Once in a rare while a creator of Bitcoin music feels that a quick video made out of stock footage, price chart screenshots, and a meme or two just isn’t enough to accompany their song. 

Unfortunately, it’s nearly impossible to make any money producing music about Bitcoin yet, but there are other reasons that compel these artists to break out the big bucks and make a music video worthy of a top label.

Some do it for the art, others do it to spread the gospel of Bitcoin. Often it’s both. Perhaps it’s enough for them to know that such high-quality videos benefit all hodlers as they accelerate Bitcoin adoption, or maybe they’re really hoping to start a career in the music industry. A few existing musicians have joined the party as well, either adding a Bitcoin song to their existing albums or being paid up front to make a music video.

Bitcoin Rap Battle Debate: Hamilton vs. Satoshi

Rhyme Combinator’s 2019 rap battle between Satoshi and Alexander Hamilton is one of the biggest and highest-quality productions to date, and it fits squarely in that last category. LinkedIn co-founder and Silicon Valley’s biggest Bitcoin backer Reid Hoffman co-wrote the lyrics, and then wrote the checks that got Rhyme Combinator and Epic Lloyd from Epic Rap Battles of History to create this six-minute monetary education masterpiece.

Besides the awkward audience reactions from many Bitcoin legends sitting in the studio, this epic debate between the builders of the two best monetary systems in history has been seen more than 1.6 million times already in under 10 months.

Rap is still the most popular category of songs about bitcoin, and two other notably high-quality rap videos in english include a Dead President’s parody called “Bitcoin, It’s better than Fiat” by Renegade Investor, and (Hodlin) Crypto by The Antiquity Project.

Bitcoin Girl

Thankfully, they haven’t all been rap songs. The first high-quality Bitcoin video was a parody of Billy Joel’s Uptown Girl made back in early 2014 by Naomi Brockwell, a.k.a. Bitcoin Girl.

And now you know how she came by that name. Often found EmCeeing Libertarian and Bitcoin conferences, Naomi spent years producing John Stossel’s TV news spots, and even longer singing the praises of Satoshi on one of the most popular YouTube channels in our space. While I could list many high-quality musical works from her, the J-Pop style song “Bitcoin's Going To The Moon” shows her dedication to the craft better than any other.

Some of the most popular Bitcoin songs on YouTube aren’t even in English. A Russian bitcoin song from popular Moscow artist Tilex has over 2.7 Million views, and a Spanish rap song from Chuty came close with 2.1 Million. Meanwhile in India, a Punjabi song called “Bitcoin Shehbaaz” from Vardhman Music has half a million views and is, oddly enough, one of the most hollywood-quality productions of any Bitcoin video.

We Are All Bitcoins

There may be a real opportunity here for an english-language musician to write a Bitcoin song that becomes super popular, since these, and even a Chinese Bitcoin song can become popular. A well-timed classic by Sixue Mandarin called “We are all Bitcoins” was partially filmed in the OKCoin offices and has been seen by practically all Chinese bitcoiners around today.

While only racking up 18 thousand views after six years on Youtube, this song was quite successful at introducing Bitcoin around China through Weibo and other local social media apps. Not long after it was released, however, the PRC dropped the hammer on crypto exchanges across the country and much of that momentum was lost, sending most Chinese bitcoiners underground.

Bitcoin Billionaire

More recently, Reason TV’s Weird Al Yankovic for Libertarians, Remy, made a hilarious rap parody called Bitcoin Billionaire. If you can bring yourself to forgive him for the dismissive ending, you’ll quickly realize that this is likely to be the funniest song out there about Bitcoin, and it has been seen by over 750,000 freedom-minded individuals already.

Many of the one-liners from this song made it an instant classics, including “I went from Basic to ASIC”, “Opposing forks like a Chinese restaurant”, and my personal favourite, “I drop more satoshis than a clumsy Japanese obstetrician”.