# SNL crypto skits: the bitcoin, NFT and Dogecoin sketches by year Source: https://mylarpwallet.com/blog/snl-crypto-skits Updated: 2026-11-08 Published: 2026-11-08 Topic: Video and creators (https://mylarpwallet.com/blog/creators) > SNL crypto skits by year: the 2017 bitcoin line, the 2021 NFT rap and Dogefather Update, the 2022 crash jokes and Trump NFT cold open, with dates and sources. Every Saturday Night Live crypto sketch we could confirm on the show's official YouTube channel and in the press, in air-date order, with who is in it and what the joke runs on. Then the late-night and web sketches people mix them up with, and what a crypto sketch needs on set. **Short answer:** SNL's crypto sketches, by air date: a bitcoin line in the Santa cold open (December 9, 2017), the NFTs rap with Kate McKinnon as Janet Yellen (March 27, 2021), Elon Musk as the Dogefather on Weekend Update (May 8, 2021), the crash jokes on Weekend Update (May 14, 2022) and the Trump NFT cold open (December 17, 2022). SNL's crypto skits are a short list: a bitcoin line in the 2017 Santa cold open, the NFTs rap of March 2021, Elon Musk as the Dogefather on Weekend Update in May 2021, the crash jokes of May 2022 and the Trump NFT cold open of December 2022. Each is below in air-date order, confirmed on the show's official YouTube channel and in at least one news report. My Larp Wallet is not affiliated with NBC, Saturday Night Live, Late Night with Seth Meyers, Comedy Central, The Daily Show, CollegeHumor, Dropout or any performer named on this page. ## SNL crypto skits by year Dates are the night each episode aired in the US. Each official clip went up on the show's YouTube channel that night or in the early hours after, and the news reports cited below followed within a few days. | Air date | Segment | Who is in it | What it is about | The comic engine | |---|---|---|---|---| | December 9, 2017 | Visit with Santa Cold Open | Kenan Thompson (Santa), Kate McKinnon (elf); host James Franco | Children bring a mall Santa questions about the year's news; one wish ends on bitcoin | The hedge: a child is reassured, then puts all her money into bitcoin just in case | | March 27, 2021 | NFTs | Pete Davidson, Chris Redd, Jack Harlow, Kate McKinnon as Janet Yellen; host Maya Rudolph | A rap to the tune of Eminem's Without Me that tries to explain NFTs | The explainer: everyone asks what an NFT is, and the answer keeps getting louder rather than clearer | | May 8, 2021 | Weekend Update: Financial Expert Lloyd Ostertag on Cryptocurrency | Elon Musk (host) as Lloyd Ostertag, with anchor Michael Che | A financial expert who goes by the Dogefather is asked to explain Dogecoin | The repeated question: Che keeps asking what Dogecoin is until the expert agrees it is a hustle | | May 14, 2022 | Weekend Update: Cryptocurrency Crashes, Mitch McConnell Visits Ukraine | Colin Jost and Michael Che; host Selena Gomez | The week's news, opening on the crypto slump | The crash pun: bitcoin fell so far it needs a smaller name | | December 17, 2022 | Trump NFT Cold Open | James Austin Johnson (Donald Trump), Mikey Day (Donald Trump Jr.), Cecily Strong (Kimberly Guilfoyle) | A parody of the former president's announcement of NFT digital trading cards | The pitchman: a sales pitch that says out loud what the audience is thinking | That is the list we could verify. It leaves out passing one-liners in monologues and Weekend Update segments that did not make it into a clip title or a news write-up, so read it as the main sketches, not every crypto joke the show has made. ## 2017: the bitcoin line in the Santa cold open The search "snl bitcoin skit 2017" leads here. The episode of December 9, 2017, hosted by James Franco, opened with Kenan Thompson as a mall Santa and Kate McKinnon as his elf, fielding Christmas requests from children that keep turning uncomfortable, as the official clip description puts it. Most of the questions are about the news. The crypto part is one line near the end. A girl says she does not want gifts this year, only for everything to be okay, and once she is reassured she adds that, just in case, she is putting all her money in bitcoin. Bitcoin.com News wrote it up on December 11, 2017, as a sign of how far bitcoin had traveled into mainstream culture. It is a single line, not a crypto sketch, but it is the one people remember from that year. ## 2021: the NFTs rap with Janet Yellen On March 27, 2021, in the episode hosted by Maya Rudolph, SNL ran a sketch simply titled NFTs. It is a parody of Eminem's Without Me, with Pete Davidson as a student playing Eminem, dressed as Robin in a nod to the original video. Chris Redd plays Morpheus from The Matrix, Kate McKinnon plays Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is asked to explain NFTs in rap, and musical guest Jack Harlow turns up as a man with a mop who gives the shortest explanation of all. Cointelegraph covered it the next morning. The official clip description sums the sketch up as a rap explaining cryptocurrency. The comedy sits in the gap between how confident the explanation sounds and how little it clears up, which is why it still gets passed around whenever someone asks what an NFT is. The sketch then did what the sketch was about. A week later CoinDesk reported that Saturday Night Live had put the closing shot (the cast crossing a street in an Abbey Road pose) up for auction as an NFT on OpenSea, with proceeds going to Stop AAPI Hate. My Larp Wallet is not affiliated with OpenSea. ## 2021: the Dogefather on Weekend Update This is the SNL crypto sketch tied most closely to a real coin. Elon Musk hosted on May 8, 2021. A week earlier, on May 1, he had answered a fan who asked for a Dogefather sketch with one word, "Definitely," and Decrypt reported the next day that Dogecoin rose 10% after the reply. On the night, Dogecoin first came up early in the show, in a Mother's Day exchange with his mother, Maye Musk. Musk then came to Weekend Update as Lloyd Ostertag, a financial expert who tells Michael Che his nickname is the Dogefather. The structure is old and reliable: Michael Che keeps asking the same question, what Dogecoin actually is, and each answer is more confident and less informative than the last, until Che concludes "So it's a hustle" and the expert agrees. NBC News recapped the episode the next day. The market story ran alongside the comedy. NBC News relayed a social media post saying Dogecoin had lost 30 billion dollars in value during the show, a figure the article did not verify. This guide makes no claim about why the price moved. ## 2022: the crash jokes and the Trump NFT cold open By spring 2022 the joke had turned. On May 14, 2022, in the episode hosted by Selena Gomez, Weekend Update took on the slump, and the official clip title leads with it: Cryptocurrency Crashes, Mitch McConnell Visits Ukraine. Yahoo's recap the next day said the segment tackled the crypto crash, and quoted Colin Jost's pun that bitcoin had fallen so far it was now "Bit O' Coin." Anyone searching for the SNL bitcoin crash skit is looking for this segment. On December 17, 2022, the show opened with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump announcing a collection of NFT digital trading cards, helped by Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr. and Cecily Strong as Kimberly Guilfoyle. Salon, writing the next day, noted it was Strong's final episode and described the parade of card artwork the sketch made fun of: Trump as an astronaut, a cowboy, a man riding an elephant. The engine is the infomercial, a pitch so frank about itself that the pitchman does the critic's job. ## Is there a bitcoin skit on Late Night with Seth Meyers? "Bitcoin skit seth meyers" is a real autocomplete suggestion, but we found no standalone bitcoin sketch on the official Late Night with Seth Meyers YouTube channel. The nearest match is a Back in My Day segment uploaded in June 2021, titled Cryptocurrency, Bill and Melinda Gates, in which Seth looks back on a simpler, if very recent, time. The show's other crypto moments are monologue jokes and guest interviews rather than sketches. If you remember a specific Seth Meyers bitcoin bit, it is most likely one of those. ## Other bitcoin comedy skits people mix up with SNL Some "snl bitcoin skit" searches are really looking for one of these. Each is on an official YouTube channel under the title given here. - **Jake and Amir: Bitcoin** (CollegeHumor, March 2014, now on the Jake and Amir channel). An episode of the office web series, described on its upload as a goodbye to digital money. One of the earliest bitcoin sketches still online. - **Should We Do a Bitcoin Sketch? (Hardly Working)** (CollegeHumor, April 2014, now on the Dropout channel). The upload sums it up as what it is basically like to invest in bitcoin, and the title is the premise: whether to do a bitcoin sketch at all. - **The Rise of Bitcoin and Other Stupid Meme Currencies** (The Daily Show, December 2017). Ronny Chieng investigates bitcoin's rapid surge and hits on a crypto idea of his own. It aired the same month as the SNL Santa line, at the 2017 peak. - **Balcony Conversations: Bitcoin Guy** (Jimmy Tatro, January 2018). The upload's own summary is that Jimmy gets way into bitcoin. This is the bitcoin bro archetype in its purest form: the friend who has converted and cannot talk about anything else. ## What these crypto sketches have in common Put the list in date order and the pattern is plain: each sketch aired at a moment when crypto was already in the news, the 2017 surge, the NFT spring of 2021, the Dogecoin weekend, the 2022 slump. Topical comedy needs the audience to arrive already knowing the headline. And almost all of them run on one of five engines. - **The explainer who cannot explain.** The NFTs rap and the Dogefather both ask "what is it?" and never answer. - **The convert.** The friend who is all in, from the Santa child's hedge to the Bitcoin Guy on the balcony. - **The crash.** A number goes down and the joke is the size of the drop: Bit O' Coin. - **The pitchman.** Someone selling, too openly, as in the Trump NFT cold open. - **The meta joke.** Comedians discussing whether to do a bitcoin sketch at all, or a sketch about NFTs sold as an NFT. Notice what is almost never shown: a real account. The jokes are carried by performers and words, and when a number appears, it is the number the scene needs. ## Writing your own crypto skit If you came here to see how a crypto sketch is built before you write one, the engines above are the useful part. Pick one, give it a character the audience already knows, and keep the reveal to a single beat. For premises, our [money skit ideas](https://mylarpwallet.com/blog/money-skit-ideas) has thirty of them with the props each one needs, and [crypto video ideas](https://mylarpwallet.com/blog/crypto-video-ideas) covers formats for channels that post every week. We will not repeat them here. The one prop almost every crypto sketch needs is a phone screen: the convert showing off a balance, the crash reveal, the pitchman's wallet. That is a prop like any other, and it should be made for the job, the way a film crew builds its [prop phone screens](https://mylarpwallet.com/blog/prop-phone-screens-for-film). A larp wallet, also called a crypto wallet app simulator, is an app that shows a believable crypto wallet screen built from the balances you type in, for videos, skits, pitch decks and demos. It holds no funds and touches no blockchain. My Larp Wallet is one: you set the name, tokens and amounts the script calls for and open the screen full screen on the phone in the shot. You can compose one in the [demo](https://mylarpwallet.com/demo) without an account; our [larp wallet guide](https://mylarpwallet.com/guides/larp-wallet) explains the rest. Keep a visible "Mockup" or "Skit" label in the frame. The screen is a prop for the scene, never proof of a balance, and presenting it as a real balance, statement or proof of funds is against our [terms of use](https://mylarpwallet.com/terms). The SNL sketches above follow the same rule without saying so. Everyone watching knows the Dogefather is a character and the trading cards are a bit. Your skit gets the same benefit when nothing in it could be lifted out of the clip and mistaken for a real record. ## Sources - [Saturday Night Live (YouTube), Visit with Santa Cold Open - SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8HLnDP6uRM), 2017 - [Bitcoin.com News, Howard Stern and Saturday Night Live Reference Bitcoin as Popularity Grows](https://news.bitcoin.com/howard-stern-saturday-night-live-reference-bitcoin-as-popularity-grows), 2017 - [Saturday Night Live (YouTube), NFTs - SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrNOYudaMAc), 2021 - [Cointelegraph, NFTs come to Saturday Night Live in rap sketch](https://cointelegraph.com/news/nfts-come-to-saturday-night-live-in-rap-sketch), 2021 - [CoinDesk, SNL's NFT Sketch Is Now an NFT Up for Bid Itself](https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2021/04/03/snls-nft-sketch-is-now-an-nft-up-for-bid-itself-as-art-imitates-art-imitating-art), 2021 - [Saturday Night Live (YouTube), Weekend Update: Financial Expert Lloyd Ostertag on Cryptocurrency - SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5RCfQyTDFI), 2021 - [NBC News, Elon Musk delivers laughs, tips hat to cryptocurrency on Saturday Night Live](https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/tv/elon-musk-delivers-laughs-tips-hat-cryptocurrency-snl-n1266763), 2021 - [Decrypt, Dogecoin rises 10% after Elon Musk confirms coin will get SNL treatment](https://decrypt.co/69695/dogecoin-rises-10-after-elon-musk-confirms-coin-will-get-snl-treatment), 2021 - [Saturday Night Live (YouTube), Weekend Update: Cryptocurrency Crashes, Mitch McConnell Visits Ukraine - SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePVzs9M4ajU), 2022 - [Yahoo Entertainment, SNL: Weekend Update Tackles Crypto Crash, Baby Formula Shortage](https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/snl-weekend-tackles-crypto-crash-130719574.html), 2022 - [Saturday Night Live (YouTube), Trump NFT Cold Open - SNL](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Izukxr-SfsM), 2022 - [Salon, Saturday Night Live jabs at NFT cards in the cold open for Cecily Strong's last episode](https://www.salon.com/2022/12/18/saturday-night-live-jabs-at-nft-cards-in-the-cold-open-for-cecily-strongs-last-episode), 2022 ## Questions ### What was the SNL bitcoin skit in 2021? There were two crypto sketches in 2021, and neither was strictly about bitcoin. On March 27, 2021, the NFTs sketch parodied Eminem's Without Me, with Pete Davidson, Chris Redd, Jack Harlow and Kate McKinnon as Janet Yellen. On May 8, 2021, host Elon Musk played Lloyd Ostertag, a financial expert who calls himself the Dogefather, on Weekend Update. ### What was the SNL bitcoin skit in 2017? It is a line in the Visit with Santa cold open of December 9, 2017, the James Franco episode. Kenan Thompson plays a mall Santa and Kate McKinnon his elf, and a child who wants no gifts, only for everything to be okay, adds that just in case she is putting all her money in bitcoin. Bitcoin.com News wrote it up two days later. ### Is there an SNL bitcoin skit from 2025? Autocomplete suggests people look for one, but we found no 2025 SNL sketch about bitcoin on the show's official YouTube channel or in news coverage when we checked on November 8, 2026. The crypto sketches we could confirm aired between 2017 and 2022. If you remember a newer one, it may be a short Weekend Update joke rather than a full sketch. ### Did Seth Meyers do a bitcoin skit? We found no standalone bitcoin sketch on the official Late Night with Seth Meyers YouTube channel. The closest is a Back in My Day segment from June 2021 titled Cryptocurrency, Bill and Melinda Gates, in which Seth looks back on a recent, simpler time. Other crypto moments on the show are monologue jokes and guest interviews. ### Who played Janet Yellen in the SNL NFT sketch? Kate McKinnon played Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the NFTs sketch of March 27, 2021, the episode hosted by Maya Rudolph. Pete Davidson played a student rapping as Eminem, dressed as Robin in a nod to the Without Me video, Chris Redd played Morpheus, and musical guest Jack Harlow played a man with a mop. ### Where can I watch SNL crypto skits? Saturday Night Live posts its sketches on its official YouTube channel, and every clip in this guide is there under its official title, such as NFTs - SNL or Trump NFT Cold Open - SNL. The clip descriptions point to Peacock and nbc.com for full episodes.