The Oakland A's: when MadBitcoins acquired a new content vertical

In 2022 the @MadBitcoins timeline acquired its most unusual stable thread: the Oakland Athletics. Not as a metaphor, not as a one-off, but as a recurring content vertical — sustained across years, with its own characters, rhythms, and grievances. The most non-Bitcoin content the account had ever carried as a stable thread.

The 193/11 engagement signature is diagnostic. 193 favs is mid-tier for the era. 11 retweets is almost nothing. The ratio — nearly 18:1 favs over RTs — means the audience was reading this as community content, not viral content. People weren't forwarding the A's tweets to their broader networks. They were nodding in private agreement, signaling membership in a small group that cared about this specific team and this specific cause.

The A's situation

The Oakland Athletics under owner John Fisher had been, for most of the pivot era, a franchise visibly being prepared for relocation. Stadium negotiations with the city of Oakland had collapsed. The team's payroll had been systematically reduced. Player development had been minimal. The fan base had organized — under banners including #selltheteam and #FJF (Fire John Fisher) — to oppose Fisher's stewardship and resist the relocation to Las Vegas.

The fan resistance was unusually sustained. Throughout 2023-2024, A's home games featured organized boycotts, anti-Fisher chants, and reverse boycotts ("paid attendance" days designed to fill the stadium specifically to show that Oakland fans existed and showed up). The Last Dive Bar (@LastDiveBar) became the most-cited fan-organized account. MadBitcoins amplified Last Dive Bar content consistently across the era.

Why Hunt picked up the beat

Hunt had moved from Oakland to Las Vegas in 2017. By 2022, the Oakland A's were, in some sense, his hometown team facing relocation to his current city. The double-frame — Oakland origin, Las Vegas residence — gave him an unusual editorial position. He could write about the relocation with the perspective of someone who knew both ends of the move.

But the more important reason is simpler: Hunt cared about the A's. The 2022-2024 A's content wasn't a strategic content choice; it was a personal allegiance the @MadBitcoins audience was being trusted with. By 2022, after nine years of consistent broadcasting, Hunt had built enough audience capital that he could afford to spend some of it on personal interests. The A's were where he spent it.

The September 2024 break

The most pointed A's tweet of the era arrived in September 2024:

John Fisher is a disgrace #selltheteam #sell #FJF — @MadBitcoins, Sept 2024 — 55 favs, 6 RTs

The tweet is fan-anger in its pure form. Three hashtags, all anti-ownership. No Bitcoin context, no editorial cushioning. By 2024 the @MadBitcoins audience had been trained to expect A's content, and the audience that engaged with the John Fisher tweet was specifically the audience that had been following the A's thread for years.

This is a substantively new content register. From 2013 through 2021, the @MadBitcoins persona had been a broadcaster — even when personal content surfaced (Sheldon, Hank, Vegas), it was framed by the broadcaster grammar. The A's content broke that frame. Hunt wasn't broadcasting; he was rooting. The audience welcomed the change because it deepened the relationship.

What the vertical demonstrated

The A's content vertical demonstrated that a long-running Twitter account can develop new sustained interests in its eleventh and twelfth years. Most accounts narrow over time. @MadBitcoins, in 2022-2024, widened — adding a sustained non-crypto thread while keeping all the previous threads operational. The account could now carry Bitcoin news, CurioCards milestones, Vegas content, and A's coverage simultaneously, with the audience parsing which mode they were in at any moment.

That capacity for sustained reinvention is part of why the @MadBitcoins archive remained live and engaged through a period when many comparable accounts had become quieter or single-purpose. The A's vertical is the strongest pivot-era evidence of the account's continued elasticity.