About

Minister You, Satoshi is a catchphrase spread through 4chan which indicates good luck in Bitcoin and cryptocurrency endeavors. The phrase appears to be a nonsensical reference to the unidentified creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

Origin

The catchphrase is referring to the unidentified creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The catchphrase was popularized by a If You See This Image While Scrolling image macro featuring his supposed face with text reading "This tread visited by Satoshi Nakamoto. He will give you luck in trade but only if you write 'Minister You, Satoshi.'" One of the earliest posts to feature the image was posted June 11th, 2017 by an anonymous 4chan user.^[1]

Spread

The image was posted in several 4chan threads in the following month, with users responding to the image saying "Minister You, Satoshi."^[2][3][4] On September 25th, 2017, a thread with the phrase was posted featuring a picture of Hibike! Euphonium character Kumiko Oumae appearing to dab. This image became associated with the phrase in future threads, as did various pictures of anime characters (shown below).

On September 29th,^[6] another thread using the phrase incited anger in one anonymous user, who wrote, "EXPLAIN THIS MOTHERFUCKING MEME. YOU POST THIS DUMB SHIT EVERY FUCKING DAY AND NO ONE EVER EPXLAINS IT YOU STUPID MOTHERFUCKERS PROBABLY DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT IT MEANS YOURSELF THAT'S WHY YOU DON'T EXPLAIN IT TO ME. FUCK YOU." Another user responded, "That's the meme."

On October 1st, a thread inquiring about the phrase was posted to /biz/,^[5] inspiring users to post guesses as to the origins of the phrase, including:

Minister is someone who evangelizes and spreads to good news, and Satoshi Nakamoto invented crypto. The girl in the image is Japanese and they all have terrible English, called Engrish. So she is trying to tell the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, to spread the good news of cryptocurrencies to the world, or minister it, if you will, when she says "MINISTER YOU, SATOSHI"

The meme comes from one of the times someone tried to figure out who the real Satoshi Nakamoto was. The tracks led the investigators to the front door of an older Japanese gentleman in Kyoto. There was considerable media attention, including reporters camping out in front of his house,and waiting for him to come out, to shout questions at him, but the old man denied being Satoshi and refused to talk to the media or the legion of hangers-on gathering around his house. Every day he went to work, the crowd would yell "Mister Satoshi, Mister Satoshi!!!", trying to get his attention. So one day, he got really frustrated, and yelled back a jumbled engrish "Minister YOU, Satoshi!" (meaning something like "I'm not Satoshi, you fucking nerds, how about YOU'RE Mr. Satoshi!" and this was the only thing he said on the topic. Witnesses of the outburst took it as some sort of an Evangelical statement, akin to Jesus's sermon on the mount, with a touch of Tolstoy's "The Kingdom of God is Within You" thrown in. The common interpretation was that the man was saying, in effect: "I may or may not be Satoshi Nakamoto, but that is irrelevant, because we each have Satoshi Nakamoto within our hearts, and so our search for salvation begins, and ends, inside." From that point on, the phrase was repeated again and again, bolstered by the fact that the old man died that day in a tragic car accident. That's really it. When people post this meme, they are essentially saying: "Don't worry about your troubles (gainz, etc.) because the peace you seek is within you already."

In the following months, threads with the phrase continued to be posted, much to the frustration of other users. However, in all these threads, nobody would explain the origin, making it appear as though the meme evolved as a way to troll users who did not understand the phrase.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References