Happy Halloween, and Happy Birthday to the Pumpkin Man Craig meme

Happy Halloween, and Happy Birthday to the Pumpkin Man Craig meme

Since it’s Halloween, and almost the second anniversary of Bitcoin Independence Day, let’s take a look at another celebrated moment in its history. It’s also the first birthday of the “Pumpkin Man Craig” meme.

The what?

You might have seen this one floating around out there on the social networks. It’s one of the odder moments in Bitcoin cultural history, and one of those memes that leaves outsiders scratching their heads in confusion. Was Dr. Wright ever a pumpkin farmer?

Actually, this incident also left a lot of seasoned Bitcoiners scratching their heads too.

It happened during the CC Forum on blockchain, AI and digital innovations in late October 2019. Dr. Wright was speaking onstage and, as happens every now and then, some audience plants began to heckle during question time.

It was all pretty routine. Dr. Wright had just taken a Tone Vays rant in his stride, telling him he could ignore him and BSV as much as he wants in a few years, because he has a lot of patents relevant to blockchain and BSV would have major corporate users. Then, from out of nowhere, audience member Andrea Lazar became accidentally famous by interrupting with a serve of her own.

With a rage and fury that was worthy of Halloween and left even Vays looking bemused, Lazar yelled:

“That’s exactly what you want! You are a mole, trying to crash Bitcoin. Farmer Craig! Pumpkin man Craig! Go back to your farm, and your tomatoes, and grow a superfarm.”

Here’s the incident itself, if you haven’t seen it:

The comments and vegetable references did make more sense in the context of the onstage discussion, though far more people have seen the Pumpkin Man memes than ever watched the actual conference session. In an attempt to shift the serious mood to something more entertaining, host Eric Van Der Keij of Frontier Network had asked Dr. Wright about his gardening abilities. Wright responded that his attempts to grow tomatoes had failed due to frequent travel, and that his gardener had mowed his pumpkin patch.

In the wake of Lazar’s outburst, Vays and the other hecklers tried to bring things back on track—but whatever points they were making had already been forgotten. The audience chuckled, and Bitcoin social media erupted with Angry Lazar and Pumpkin Man Craig memes.

You can even buy Pumpkin Man Craig hoodies, accessories and… pretty much everything:

A quick search on the Twitter hashtag #PumpkinManCraig reveals the entire collection. It got to the point where even Bitcoin Association President Jimmy Nguyen jumped in with a competition for the best Pumpkin Man meme:

Oh and also, happy birthday Craig

Some trivia: the last week of October is also the birthday of Dr. Wright himself:

Also, apart from his vegetable garden, Dr. Wright has never actually been a pumpkin farmer. However he has held an eclectic variety of jobs in his past, including “chalkboy” at the Brisbane Stock Exchange, and chicken gutter at an actual farm (which explains his tendency to measure chicken in liters, not pieces). Despite this, no-one ever calls him Chalkboy Craig, Chicken Gutter Craig, or… well, better to stick with plain old Bitcoin Creator Craig or Satoshi Nakamoto.

The Pumpkin Farmer meme lives on as history, albeit strange history. For all its recent moves towards acceptance and respectability, Bitcoin can’t help sprouting new memes at a rate almost as great as Dr. Wright’s patent applications. Bitcoin has certainly produced more in-jokes than Dr. Wright has produced vegetables, anyway—if you were ever confused by this one, now you can join in the anniversary celebrations. Happy Halloween!

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