The San Francisco Bitcoin Meetup holiday party in December 2017 was packed with crypto hopefuls.
Bitcoin had just hit nearly $20,000. Ethereum was holding steady above $700. Under the glow of fluorescent lights and an air of optimism, two young men posed for a photo that would become one of crypto’s most enduring snapshots.
Frédéric Fortier wore an Ethereum sweater. Mathieu Baril wore a Bitcoin one. Their image landed in a New York Times feature published weeks later under the headline: Everyone Is Getting Hilariously Rich and You’re Not.
Weeks later, the market began to crack and, at that point, experienced one of its steepest declines in its history.
The 2018 crypto meltdown, dubbed the “Great Crypto Crash,” saw Bitcoin fall over 80% from its all-time high, triggering a broader wipeout across nearly all digital assets.
The downturn began in January of the year, accelerated by regulatory fears, a $530 million hack at Coincheck, and ad bans from Facebook, Google, and Twitter.
By December, Bitcoin had dropped to around $3,100, an 84% drawdown from its peak that surpassed the scale of the dot-com collapse.
For years, not many really knew what happened to the sweater-clad duo.
Threads on X resurfaced the image sporadically. Some joked that the Ethereum guy “slow rugged.” Others figured they’d cashed out and disappeared.
But they might be wrong.
Fortier is now listed as a co-founder and lead contributor at DerivaDEX, a decentralized derivatives exchange, according to Crunchbase, LinkedIn, and X profiles reviewed by Decrypt.
DerivaDEX is built through a research and development group called DEX Labs.
Those profiles indicate that he built trading infrastructure at Enigma, where he helped launch Catalyst, one of the earliest algorithmic crypto platforms. He appears to have remained active in the Ethereum ecosystem, trading and building through multiple boom-and-bust cycles.
Notably, Fortier’s first name was spelled as “Fredric” in the original New York Times piece, not Frédéric as his LinkedIn profile suggests.
Baril, on the other hand, took a different path.
He’s now CEO of Octav, a Web3 analytics startup specializing in on-chain transaction labeling for DAOs, crypto treasuries, and institutional clients. He also teaches treasury strategy at the Crypto Accounting Academy.
“Oh shit, my photo again! Is it the top ?” Baril tweeted on Wednesday. “Should I put it on again?” he later added.
Neither has made a huge deal of their early crypto fame. But the legacy of that photo, just two guys in Hodlmoon holiday sweaters, at the height of 2017 euphoria, still floats about.
While the image froze them in time, both kept moving, their giddy, grinning faces showing up from time to time in memes, explainer decks, and nostalgic Twitter posts.
Some others have reworked the iconic photo to present the current hype cycle, pointing to Pump.fun and Hyperliquid as the new Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Still, their paths somehow reflect an observable split in the crypto space itself: spectacle versus substance. While others vanished, they built.
