To mark the 2nd birthday of Crypto Communications Collective, we present the second All Time Low (ATL) awards! The ATL Awards honour the best-of-the-worst practices in the web3 & crypto media and communications landscape from the past year to date. And the winners are…

Every season, the web3 & crypto community conjures up yet another linguistic abomination - a ‘new narrative’ accompanied by buzzwords so cringe that every time we say it (and we find ourselves having to do so), it is followed by an embarrassed little snort.

AI has been the ‘plat du jour’ for a while now so the inevitable flood of projects pivoting to AI has spawned terminology that would make even a LinkedIn thought leader go 🫣😬.

The results are in - the worst one of the last year-to-date is “DeFAI”. When the buzzword requires its own pronunciation guide and is accompanied by “however it’s pronounced” when used, it’s time to admit that not everything needs to be ‘crypto-fied’.

With AI Agents everywhere to Make [Anything] Great Again, one would think this endless quest to onboard the next billion users would turn the tide with better language that exudes credibility, given the likes of Fartcoin, Buttholes and Hawk Tuah.

Independent journalistic integrity. The crypto media landscape has always walked a fine line between bold reporting and full-blown chaos. Still, there was a collective holding of breath when CoinDesk — long seen as one of the few relatively stable pillars — came out of their peril and was acquired by Bullish at the tail end of 2023.

Cue questions about what it means for the CoinDesk news room. This was settled quickly with Bullish’s standard boilerplate reassurance expressing their “unwavering support for CoinDesk’s commitment to journalistic independence”. A little more than a year later, all it took was an expensive banana to unravel this thin commitment.

Yes, that noble commitment was undone not by some high-stakes exposé or scandalous leak, but by a banana. Specifically, Tron founder Justin Sun’s expensive, duct-taped banana artwork, Comedian, which he ate in public, in what could only be described as performance art meets flex culture.

CoinDesk covered it. Tron, CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong main sponsor, did not appreciate the coverage. Despite the journalist being invited, and the piece being factual and almost aggressively neutral in tone, Tron wanted it gone.

To their credit, CoinDesk’s editorial team stood their ground. But alas, it was all for naught as the article did get taken down and three senior editors abruptly joined the prestigious LinkedIn green frame group, just a few days before Christmas.

The rugging of CoinDesk’s newsroom over a curved yellow punchline didn’t just spark media outrage (Fortune breaking the story was really high signal) — it actually achieved the unthinkable: getting PRs and journalists to publicly agree on something so unanimously.

Yet another year of PR and comms professionals battling to explain real PR, while sighing at absolute dumpster fire founder moments. Following in the footsteps of last year’s winner Balaji, who helped popularise the “go direct” movement, this year’s contenders did not disappoint. Unfortunately.

Amongst the cringeworthy moments this year (of which there was no shortage), Meow from Jupiter Exchange took the crown. It wasn’t just about the inappropriate use of language, but the intentions that were discussed by both his detractors and defenders.

It is one thing to be a terrible person or just foolish, but one plausible reason floated around is that they were ‘trying to fit in’, and not fully understanding the gravity of such language being a non-native English speaker. This is seriously concerning from a comms perspective and why a PR is needed to ensure founders are aware of societal norms as their actions can deeply impact their projects.

This also raises the issue about the normalising of racist and other inappropriate terms being thrown around in this industry and the wider problem of credibility due to that. Being edgy is one thing; being recklessly alienating is quite another. And when the real crisis hits? Meow’s later attempt at reassuring the community of Meteor was as effective as trying to verify a transaction with 0% network consensus—technically transmitted, but universally rejected.

It’s not about conforming, but being respectful and inclusive.

In contrast, Ben Zhou showed how it’s done: clear, composed, and scandal-free. A reminder that sometimes, the best way to go direct... is to go via someone who knows what they’re doing.

Contrary to popular belief, PRs and journos do get along… most of the time. PRs understand journos are drowning in embargoes and half-baked announcements, while journos understand PRs are under immense pressure to turn any type of announcements into solid stories. There is thus mutual respect as “we are in the trenches together”. A quick chat here and there during the work day (not necessarily related to pitching a story) is the norm, which builds and feeds the relationship.

So when something changes abruptly, this is a red flag and PRs do what any responsible professional would do: turn suspicious, panic quietly and launch an informal investigation. And that’s what happened when Telegram exchanges with Vishal Chawla, from The Block, started completely disappearing and Twitter accounts got unfollowed. Has he been hacked? Was it a bot this entire time? Did he leave crypto? Turns out, it was none of the above but the reaction to checking in was between glacial and volcanic (when further pushed) and still a mystery up till today. This has burned several bridges, soured relationships and shifted the pitching dynamics into unexpectedly unprofessional territory.

It was inevitable. Throw together memecoin mania, cute aesthetics, and the unfiltered chaos of ‘price goes up’, and we got ourselves the perfect storm of mass adoption no one asked for. The ‘girltech coin’ era was born while still in the midst of the bear with the launch of $BLONDE. Because nothing says ‘financial empowerment’ like monetising hair colour.

Naturally, the usual influencing posts followed - featuring early-2000s Snapchat-meets-Instagram vibes, with back-of-the-head photos of blondes gazing wistfully into the distance huddled together in a pool or more tech hacker style.

Rallied by both girls and “boys who support girls” (a phrase that probably sounded better in the group chat), the token hit a $10M market cap. Empowerment! Sort of. The viral Crypto Twitter “the ticker is $BLONDE” morphed into a campaign to convince Base founder Jesse Pollak to change hair colour — because when we said “change the system”, we clearly meant hair colour first. Those with other hair colours were... present. Possibly confused. Largely unaffected.

To be fair, it was eventually admitted to be a “social experiment,” which is crypto’s favourite way of saying, “We didn’t think this through, but now it’s performance art.” At least it wasn’t tied to International Women’s Day. Small mercies.

In the end, asking women to buy a token with vaguely feminist vibes is not onboarding— it’s rebranding pinkwashing with better engagement metrics. A true milestone in the ongoing effort to confuse inclusion with clout.

Every year, PRs pour their hearts into thoughtful, relevant pitches—only to watch in quiet despair as those stories are passed over in favour of something that further enhances the bad reputation of the web3 and crypto industry. Sure it’s probably what the masses want to read aside from the ‘money goes up/down’ articles but these wtf moments really make it easy for anyone to pivot into becoming a fruit juice seller instead.

This year’s competition was fierce, with no shortage of eyebrow-raising, coffee-spitting headlines. But ultimately, the AI Agents won (no surprise there). Specifically, a developer created artificial vaginas for AI bot, ElizaOS, definitely not something on the crypto bingo card. This was part of a challenge designed for anyone who could make it possible to have sex with an AI bot.

Delightfully naming the product “Orifice” and marketing it under the noble mission of “curing loneliness in men” (a cause so pure, it didn’t even require high incentivisation), the developer even went as far to cite potential benefits to society to include the likes of pick up artistry like Andrew Tate (cue silent, demonic scream).

In a world literally on fire, this top unhinged story proves that while we may not have solved climate change, we’re well on our way to giving ChatGPT a Tinder profile. Priorities.

This was a tough one. In crypto, PR often gets mistaken for marketing, and marketing often gets mistaken for... whatever this was. The lines blur even further when KOLs enter the chat, bringing with them their $1000 per Tweet thread and reply guy/girl triggering “gm fam”.

The influencing finally made it out of Crypto Twitter when a charter flight from Dubai to Singapore was organised by Redacted (that’s the project, not a redaction, though the latter should have been done). The plan? Airlift a “premium” selection of crypto KOLs, investors, and whoever has an X account, and drop into Token2049.

There was karaoke. There were vibes. There was, notably, very little awareness of what Redacted actually does — besides, apparently, foot the bill.

While some journos were curious enough to take a ‘front row seat to the stupidity’ that was highly expected, some of them did not care for the ‘wild invitation’.

The publicity stunt did achieve its goal, if the goal was “maximum visibility and minimum context”. KOLs posted their ‘10/10 would recommend’ posts with accompanying videos and photos that could have just as easily been taken inside a static aircraft.

For an industry filled with true PRs who are desperately trying to abstract away the casino reputation from solid projects that are building serious infrastructure, air-dropping influencers across continents for airborne karaoke is seriously questionable.

Particularly in a year when much of the world is wondering whether they can still afford eggs.

If there’s one thing this industry consistently proves, it’s the love for anything animal-related. Cats, dogs, frogs, bears - at this point, crypto feels less like a means for financial freedom and more like a reboot of McDonald’s Happy Meal collectibles.

While the OG dogs have proven long-term sustainability, everything else has burned bright and combusted quicker than Clubhouse invites in 2021. This year’s fleeting star is none other than Moo Deng, a pygmy hippopotamus from a Thai zoo, whose name charmingly translates to “bouncy pork” in English. Naturally, this cutie did not just inspire viral memes, but an insanely popular meme coin.

The hype reached its bizarre and beautiful climax when Devcon attendees, in full sincerity, made a pilgrimage to the zoo while in Bangkok—because nothing says "cutting-edge web3 innovation" like a field trip to visit the hippo who was more than oblivious to its fame.

Unlike most 15-minute wonders, Moo Deng’s brief reign didn’t trigger derision or existential dread. Instead, it offered a strangely wholesome break from the usual chaos. In a year of rugged coins and broken dreams, Moo Deng was a balm for battered souls to end the year.

It’s been a pivotal year for crypto and US politics. Trump promised to establish a strategic bitcoin stockpile if elected. Then he actually got re-elected (surprise!). Bye bye Gary👋.

And, naturally, what followed was the only logical next step in this dystopian fever dream: the launch of $TRUMP, a Solana-based meme coin. Far from being an anonymous cash grab (as tradition dictates), the Solana community treated it like a historic achievement — proudly hailing Trump as their newly crowned “meme coin founder,” as if decades of political chaos were just prep work for Crypto Twitter.Trump and co are proving adept at the insider games of the industry, courting crypto teams to swap tokens with World Liberty Financial’s WLFI (plus a little extra as the price for getting in tight with the family).

Will someone wake us up?

There are few greater joys for journos than slapping “SCOOP” in all caps at the start of a Tweet or TG group chat message, to share an article that’s hot off the press. The adrenaline and clout for a smaller media outlet doing so, ahead of the legacy outlets and being cited as a source is chef’s kiss. That is of course, if they actually got the scoop and weren't part of a mass media outreach. To top it off, a subsequent self-declared scoop turned out to be an error, demonstrating a pristine example of journalistic ambition outweighing journalistic accuracy, further erodes credibility.

Nice work from Blockspace Media in showing us a masterclass in “how not to scoop”

And that’s a wrap on the CCC All Time Low Awards 2025! Thanks to our community for voting on these awards, and we hope you enjoyed this recap of the best-of-the-worst moments. The past year in web3 & crypto would not be the same without our winners.

Read about last year’s winners here.

Comments? DM us on our X account.

To mark the 2nd birthday of Crypto Communications Collective, we present the second All Time Low (ATL) awards! The ATL Awards honour the best-of-the-worst practices in the web3 & crypto media and communications landscape from the past year to date. And the winners are…

Every season, the web3 & crypto community conjures up yet another linguistic abomination - a ‘new narrative’ accompanied by buzzwords so cringe that every time we say it (and we find ourselves having to do so), it is followed by an embarrassed little snort.

AI has been the ‘plat du jour’ for a while now so the inevitable flood of projects pivoting to AI has spawned terminology that would make even a LinkedIn thought leader go 🫣😬.

The results are in - the worst one of the last year-to-date is “DeFAI”. When the buzzword requires its own pronunciation guide and is accompanied by “however it’s pronounced” when used, it’s time to admit that not everything needs to be ‘crypto-fied’.

With AI Agents everywhere to Make [Anything] Great Again, one would think this endless quest to onboard the next billion users would turn the tide with better language that exudes credibility, given the likes of Fartcoin, Buttholes and Hawk Tuah.

Independent journalistic integrity. The crypto media landscape has always walked a fine line between bold reporting and full-blown chaos. Still, there was a collective holding of breath when CoinDesk — long seen as one of the few relatively stable pillars — came out of their peril and was acquired by Bullish at the tail end of 2023.

Cue questions about what it means for the CoinDesk news room. This was settled quickly with Bullish’s standard boilerplate reassurance expressing their “unwavering support for CoinDesk’s commitment to journalistic independence”. A little more than a year later, all it took was an expensive banana to unravel this thin commitment.

Yes, that noble commitment was undone not by some high-stakes exposé or scandalous leak, but by a banana. Specifically, Tron founder Justin Sun’s expensive, duct-taped banana artwork, Comedian, which he ate in public, in what could only be described as performance art meets flex culture.

CoinDesk covered it. Tron, CoinDesk’s Consensus Hong Kong main sponsor, did not appreciate the coverage. Despite the journalist being invited, and the piece being factual and almost aggressively neutral in tone, Tron wanted it gone.

To their credit, CoinDesk’s editorial team stood their ground. But alas, it was all for naught as the article did get taken down and three senior editors abruptly joined the prestigious LinkedIn green frame group, just a few days before Christmas.

The rugging of CoinDesk’s newsroom over a curved yellow punchline didn’t just spark media outrage (Fortune breaking the story was really high signal) — it actually achieved the unthinkable: getting PRs and journalists to publicly agree on something so unanimously.

Yet another year of PR and comms professionals battling to explain real PR, while sighing at absolute dumpster fire founder moments. Following in the footsteps of last year’s winner Balaji, who helped popularise the “go direct” movement, this year’s contenders did not disappoint. Unfortunately.

Amongst the cringeworthy moments this year (of which there was no shortage), Meow from Jupiter Exchange took the crown. It wasn’t just about the inappropriate use of language, but the intentions that were discussed by both his detractors and defenders.

It is one thing to be a terrible person or just foolish, but one plausible reason floated around is that they were ‘trying to fit in’, and not fully understanding the gravity of such language being a non-native English speaker. This is seriously concerning from a comms perspective and why a PR is needed to ensure founders are aware of societal norms as their actions can deeply impact their projects.

This also raises the issue about the normalising of racist and other inappropriate terms being thrown around in this industry and the wider problem of credibility due to that. Being edgy is one thing; being recklessly alienating is quite another. And when the real crisis hits? Meow’s later attempt at reassuring the community of Meteor was as effective as trying to verify a transaction with 0% network consensus—technically transmitted, but universally rejected.

It’s not about conforming, but being respectful and inclusive.

In contrast, Ben Zhou showed how it’s done: clear, composed, and scandal-free. A reminder that sometimes, the best way to go direct... is to go via someone who knows what they’re doing.

Contrary to popular belief, PRs and journos do get along… most of the time. PRs understand journos are drowning in embargoes and half-baked announcements, while journos understand PRs are under immense pressure to turn any type of announcements into solid stories. There is thus mutual respect as “we are in the trenches together”. A quick chat here and there during the work day (not necessarily related to pitching a story) is the norm, which builds and feeds the relationship.

So when something changes abruptly, this is a red flag and PRs do what any responsible professional would do: turn suspicious, panic quietly and launch an informal investigation. And that’s what happened when Telegram exchanges with Vishal Chawla, from The Block, started completely disappearing and Twitter accounts got unfollowed. Has he been hacked? Was it a bot this entire time? Did he leave crypto? Turns out, it was none of the above but the reaction to checking in was between glacial and volcanic (when further pushed) and still a mystery up till today. This has burned several bridges, soured relationships and shifted the pitching dynamics into unexpectedly unprofessional territory.

It was inevitable. Throw together memecoin mania, cute aesthetics, and the unfiltered chaos of ‘price goes up’, and we got ourselves the perfect storm of mass adoption no one asked for. The ‘girltech coin’ era was born while still in the midst of the bear with the launch of $BLONDE. Because nothing says ‘financial empowerment’ like monetising hair colour.

Naturally, the usual influencing posts followed - featuring early-2000s Snapchat-meets-Instagram vibes, with back-of-the-head photos of blondes gazing wistfully into the distance huddled together in a pool or more tech hacker style.

Rallied by both girls and “boys who support girls” (a phrase that probably sounded better in the group chat), the token hit a $10M market cap. Empowerment! Sort of. The viral Crypto Twitter “the ticker is $BLONDE” morphed into a campaign to convince Base founder Jesse Pollak to change hair colour — because when we said “change the system”, we clearly meant hair colour first. Those with other hair colours were... present. Possibly confused. Largely unaffected.

To be fair, it was eventually admitted to be a “social experiment,” which is crypto’s favourite way of saying, “We didn’t think this through, but now it’s performance art.” At least it wasn’t tied to International Women’s Day. Small mercies.

In the end, asking women to buy a token with vaguely feminist vibes is not onboarding— it’s rebranding pinkwashing with better engagement metrics. A true milestone in the ongoing effort to confuse inclusion with clout.

Every year, PRs pour their hearts into thoughtful, relevant pitches—only to watch in quiet despair as those stories are passed over in favour of something that further enhances the bad reputation of the web3 and crypto industry. Sure it’s probably what the masses want to read aside from the ‘money goes up/down’ articles but these wtf moments really make it easy for anyone to pivot into becoming a fruit juice seller instead.

This year’s competition was fierce, with no shortage of eyebrow-raising, coffee-spitting headlines. But ultimately, the AI Agents won (no surprise there). Specifically, a developer created artificial vaginas for AI bot, ElizaOS, definitely not something on the crypto bingo card. This was part of a challenge designed for anyone who could make it possible to have sex with an AI bot.

Delightfully naming the product “Orifice” and marketing it under the noble mission of “curing loneliness in men” (a cause so pure, it didn’t even require high incentivisation), the developer even went as far to cite potential benefits to society to include the likes of pick up artistry like Andrew Tate (cue silent, demonic scream).

In a world literally on fire, this top unhinged story proves that while we may not have solved climate change, we’re well on our way to giving ChatGPT a Tinder profile. Priorities.

This was a tough one. In crypto, PR often gets mistaken for marketing, and marketing often gets mistaken for... whatever this was. The lines blur even further when KOLs enter the chat, bringing with them their $1000 per Tweet thread and reply guy/girl triggering “gm fam”.

The influencing finally made it out of Crypto Twitter when a charter flight from Dubai to Singapore was organised by Redacted (that’s the project, not a redaction, though the latter should have been done). The plan? Airlift a “premium” selection of crypto KOLs, investors, and whoever has an X account, and drop into Token2049.

There was karaoke. There were vibes. There was, notably, very little awareness of what Redacted actually does — besides, apparently, foot the bill.

While some journos were curious enough to take a ‘front row seat to the stupidity’ that was highly expected, some of them did not care for the ‘wild invitation’.

The publicity stunt did achieve its goal, if the goal was “maximum visibility and minimum context”. KOLs posted their ‘10/10 would recommend’ posts with accompanying videos and photos that could have just as easily been taken inside a static aircraft.

For an industry filled with true PRs who are desperately trying to abstract away the casino reputation from solid projects that are building serious infrastructure, air-dropping influencers across continents for airborne karaoke is seriously questionable.

Particularly in a year when much of the world is wondering whether they can still afford eggs.

If there’s one thing this industry consistently proves, it’s the love for anything animal-related. Cats, dogs, frogs, bears - at this point, crypto feels less like a means for financial freedom and more like a reboot of McDonald’s Happy Meal collectibles.

While the OG dogs have proven long-term sustainability, everything else has burned bright and combusted quicker than Clubhouse invites in 2021. This year’s fleeting star is none other than Moo Deng, a pygmy hippopotamus from a Thai zoo, whose name charmingly translates to “bouncy pork” in English. Naturally, this cutie did not just inspire viral memes, but an insanely popular meme coin.

The hype reached its bizarre and beautiful climax when Devcon attendees, in full sincerity, made a pilgrimage to the zoo while in Bangkok—because nothing says "cutting-edge web3 innovation" like a field trip to visit the hippo who was more than oblivious to its fame.

Unlike most 15-minute wonders, Moo Deng’s brief reign didn’t trigger derision or existential dread. Instead, it offered a strangely wholesome break from the usual chaos. In a year of rugged coins and broken dreams, Moo Deng was a balm for battered souls to end the year.

It’s been a pivotal year for crypto and US politics. Trump promised to establish a strategic bitcoin stockpile if elected. Then he actually got re-elected (surprise!). Bye bye Gary👋.

And, naturally, what followed was the only logical next step in this dystopian fever dream: the launch of $TRUMP, a Solana-based meme coin. Far from being an anonymous cash grab (as tradition dictates), the Solana community treated it like a historic achievement — proudly hailing Trump as their newly crowned “meme coin founder,” as if decades of political chaos were just prep work for Crypto Twitter.Trump and co are proving adept at the insider games of the industry, courting crypto teams to swap tokens with World Liberty Financial’s WLFI (plus a little extra as the price for getting in tight with the family).

Will someone wake us up?

There are few greater joys for journos than slapping “SCOOP” in all caps at the start of a Tweet or TG group chat message, to share an article that’s hot off the press. The adrenaline and clout for a smaller media outlet doing so, ahead of the legacy outlets and being cited as a source is chef’s kiss. That is of course, if they actually got the scoop and weren't part of a mass media outreach. To top it off, a subsequent self-declared scoop turned out to be an error, demonstrating a pristine example of journalistic ambition outweighing journalistic accuracy, further erodes credibility.

Nice work from Blockspace Media in showing us a masterclass in “how not to scoop”

And that’s a wrap on the CCC All Time Low Awards 2025! Thanks to our community for voting on these awards, and we hope you enjoyed this recap of the best-of-the-worst moments. The past year in web3 & crypto would not be the same without our winners.

Read about last year’s winners here.

Comments? DM us on our X account.