TL;DR: The countdown continues toward revealing the Spiciest Person of the Year for 2019. We’ve narrowed the field to less than a half dozen total, including four runners-up. Numbers 5 & 4 are shipped, posted. Our number 3 is Joshua Davis, better known as @karbonbased on Twitter. A combination of hilarious memetics, an ecumenical approach to pissing off all of the cryptocurrency space, and a cutting wit sent him skyrocketing over notable runners-up Jesse Powell of Kraken and Haipo Yang of CoinEx.

Number 3, Joshua Davis, 2019’s Sh*tposting Troll King

The more he pushes us away, the more we adore him (to paraphrase Morrissey). Joshua Davis suddenly appeared in our Twitter feed this year, and we have never been the same. From New York City, we imagine him sitting on a perch: laptop sagely in one hand, whiskey in the other, swatting cryptocurrency creeps and their goofy dreams.

BTC’s main cheerleader, its hopium crusader amongst all of the truest True Believers, is Anthony Pompliano, “Pomp,” this article’s featured image. Pomp’s takes are glorious, Multi-level Marketing like in their turn of phrase repetition. Nothing is bad for BTC. Nothing. Government crackdowns, scams using it to defraud innocent folks by the hundreds of millions, lack of basic development with the project, even the vaunted price dropping like a rock — all of it is good for BTC. All of it.

And while it’s nice to have a positive outlook on a cryptocurrency project, Pomp is endemic of a certain type of crypto influencer. He serves a function, but if you’re looking for sobriety, to really consider cryptocurrency in any rational sense, Pomp is decidedly not your guy. Most in the ecosystem simply eye roll at Pomps of the space. Not Davis. In a masterful, cutting jab, he Photoshopped an obvious pretend Pomp tweet take, suggesting Pomp’s mother just died. BTC never dies. Three rocket emojis.

DeFund Crypto

At this point, you’re either laughing hysterically or horrified. Chances are you’re a little of both, and that’s Davis’ value. He so shocks crypto Religionists out of their stupor, it’s either through revulsion and cognitive dissonance or the sudden realization he’s, well, right. Pomp’s opinions are often garbage and too saccharine, and we should’ve noticed earlier.

And Davis doesn’t just poke and prod, he also models a good actor, albeit through coarse measures. When a shady-seeming cryptocurrency project, related to a messaging application, was hounded by US regulators, the company set itself up as a victim and attempted to onboard the ecosystem into helping fund its legal battles under the rubric of it being some sort of general pool. More projects were sure to be targeted by the likes of the SEC, the company reasoned, and so they launched Defend Crypto.

😂🤣"… Bitcoin never dies … [and I added] three rocket emojis."@karbonbased takes-on a vaunted figure in the space @APompliano , and he has our Editor-in-Chief falling-out laughing in this clip. 🚀🚀🚀 🎧Listen to the rest: https://t.co/OYJLifsS1G pic.twitter.com/SzFc9pc9gT — CoinSpice (@CoinSpice) July 22, 2019

Davis promptly created DeFund Crypto, a landing page designed to lampoon the obvious. “For the future, we all need to come to grips with the fact that 99.9% of ICOs and IEOs are scams. This website will set a precedent and could serve as the new Howey Test for how almost all cryptocurrencies are simply an efficient transfer of wealth from you -> to them. That’s why we set up the Defund Crypto Fund™ to ensure that the funds aren’t there at all. Defund has already spent $16.80 on a domain name and hosting and is committing another $2.99 of fiat to buy a second month of hosting just because,” he explained.

The master troll ended 2019 with perhaps his best work yet. He posted a play on the You vs. the Guy She Tells You Not to Worry About meme, juxtaposing Blockstream’s notorious CSO Samson Mow with his lady friend and her, um, “gym friend.” It’s now Crypto Twitter lore, history. Mow threw a fit, melted down in response, causing even those who are otherwise sympathetic to his BTC maximalism to tell Mow to chill. More importantly, Davis exposed Mow, a BTC thought leader, for what he is … and as a result, if nothing else, he deserves our Number 3 spot.

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DYOR: CoinSpice is your home for just spicy crypto things. We’re not affiliated with any cryptocurrency project or token. Each published piece is intended for information purposes only, not investment advice and not in the hope of impacting speculative markets. There are plenty of trading sites and coin-specific advocacy journals out there, we’re neither. CoinSpice strives for rigorous accuracy in our reporting. Information presented here is contingent usually on a host of factors, and the ecosystem moves fast — prices change, projects change, and at warp speed. Do your own research.

DISCLOSURE: The author holds cryptocurrency as part of his financial portfolio, including BCH.