Magic Internet Money: Bitcoin Wizard

Submission 10,171

Part of a series on Bitcoin. [View Related Entries]

About

Magic Internet Money: Bitcoin Wizard refers to an advertisement for the /r/Bitcoin subreddit that features an MSPaint illustration of a wizard.

Origin

On February 19th, 2013, Redditor^[1] theymos, an admin for the /r/Bitcoin, requested submissions for an advertisement for the subreddit. That day, Redditor mavensbot submitted a MSPaint illustration of a wizard with the caption, "Bitcoin Magic Internet Money" (shown below).

Spread

On November 6th, 2013, an unknown Redditor posted the image in the /r/ads^[2] subreddit, where it received more than 1,600 points (98% upvoted) and 585 comments in less than eight years.

Some have credited the ad with raising Bitcoins value. When the advertisement went live on November 6th, the value of one Bitcoin was $287. Three days later, South Park's art department drafted an image for the episode Black Fridaay, which would air on November 13th (shown below, left). When the episode aired, many believed the image to be an homage to the Bitcoin wizard (screenshot below, center). At this time, Bitcoin was valued at $416 (comparison below, right).^[2]

By November 29th, 2013, bitcoin's valuation reached $1,132 and /r/Bitcoin subscribership increased 36% to 74,000 subscribers.

On February 12th, 2017, Paul Bars published a history of the image on Medium.^[3]