The Bitcoin Wizard on the Wall Street Journal is a crowdsourced attempt to place a Bitcoin advert in the newspaper, calling itself an ITO or Initial Troll Offering.
The Bitcoin wizard, a crude MSPaint advertisement used to promote the Reddit subforum /r/Bitcoin is seeing a crowdsourced attempt to place it in the Wall Street Journal. The move is planned to be the first of many promotional attempts to troll high profile institutions.
The ITO Whitepaper
The initiative presents its whitepaper on the btcwizard.fund website, where it is advertised under the auspices of an ITO or Initial Troll Offering;
Commonly referred to as an ITO, it is a fundraising campaign for ridiculous and fun concepts involving the trolling of institutions with Bitcoin… participants will fund projects whose sole intention is to make fun of things, people, or Jamie Dimon.
Jamie Dimon, head of JPMorgan made himself a target of the Bitcoin communities ire when he made comments calling Bitcoin a “fraud” among other derogatory remarks aimed at Bitcoin users.
The name ITO also trolls the current Ethereum ICO craze. The Bitcoin wizard himself is also a less than serious figure, actively poking fun at Bitcoin, the words “magic internet money” on the ad both mocking and celebrating Bitcoin’s incredible market cap (currently valued at over $100 billion), and the general perception of Bitcoin’s complexity. The wizard portrayed in the ad wields a Bitcoin staff and holds fire in his hand asking only one thing – Join Us.
The Wall Street Journal
Let's get our beloved #Bitcoin wizard on the WSJ!
$350k goal. https://t.co/85v73JeGsm
— Hisham Fahmy (@fahmyeu) November 16, 2017
A full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal sells for approximately $350,000 and the whitepaper promises to return donated Bitcoins if the target is not met. If the target is met however then donors will be rewarded by having the Bitcoin wizard advert featured in the largest circulated newspaper in America. That’s approximately 2.277 million copies.
The ITO website has also reached out for suggestions for further crowdsourced Bitcoin troll activism.
Other Notable Cryptocurrency Crowdsourced Promotions
Community activism and crowdsourcing has a history in the cryptocurrency space, particularly in the Dogecoin community where the coin sparked the imaginations of a new generation drawn to Dogecoin’s less than serious attitude towards finance and cryptocurrency. The Dogecoin community grew from a general ironic cynicism of the cryptocurrency market, with clone Bitcoins being released thick and fast. However, users had seen the gains Bitcoin made and wanted some of that themselves.
Despite all odds, Dogecoin saw a huge surge in popularity with it particularly striking a chord with Reddit and 4chan users. The Dogecoin community’s achievements, arguably unlike the coin (753 Dogecoins to the dollar), cannot be discounted – they raised enough money to sponsor Nascar driver Josh Wise and also the Jamaican Bobsled team. The Dogecoin efforts demonstrated what the internet is capable of when achieving groundswell helping to bring cryptocurrency to a much larger audience.
The Bitcoin wizard also made headlines last week as the banner for Reddit sub /r/Bitcoin, which recently reached the 400,000 subscribers milestone.
Will you be donating to the WSJ fund? Do you have any suggestions for further fundraising? Let us know in the comments below.
Images courtesy of /r/Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Flickr/Sarah Gilbert