Investors suffered a 25% loss on JBX after Paradigm's $69 million funding round turned out to be an April Fool's prank.
On April 1, Juicebox’s content manager appeared to announce a false news story that the Ethereum-based crowdfunding platform had secured a $69 million funding round backed by cryptocurrency venture capital firm Paradigm.
But it was later revealed to be an April Fools' Day prank, causing JBX speculators to lose more than 20%.
JuiceBox’s April Fools’ Day Prank
The news was sparked by a post on X from the anonymous account Briliegh.eth, which has since been made private. The post claims that JuiceBox has completed a round of funding and expresses its gratitude to backers and backers for their role in the alleged achievement.
The post reads, “Very proud to announce we’ve raised $69 million!” Although no investors were named, an accompanying image of Paradigm strongly hinted at their participation in the round.
According to CoinGecko data, the price of JuiceBox's native token JBX soared more than 40% to $0.0043 after the announcement. However, the celebration did not last long, and an hour later, Briliegh.eth admitted that it was all a prank. The post read, "Happy April Fools' Day!" and warned speculators not to buy JBX tokens for financial gain.
The new news caused the JBX price to drop, with the token’s value falling by 25% to $0.0033.
The aftermath of the prank has sparked a strong reaction from X users. Responding to a screenshot of the initial announcement shared by @spreekaway on X, one user said, "What the hell is the joke here?" while another shouted, "He should go to jail."
More Cryptocurrency April Fools’ Day Pranks
In a similar incident, decentralized technology stack Waves saw its price briefly rise by 5% after its anonymous founder “Sasha” announced a fake integration with artificial intelligence, before quickly returning to previous levels. Some users criticized the joke, likening it to market manipulation.
Interestingly, on April Fool’s Day, Ethereum influencer and Bankless co-host David Hoffman made a big joke and announced that he would leave the ETH ecosystem and join Austin Federa and Yakovenko at the Solana Foundation.
Hoffman joked about becoming the “Vice President of Decentralization” and poked fun at the idea that Solana is not as decentralized as Ethereum. Given his longtime advocacy for Ethereum, the claim was met with amusement rather than anger from many.
BitMEX Research also half-jokingly stated that there were no outflows from the Grayscale Bitcoin ETF and mocked the large outflows that GBTC has experienced in recent weeks.
They later clarified in a follow-up post that the actual outflow on April 1 was $303 million.