Written in the voodoo cultspeak of futurist horror writer H.P. Lovecraft's short story, "The Call of Cthulhu," the creepy Cthulhu Offerings may be the most confusing digital currency yet.

"The time draws near, the return of The Great Old One is upon us," writes the developer. "Join us in our ritual."

"Join us in our ritual."

The currency was announced in September by a user, Blazr2, on the cryptocurrency forum Bitcointalk. Its growth has been slow but steady since then. The "ritual" refers to the distribution of coins, or OFF. Like other cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, users can run the OFF client to slowly generate more coins. The algorithm will adjust the difficulty of mining once half all coins are generated in order to pace the release of coins.

It also appears that OFF is designed to randomly reward one user with a windfall:

During the last five days, the 'Tharanak shagg,' or "promise of dreamland," the ritual reaches final pitch and the daily special blocks are highly increased. Finally Cthulhu will return after the xxx665th offering has paid tribute to the Great Old One and he will bestow a bounty deserving of Him upon one lucky worshiper. The ritual can be repeated after six months time, following the great halving.

Like Dogecoin, OFF users have adopted their own slang. Coins are "offerings" or "blessings," users are "cultists," and mining is done via "sacrifices."

Is not the ultimate love darkness? Is not the ultimate peace, in fact, death? I pray that you amend your offerings to make right that which doth has wronged....

You are correct my brother, none of us are worthy, not even the Great Prophet Blazr2. For this I have given you offerings to give unto the Great One. I will not forget this brother.

Where may we pray for offerings from the Dark one together, in some sort of group offering?

OFF is based on Quark, one of the many permutations of the Bitcoin protocol. So far, 1.8 million OFF have been mined and the price stands at $.00031 per OFF, according to the altcoin tracker Cryptocoinrank. There are no plans for it to "blow up" or go "to the moon," according to the developer. Instead, it's intended to remain a lighthearted niche currency.

"Offerings was released near the equinox and designed to fit in to the Cthulhu/Illuminati mythos," developer Adam McKinney, or Blazr2, tells The Verge in an email. "Its rewards are designed like a ritual and it's fairly rare as far as alt coins go. It was not released to make money or even to be profitable—it was released because Cthulhu deserves a way for people to waste electricity in his name."