2025 Crypto Circle Silly News Awards

The crypto market of 2025 has officially come to an end. Many thrilling events occurred throughout the year, from the US President issuing coins to epic liquidations, making 2025 destined to be extraordinary. Looking back, we pick up those absurd and silly moments from this year as Easter eggs at certain milestones, also as a memorial for you and me to have “survived” until the end in this “casino,” this amusement park, this experimental field. We hope to see the very last moment, which is the origin of all the silliness this year—more absurd than “hot weather turning cold wallets into hot wallets.”

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

In February, the DIN team announced that they had been unable to contact the project founder Harold for several hours, and they were seeking assistance from venture capital firms and media to confirm his whereabouts. According to Harold’s previous statements on social media, he was suspected to be in Myanmar and claimed to have lost a multi-signature wallet and a laptop. Despite the founder’s temporary disappearance, the DIN team stated that the $DIN token issuance plan was unaffected. Currently, the TGE has received approval from more than two-thirds of the multi-signature signers and is expected to launch as scheduled. Some community members believe this incident brought unexpected attention to the project, while others questioned the “founder missing, wallet lost but project still launching normally” scenario, suspecting possible 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 (the incident originally occurred in February) accidentally 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 mistakenly 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 operators of that website. 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 website had been running for over five years. At this stage, the security team had no conclusive evidence linking the phishing site and the attacker. As a precaution, zkLend added these new wallet addresses from the phishing site into its fund tracking system for real-time monitoring, and contacted CEXs and authorities. The team will continue efforts to trace these funds.

Zerebro co-founder fakes death and posts a timed farewell letter.

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

As attention grew, its related meme token LLJEFFY’s market cap skyrocketed, once surpassing $30 million. However, on the evening of the 6th, several KOLs posted “fact-checks,” revealing that Jeffy Yu had sent a detailed letter to an early