Bigcoin Rises from the Ashes: Mining Game Stages Bold Comeback After 90% Crash

Once left for dead, Bigcoin's abstract mining ecosystem is roaring back—proving crypto zombies refuse to stay buried.

From crash to cashflow

The token that turned 'to the moon' into 'to the grave' in 2024 is now defying skeptics. BIG holders who didn't paper-hand during the bloodbath are seeing green shoots—or just another dead cat bounce.

Mining mechanics reloaded

Developers overhauled the game's tokenomics, because nothing says 'lesson learned' like tweaking numbers after vaporizing $200M in market cap. New staking rewards might actually last longer than a meme stock rally this time.

Wall Street's watching (between martinis)

Hedge funds are 'monitoring the situation'—code for waiting to front-run retail if this pumps. Meanwhile, crypto OGs mutter about Ponzinomics while secretly checking BIG price alerts.

Comeback or cautionary tale? The market will decide. Again.

The new Bigcoin is being overseen by a “handful” of community members, including Bored, plus a trader who goes by EJR, and a few others. They’ve just turned the pixelated “mining” rigs into over 29,000 Abstract NFTs on OpenSea in a way that generates royalties so the new team can build up a treasury to reinvest into further building out the game.

The new team also wants to be able to add more BIG liquidity so that buyers won’t have to pay a lot in slippage.

Of course, BIG’s price crash was nothing new. Like many, many low-cap tokens before it, BIG’s price spiked upon launch, only to dump and trail downward for months after. That price action, plus the fact that those who started “mining” early got more rewards, spurred (arguably valid) accusations that the whole thing was just a Ponzi.

Bored said this week that BIG’s price “got out of control” when it first launched. 

As a result, that created some unrealistic expectations. And, like with most tokens, the price plunge spurred anger from those who bought the top.  

“The problem with a lot of tokens today is they can be created in seconds,” Bored said during a livestream of the game yesterday, where he displayed his “mining” facilities onscreen.

“I think the first iteration of Bigcoin definitely felt like a Ponzi,” Bored told me when I asked him during the stream if the “Ponzi” accusations were fair. “I don’t think the current version of Bigcoin is a Ponzi at all,” he said.

Over half of the  capped BIG supply of 21 million that has been mined has already been burned, with over 9 million burned and over 16.9 million mined (out of 21 million total).

Michael Lee, co-inventor of Abstract and former VP at Activision Blizzard, confirmed to me in a message that Bored and Bigtoshi aren’t the same person.

“Bigcoin’s handover to its community mirrors Bitcoin — its success depends on outgrowing its founder and becoming a project owned by everyone, yet no one. In this story, notable members like Bored step into the role of Michael Saylor.” Lee said.

He added: “With merge mining, Bigcoin’s promise is to evolve into a fair token launcher — free from KOLs, whales, cabals, bundlers, and market makers — for the people. Like Bitcoin, put in the work and mine the tokens.”

Whether Bigcoin 2.0 succeeds in this way is still up in the air, of course. But about 215 unique wallets have already bought into the new NFTs, suggesting at least some believe it can happen.

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