Say hello to Buttcoin and the community celebrating Bitcoin's fall

Bitcoin may be down, but oh man Buttcoin has never been better.

As cryptocurrency investors around the world bemoan the loss of their life savings, a contrarian community that prefers to see the humor in the recent correction has formed online under the banner of Buttcoin. And they're loving every minute of this tailspin.

Like some sort of Mirror Universe version of r/Bitcoin, the Buttcoin subreddit is filled with memes and posts applauding every downward-trending Bitcoin milestone. Just dropped to $9,000? Let's celebrate. Hit $7,000? Time to bust out the caviar.

One upvoted Feb. 5 post sums up the mood nicely. "I'm having an orgasm watching the prices dropping - upvote if you're a sick degenerate like me," it reads. "i just kept 0.1 bitcoin to enjoy some delicious pain in the process."

Mocking the cryptocurrency faithful's rallying cry of "to the moon" — where the value of their portfolio is surely heading in their eyes — is also part of the fun.

Perhaps the loudest voice in the Buttcoin space can be found on Twitter at, you guessed it, @Buttcoin. While the account is now managed by several people, it was originally created in 2011 by one guy who is also responsible for the subreddit and the now-defunct Buttcoin.org (you can see the earlier posts on a mirror site).

In conversation over encrypted chat, the creator of the Twitter account shared Buttcoin's origin story.

"The name grew out of the Something Awful forums," explained Barry Oners (an intentionally erection-evoking pseudonym). "In 2011 Gawker wrote an article about Silk Road and how bitcoins were involved. This is kinda how Bitcoin enters the mainstream.

"There was a thread on SA that started semi-serious but we quickly realized that there were a lot of real dumb people involved," he continued. "There were just hundred[s] of pictures of people's milk crate mining rigs, people accidentally deleting wallets, people falling for Ponzi schemes and obvious scams."

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And while Oners may revel in the mess that is Bitcoin, he isn't heartless. "I feel for people who were suckered in the past few months by 'cryptocurrency experts' telling them that Bitcoin was going to the moon.

"They got the newbies into this mess," he continued, "they share the blame and pain equally."

And Oners sees a lot of potential pain on the horizon. When asked about Erik Finman, the 19-year-old cryptocurrency investor who said it's "your fault" if you don't become a millionaire in the next 10 years, he had a few choice thoughts.

"Twerp gambled at the table and hit the jackpot," he noted. "Doesn’t mean everyone should head to the casino. Cash out and head home is all I can say."

So does the Buttcoin community hope Bitcoin crumbles to nothing? Not even close. After all, then who would they have to make fun of?

"If bitcoin dies, we die too," observed Oners. "I sincerely hope Bitcoin never dies."

We're right there with you.