This April Fools' Joke Cost Crypto Investors 25% of Their Money

Investors suffered a 25% loss on JBX as Paradigm's $69 million funding round turned out to be an April Fool's prank.

On April 1, Juicebox’s content manager appeared to announce false news that the Ethereum-based crowdfunding platform had secured a $69 million funding round backed by cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm.

But it was later revealed to be an April Fools' Day prank, causing JBX speculators to lose more than 20%.

JuiceBox April Fools' Joke

The news was sparked by a post on X from the anonymous account Briliegh.eth, which has since been made private. The post claimed that JuiceBox had closed a funding round and thanked backers and contributors for their role in the alleged achievement.

The post read, "Very proud to announce that we have raised $69 million!". While no investors are explicitly named, an accompanying Paradigm image strongly hints at their involvement in the round.

According to data from CoinGecko, after the news was announced, the price of JuiceBox’s native token JBX surged by more than 40%, reaching $0.0043. The celebrations didn't last long, however, and an hour later Briliegh.eth admitted it was all a prank. The post read, "Happy April Fools' Day everyone!" and warned speculators not to buy JBX tokens for financial gain.

The new news caused JBX prices to drop, with the token value falling by 25% to $0.0033.

The fallout from the prank prompted a strong response from X users. Responding to a screenshot of the original announcement shared by @spreekaway on

More Cryptocurrency April Fools’ Day Pranks

In a similar incident, decentralized technology stack Waves briefly saw a 5% price increase after its anonymous founder “Sasha” announced a fake integration with artificial intelligence, before quickly recovering to its previous level. Some users criticized the joke, likening it to market manipulation.

Interestingly, on April Fools’ Day, Ethereum influencer and Bankless co-host David Hoffman made a big joke by announcing that he would be leaving the ETH ecosystem and joining Austin Federa and Yakovenko at the Solana Foundation.

Hoffman joked about becoming the “Vice President of Decentralization” and poked fun at the idea that Solana is not as decentralized as Ethereum, a claim that many found amusing rather than infuriating given his longtime advocacy for Ethereum.

BitMEX Research also half-jokingly stated that there were no outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF and mocked the large outflows that GBTC has experienced in recent weeks.

They later clarified in a follow-up post that the actual outflow on April 1 was $303 million.