April Fools' Pranks Lead to Significant Losses and Backlash in Crypto Community

This April Fools' joke ends with a 25% loss for crypto investors. Investors faced a 25% loss on JBX as the $69M Paradigm funding turned out to be an April Fool’s prank. On April 1, JuiceBox’s content manager appeared to have announced that the Ethereum-based crowdfunding platform had secured a fake $69 million funding round supported by the crypto venture capital company Paradigm. However, it was later revealed to be an April Fools’ Day prank, causing JBX speculators to incur losses exceeding 20%. The news broke through a post on X by pseudonymous account briliegh.eth, which has since been made private. The post claimed that JuiceBox had secured a funding round, expressing gratitude to the backers and supporters for their role in the purported achievement. Following the announcement, JuiceBox’s native token JBX surged more than 40%, reaching $0.0043, according to CoinGecko data. However, the celebration was short-lived, and an hour later, briliegh.eth confessed that it was all a prank. The new revelation caused a decline in JBX price, with the token’s value plummeting by 25% to $0.0033. The aftermath of the prank stirred up backlash from various X users. In response to screenshots of the initial announcement shared on X by @spreekaway, one user stated, “What even was supposed to be the joke here?” while another exclaimed, “Jail.” In a similar incident, decentralized tech stack Waves experienced a brief 5% increase in price after its pseudonymous founder “Sasha,” announced a fake integration with AI, only to return to previous levels shortly after. Some users criticized the joke, likening it to market manipulation. On a lighter note, April Fools saw David Hoffman, a prominent Ethereum maximalist and Bankless co-host, announce his fake departure from the $ETH ecosystem to join forces with Austin Federa and Yakovenko at the Solana Foundation. Hoffman joked about becoming the “VP of Decentralization,” poking fun at the common criticism that Solana isn’t as decentralized as Ethereum. Given his history of advocating for Ethereum, the announcement left many amused rather than outraged. BitMEX Research also playfully suggested that Grayscale Bitcoin ETF experienced no outflows, poking fun at the significant outflows GBTC had seen in recent weeks. They later clarified in a follow-up post that the actual outflow was $303 million on April 1.