As a reminder, Brad Sherman is well known within the cryptocurrency niche - but not in a good way. In particular, he has already proposed interaction with Bitcoin within the US, explaining his point of view with crypto investors' love of tax evasion, as well as the sharp jumps in the coins' exchange rates. Read more about this in a separate piece.

Sherman made his views known during a hearing in the U.S. Congress. Representatives from major cryptocurrency projects like FTX and Coinbase exchanges, as well as the Circle platform, were among those there. Overall, the event went well, with many politicians supporting the initiatives of the cryptocommunity members.

The world’s most ridiculous cryptocurrencies

The context of Sherman’s joke lies in the aforementioned fable about an old woman who swallows more and more animals in order to eat other animals previously swallowed. According to the congressman, so often cryptocurrencies crowd out each other. Bitcoin may be superseded by Etherium, the latter will succumb to Dogecoin, which will fall by the wayside thanks to Hamster Coin and then Cobra Coin.

That is how the official cited the names of some made-up cryptocurrencies as a mockery to clearly demonstrate the abundance of cryptocurrencies, some of which make no sense beyond the name.

Here’s Brad’s retort, in which he ended his own joke. The statement is cited by Cointelegraph.

Can MongooseCoin achieve the same results in replacing another cryptocurrency?

And here’s a recording of Sherman’s full statement in this context.

As journalists note, Sherman’s words were quickly picked up by crypto-enthusiasts, who instantly created a Mongoose Coin under the ticker symbol MONGOOSE. At the time of writing, its capitalization has grown to nearly $19 million, and the number of holders has surpassed 3,000.

Congressman Brad Sherman

Then came tokens like GOOSE, MONG, Son of Mongoose and Baby Mongoose. Some of them grew by leaps and bounds, although given low liquidity and a large hype, this was to be expected. The creators of these coins claimed to be fighting for the freedom of the cryptocommunity against the arbitrariness of financial regulators.

However, the value of “hype” coins will quickly drop to zero once this event is forgotten. Here’s another quote from Sherman on the subject.

Will the Mongoose coin be able to retain its value? I don’t know. I just came up with this project as a joke. Although I said it about Hamster Coin as well, I then discovered that Hamster Coin does exist. It’s not fair to compare the current system of traditional currencies with what cryptocurrencies aspire to.

So in the end, the official's argument boiled down to the fact that there are too many hype projects in the cryptocurrency industry, so in general the niche cannot compete with traditional finance. This is most likely a mistaken viewpoint - also because there are more than enough serious crypto projects in the niche without any link to animals.

The very Hamster Coin mentioned by Sherman has also grown significantly


We believe that the current situation has just proved once again the pace at which the cryptocurrency community is able to react to what's going on in the world. Of course, the Mongoose coin is unlikely to change the situation for the better, but in this case we should not forget about hundreds of other projects that do make people's lives easier. And the officials should focus their attention on them.

What do you think about it? Share your opinion in our millionaires’ cryptochat. There we will talk about more than just token tokens without any serious application.