Beforememecoins,
therewereBitcoin comics.
In June 2011 a graphic designer called Z1Xwitch started posting hand-drawn strips about mining rigs, Mt.Gox and getting rich on a forum with a few thousand regulars. This archive collects every episode it could find, with each date, title and image traced to a source.
- Episodes recorded
- 36
- Strips recovered
- 31
- Dates verified
- 29
The timeline
2011 to the trenches.
Fifteen years of crypto told in comics: the BitcoinTalk thread, the strips drawn through every boom and crash after it, and the chapter we are drawing now. Every date links to its source.
- The thread
- Lost comics
- Our chapter
- 2011
Lost comics
The first Bitcoin comic on the forum
Amisād posts a single strip about a GPU miner whose rig never pays back. “There should be more strips/comics about Bitcoin in general, I think. Especially bitter ones.”
- 2011
The thread
The Bitcoin Comic thread opens
“Well, I just could not help myself, so I went ahead and made a Bitcoin Comic.” Z1Xwitch starts topic 13903 on BitcoinTalk; the first reply is timestamped 06:21 AM.
- 2011
The thread
A strip in the New York Observer
The artist reports that one of his strips illustrated the Observer’s “Bit-O-Money” feature about the people behind the Bitcoin bubble.
- 2011
The thread
Comic No. 30
“*fanfare* this is actually my bitcoin comic No. 30.” Episode 030, “Dear Bill”.
- 2012
The thread
Episode 033 and a Facebook page
After a year without new strips, “Trust me, I’m a Pirate!” is posted, along with a new Bitcoin Comic page on Facebook.
- 2012
Lost comics
xkcd hides a Bitcoin joke
Randall Munroe’s explorable “Click and Drag” puts a Bitcoin gag far to the left of the starting view. BitcoinTalk readers had to post directions to find it.
- 2013
The thread
Series 2, and the thread goes quiet
Three last strips in a reworked style: “Another brick in the wall”, “502 Bad Gateway - DDOS” and “the MtGox Dwolla seizure”. Then Z1Xwitch stops drawing.
- 2013
Lost comics
Bitcoin reaches the funny pages
The first Dilbert strip to name Bitcoin runs in syndication while the coin trades near $90. Dogbert plays a cartoon Satoshi.
- 2013
Lost comics
“Bitcoined”
Fredo and Pidjin make Bitcoin the whole joke the week it first crosses $1,000, when the coin went from forum curiosity to dinner-table topic.
- 2014
Lost comics
Drawing through the Mt. Gox collapse
Three days after Mt. Gox goes offline, CommitStrip publishes developers trying to make sense of Bitcoin. Joy of Tech had posted its own explainer two days earlier.
- 2014
Lost comics
Dogecoinball and the first meme-coin comics
carlishio2 starts Dogecoinball the spring /r/dogecoin funds a NASCAR car. Four tracks of strips, paid for in tips. The first comic series born from a meme coin.
- 2017
Lost comics
ICO season reaches the office
Dilbert pitches a token sale. Over the following weeks Scott Adams runs a cluster of blockchain strips as the 2017 mania peaks.
- 2017
Lost comics
Bitcoin for Christmas
CommitStrip publishes the week Bitcoin runs from $11,000 to $17,000, days before the cycle’s all-time high.
- 2018
Lost comics
The hangover year
MonkeyUser’s “ICO”, SMBC’s “Saturday Morning Block Chain”, and Dilbert asking why not an immutable database. The jokes turn from mania to aftermath as Bitcoin falls under $4,000.
- 2026
Our chapter
The Forgotten Bitcoin Comics opens
All 36 Z1Xwitch episodes catalogued, 31 strips recovered under the artist’s own CC BY license, and a shelf of the forgotten comics drawn around them.
- Next
Our chapter
The Trenches, No. 001
The timeline keeps going because we are drawing the next chapter: our own comic about pump.fun right now. Bonding curves, dev wallets, the 3 a.m. rug.
The wider shelf
Comics the timeline forgot
21 rediscovered strips from 2011 to 2018, starting with Amisād’s mining comic from 14 May 2011, a month before Z1Xwitch.
Browse lost comicsOriginal series · 2026
The Trenches
Our own comic about pump.fun right now: bonding curves, dev wallets, 3 a.m. rugs. The 2011 comics recorded their moment. This one records ours.
Enter the trenchesThe plan
Preserve the old ones. Draw the new ones.
Crypto’s history was drawn on forums and lost when the image hosts died. We’re saving what’s left, and we’re making more comics so this era doesn’t vanish the same way.
- Done
Bring the 2011 comic back
31 of Z1Xwitch’s strips recovered from dead image hosts and the Wayback Machine, each dated against the forum post it came from.
Read the archive - Ongoing
Find the comics nobody remembers
21 forgotten crypto strips from 2011 to 2018 so far: forum doodles, meme-coin series, syndicated dailies. We keep digging, and readers keep sending finds.
Browse lost comics - In production
Draw our own: The Trenches
An original comic about pump.fun today. Bonding curves, dev wallets, KOL calls, the 3 a.m. rug, and the one who held. No. 001 is on the drawing board.
Enter the trenches - Open now
Your story, in panels
Lived through a rug, a moonshot or a Mt. Gox? Pitch it and it might become a strip. Know where one of the 5 missing episodes is hiding? Tell us.
Pitch or submit
5
strips are still missing.
Episode 001, episode 033 and all three 2013 pages were hosted on the artist’s own site or on Facebook, and those copies are gone. If you saved one in 2011 or 2013, or know a mirror, the archive wants to hear from you.