The mysterious disappearance of Crypto_Bitlord

Some people seem to personify the Crypto Twitter community. They appear on your timeline 24/7. You might not like them, you might not follow them, but there is always plenty of people who retweet, comment or likes their posts.

And just like in everyday life, whether we hate or love them, in the end we get used to them. Crypto_Bitlord is one of those accounts that flooded CT with posts ranging from serious stuff —like his coverage of the coronavirus earlier this year—to nonsense, like threats to fork XRP or sharing the infamous coronavirus challenge with a crypto twist.

But then one day this week, he seemed to disappear.

On March 24, Cypto_Bitlord shared a message with his followers claiming to be tired of Twitter. "I'm out... I'm tired of Twitter and I think leaving this platform is the best thing. Peace and prosperity for all."

It's likely that Bitlord was being honest about the reason behind his decision. His followers included a lot XRP fans, and considering that the XRP Army was toxic enough to kick Tiffany Hayden —one of the most popular accounts in the XRP ecosystem— out of their ranks, it would not be surprising to find that they were able to troll the troll to the point of making him disappear.

Who is Crypto_Bitlord

What we know about him comes from interviews and a couple of articles.

He's a Bitcoin OG. He went down the crypto rabbit hole in 2012 when Bitcoin was mostly a technological curiosity for the masses, and an emerging world view for many anarchists.

He's believed to be from Australia, and worked full time in the oil and gas industry. He left his job in 2012 to expand his horizons and have time to investigate, invest in and promote the crypto space.

For a while, he mixed his passion for crypto with an independent business in the area of food production, but in the end, he sold this business and dedicated himself fully crypto. In addition to Bitcoin, Bitshares and NXT were among his earliest investments.

The XRP troubles

In the beginning, Crypto_Bitlord shared his passion with a community that was eager for knowledge. His first posts were mostly educational and technical. It was this kind of content that catapulted him to the status of influencer. "I used to find a lot of good coins (and) a lot of good projects," he said in an interview with Crypto Insider "and I think that is how I got to this stage because I had those foundations: I made them early by doing some cool stuff."

Soon his fanbase hit 11o,00 followers—mostly after his involvement with the XRP Army—and continued to grow. He was an early believer in XRP and attracted plenty of followers and was one of the loudest Pro-XRP voices in the space and remained so for quite some time.

However, when XRP started a bearish trend that turned it into the worst performing token of 2018, Crypto_Bitlord wasn't pleased. Every quarter, Ripple sells a huge stack of XRP to cover operational costs. Crypto_Bitlord started promoting a Change.org campaign to "Stop Ripple from dumping XRP." Later, he threatened to create his own version of a Ripple-less XRP.

Just as the crypto-verse changed over time, so did rypto_Bitlord's approach to tweeting. He went from being a respected educator to becoming one of  Crypto Twitter's most popular trolls.

"My role is to enjoy myself, have some fun, make people laugh," he told an interviewer. "I feel I have a pretty interesting sense of humor and a lot of people in crypto can relate to that."

Crypto_Bitlord and the Coronavirus

At the beginning of 2020, something caught Crypto_Bitlord's attention: The Coronavirus.

Though few had heard of it, and the victims of COVID-19 could be counted on two hands, Crypto_Bitlord, who was then in China, started tweeting about the disease. He warned that it might become a pandemic.

In a recent conversation with Charlie Shrem, the Bitlord explained that he was in China doing contracting work when the whole problem started. He claimed that there was an effort to minimize public awareness.

Then Crypto_Bitlord became ill.

Shrem shared the audio of a video showing a sick Crypto_Bitlord, who said that perhaps he had contracted a coronavirus. He explained that though hardly anyone knew about the virus, there were already packs of people queuing up for a diagnosis. That was January 21, and he subsequently recovered.

However, a couple of weeks ago he shared another video of himself, hospitalized, this time in an English speaking country. Wearing a mask, and alternately smoking inside the hospital, he lectured about balancing strict quarantines and social distancing against the perils of shutting down the economy.

"The only solution is management," he said on March 21. "Scale up infrastructure to handle cases and begin."

The Crypto_Bitlord-went-to-jail theory

So what happened to him? Where'd he go?

One theory is he could be involved in a legal matter. According to a tweet shared by TheBryMan, Crypto_Bitlord was implicated in a case that could lead to him serving 3 to 5 years in prison; some of his tweets, supposedly, were being used as evidence.

"Got court tomorrow and defense is using some of my tweets (Lol)" he said before wiping off all of his content. Later that day, the account was deleted.

Decrypt could not verify the authenticity of this statement, but like many explanations, in the absence of contact with Crypto_Bitlord speculation is a last resort.

We tried to contact Crypto_Bitlord, of course, to no avail.   Since he hasn't even replied to the Brenna Sparks we're pessimistic that he will reply. Goodbye Crypto_Bitlord! We hope you return some day.