the theft of 2930 ETH. The hacker then sent an on-chain message to zkLend saying, “Hello, I intended to transfer funds into Tornado Cash but accidentally used a phishing site, and all the funds were stolen. I am devastated. I deeply apologize for the chaos and losses caused. All 2930 ETH have been taken by the website’s operators. I no longer hold any coins. Please focus on those website operators to see if some funds can be recovered.”

On the same day, zkLend issued a statement saying that the phishing site had been running for over five years. At this stage, the security team had no concrete evidence linking the phishing site to the attacker. As a precaution, zkLend added these new wallet addresses from the phishing site into their fund tracking for real-time monitoring, and contacted CEXs and authorities. The team will continue efforts to trace these funds.

Zerebro founder fakes death and releases a timed suicide note

In May, a clip of Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu shooting himself during a live stream circulated online. Many saw it as similar to the bizarre live streams of Pump.Fun, just another meme developer staging a “story” for attention. On the afternoon of May 6, a screenshot of Jeffy Yu’s obituary circulated on social media, leading people to connect it with the “suicide clip” from two days earlier.

As attention grew, the related meme token LLJEFFY’s market cap surged past 30 million USD. However, that evening, multiple KOLs posted “fact-checks,” revealing that Jeffy Yu had sent a detailed letter to an early investor, showing this was a carefully planned “pseudo-death exit” scheme. Jeffy Yu explained that due to ongoing harassment from a former partner, malicious disclosure of personal info, and online hatred, he chose to “permanently exit” by faking his death video. He admitted this was the “only way out” to prevent the project’s token price from crashing. This event is considered the first “pseudo-death exit strategy” in crypto history.

Previously stole project funds, Clanker partner drops off during offline conference

In May, AI token generator Clanker on Base announced ending cooperation with core developer proxystudio (@proxystudio.eth). Team member Jack Dishman stated that Clanker only recently realized that proxystudio had a history of misconduct.

What makes this story absurd is the multiple identities of the protagonist. proxystudio’s real identity is Gabagool.eth, a well-known on-chain detective active in DeFi circles, famous for tracking down criminals on-chain. In 2022, this detective was exposed for allegedly embezzling about 350,000 USD from the Velodrome team’s wallet during his tenure, later returning most of the funds under community and project pressure.

Even more surreal, Gabagool was not re-identified through on-chain data but was “recognized in person” at an offline FarCon event by an old colleague—according to multiple media reports, Aerodrome founder Alex Cutler recognized proxystudio as the same Gabagool from years ago. The old case was quickly dug up, and Clanker’s team promptly announced they had “parted ways.”

A Bitcoin wallet wipes out user balances

In June, multiple community users reported that their Bitcoin Lightning wallets in Alby appeared to have their balances deducted by the platform. Alby’s official documentation, updated in March 2025, states: “Users who have been notified for over a year to withdraw excess funds from their old Alby accounts created in 2023 or earlier, which use the shared wallet (shared wallet) architecture. To better manage these long-term inactive accounts, if there is no transaction activity (i.e., no completed transactions) for 12 consecutive months, the platform reserves the right to deduct all remaining balances from those accounts.”

Alby, redefining wallets.

Paxos mistakenly mints 300 trillion PYUSD, then urgently destroys them, more than twice the total global debt

In October, stablecoin issuer Paxos minted 300 trillion PYUSD, a USD-pegged stablecoin, but after discovering the error, they took 22 minutes to burn all the tokens.

Based on its USD peg, the total value of these destroyed tokens is about 300 trillion USD. In comparison, according to IMF data, this amount exceeds the combined GDP of all countries in the world by more than double.

Blockchain can solve global debt problems in just one minute.