2025 Crypto Market Silly Yearbook: Those Unimaginable Identity Reversals and Absurd Events

If I were to describe the cryptocurrency industry in 2025 with a single word, it would be “reversal.” Founders go missing on TGE day, hackers get counter-killed by their stolen funds, on-chain detective Gabagool shifts from chasing criminals to becoming a thief, and all these absurd plots are hints at how crazy this market has become. The stories that unfolded this year are enough to make any screenwriter blush.

From On-Chain Detective to Fugitive: Gabagool’s Identity Reversal Becomes the Biggest Drama of the Year

In an offline meeting in May, the most surreal “face recognition event” in crypto happened—Aerodrome founder Alex Cutler suddenly recognized the developer in front of him, proxystudio, as the infamous on-chain detective Gabagool.eth from years ago.

The story begins in 2022. At that time, Gabagool was active in DeFi and famous for on-chain criminal tracking skills, considered a “hacker nemesis” by many project teams. But ironically, this “justice enforcer” exploited his position to transfer about $350,000 from the Velodrome project team wallet. After the incident was exposed, Gabagool reluctantly returned the funds under community and project pressure, but his identity gradually faded from public view.

No one expected that this “reformed” detective would later become a core partner of proxystudio—the AI token launcher on Base. It wasn’t until the scene at FarCon that this long-silent old case was suddenly dug up overnight. The Clanker team responded swiftly, issuing a statement to sever ties. This dramatic “offline reveal” far surpassed any on-chain tracing.

Founder Disappearance: From TGE Vanishing to Lost in Myanmar

In February, the DIN project taught the community a lesson: what does “dropping the chain at a critical moment” mean? On the TGE (Token Generation Event) day, founder Harold suddenly vanished, and the team couldn’t contact him for hours. Later, through Harold’s social media, it was revealed he claimed to be in Myanmar and had unfortunately lost access to the multi-sig wallet and his laptop.

Even more surreal, despite the founder’s disappearance and lost wallet, the DIN team announced that the token issuance plan would proceed unaffected, with two-thirds multi-sig approval, and launch as scheduled. This bizarre combination of “person missing, tokens still issued” instantly sparked community debate—was this real misfortune or a carefully planned hype? Regardless of the truth, this disappearance event indeed brought “unexpected heat” to the project—though more like a wave of skepticism.

Hacker Counter-Killed: The Strange Disappearance of 2930 ETH Stolen Funds

In April, a drama of “mantis catching cicada, oriole behind” played out on-chain. The hacker who attacked zkLend in February and stole 2930 ETH made a fatal mistake when trying to transfer the stolen funds via Tornado Cash—they clicked on a phishing site.

As expected, all 2930 ETH were instantly stolen by the phishing site’s operators. Even more “appreciable” was that the hacker later sent an on-chain message to zkLend, almost pleading for cooperation to recover the funds. Ironically, the attacker had become a victim, and the phishing site had been running for over five years, indicating many other victims besides this hacker.

Fake Death and “Pseudo-Death Plan”: When Founders Exit with a Death Video

In May, Zerebro co-founder Jeffy Yu turned his “retirement” into an absurd spectacle. First, a video of him shooting himself circulated online, leading viewers to think it was another meme developer’s sensational live stream. Then, on the afternoon of the 6th, a screenshot of Jeffy Yu’s obituary began spreading, and people linked it to the video.

The key moment arrived—his related meme token LLJEFFY’s market cap surged to $30 million. But the show wasn’t over; that evening, several KOLs came out to “debunk” the death, and Jeffy Yu sent a letter to early investors admitting it was a carefully planned “pseudo-death exit.” His reasons sounded sincere: ongoing harassment from an ex-partner, maliciously leaked personal info, online hatred—all served as excuses for his “permanent exit.” More candidly, he stated in the letter that this was the “only way to prevent a crash in the project’s token price.”

This created a new record in crypto history—the first “pseudo-death exit strategy.” Though absurd, it reveals the mindset of project teams and warrants reflection.

Wallet Auto-Reset: Long-term Inactivity Leads to “Taxation”

In June, Bitcoin Lightning Network wallet Alby annoyed some users. They found their wallet balances were deducted by the platform. Why?

Reviewing Alby’s updated terms of service in March 2025, the truth became clear: for old accounts created before 2023 using shared wallet architecture, if there is no transaction activity for 12 consecutive months, Alby reserves the right to deduct all remaining balance from that account. Users then realized their “idle wallets” were directly wiped out by the platform. This move pushed the concept of “wallet management fee” to an extreme—not just deducting fees, but taking all remaining funds.

Stablecoin Blunder: 300 Trillion PYUSD in 22 Minutes Crisis

In October, stablecoin issuer Paxos staged a “false alarm” drama. They accidentally minted 300 trillion PYUSD stablecoins—what does that mean? Based on a 1:1 USD peg, it’s equivalent to 300 trillion dollars—more than twice the total GDP of all countries combined.

Fortunately, Paxos responded quickly, destroying all 300 trillion tokens in 22 minutes. Without prompt action, this blunder could have triggered a market-wide nuclear event. Ironically, this incident highlights that sometimes, solving global debt issues on blockchain just takes a mistake and a burn button.

Market Manipulation and Self-Playing Projects: K-line Begins “Free Drawing”

Mid-year, the crypto market witnessed the “artistic creation” of whales. When quantitative trading was “ground into the dirt,” some altcoin whales found they could freely draw K-lines—charts that defy normal trading logic, all crafted by the whales’ “masterpieces.”

In tandem, the Eclipse project issued an “honest declaration.” The project, known for controversy—from founder sexual assault scandals to frequent leadership changes, and claiming to be “a 36-month social science study at Harvard”—recently, in a post introducing the new project ETHGAS, the official account bluntly stated: “We have no users.” This ironic “honesty” makes one laugh and cry at the same time.

Celebrities Jumping on the Bandwagon: Melania Token Becomes the Top of the Shame

If the previous events are absurd, then Melania launching a token named MELANIA after Trump issued his own token, in the dead of night, completely breaks the bottom line of crypto aesthetics. It’s not just copying the trend; it’s a deconstruction of the entire industry.

Some say that if there is a shame pillar in crypto, MELANIA would be carved at the very top, and the token itself would be the shame of the shame pillar. This judgment might be a bit absolute, but it sufficiently illustrates the community’s disgust for such “celebrity tokens.”

The 2025 Silly Revelation

Looking back at 2025, from Gabagool’s identity reversal to founders disappearing en masse, from hackers being counter-killed to “pseudo-death exits,” these series of events resemble a surreal absurdist play. But beneath the humor, they all hint at real issues in the crypto market:

Failure of identity verification, chaos in project governance, vulnerabilities in user asset protection, rampant market manipulation, and abuse of celebrity effects. This year, the crypto industry used one “silly moment” after another to show us how crazy and fragile this market truly is.

Whether 2025 has officially “ended” or not, these events will serve as warnings for future entrants— in this “casino” and “amusement park” experiment, even more absurd stories than “cold wallets turning hot due to heat” are always playing out.