A crypto prank app, and how to film the prank

First, the line you don’t cross

A prank is a joke with a reveal at the end, and nothing real rides on it. Telling your sister you’ve just put your whole paycheck into Bitcoin, filming her face, and showing her a minute later that it’s a prop is a prank. Showing her the same screen so she sends you money, buys a coin, joins a group you run or lends you something against it is fraud, whichever app drew the screen. This guide is about the first kind; our acceptable use policy covers the rest.

Three more limits. Play it on someone who knows you, in the same room, and reveal it in the same scene. Keep the claim on your own imaginary money: a claim about theirs, or about money you share, produces panic, and panic isn’t worth posting. And keep the prank inside the app. It makes screens, not messages: a screenshot of a deposit or a transfer sent to someone as if it happened is a fake payment confirmation, whatever the joke was meant to be.

A crypto prank app that opens from a link

A crypto prank app usually means an app-store download with one screen and a share button. This is an exchange you set up in an editor, publish, and open from a link. Pozer’s Binance-style exchange is an original design with no Binance name, logo or artwork, called Bourse in the editor. Added to the home screen, it opens fullscreen under the name and icon you gave it. Building it, installing it and filming it are free.

It opens on Home: Est. Total Value in large type, the same figure in your currency under it, a Today’s PNL line, an Add Funds button, a row of tiles and the first coins on the exchange’s board. Five tabs run along the bottom: Home, Markets, Trade, Futures and Assets. The balance isn’t typed. It’s your coins at their prices plus the futures wallet, so it can’t disagree with the list on the Assets screen.

Set the account up for the joke

Four settings in the editor decide whether the prank reads at a glance.

• Show the balance in money. Value shown in starts on BTC, which prints the whole account as a number of Bitcoin. A friend can’t read that. Choose Fiat, and pick the currency under Fiat.
• Switch Live prices off. With it on, the coins are repriced about once a minute and the total you rehearsed has moved by the time you roll. With it off, each holding gets a Unit price (USD) and a 24h % field. Keep the price near what the coin really trades at; anyone who follows it will know.
• Hold the coin you’ll buy. The Buy/Sell page only offers coins that are rows under Holdings (what you own). If the prank buys Bitcoin, the account needs a BTC row, however small.
• Size the account to the story. The defaults describe a large account. A paycheck only matters on a small one, so cut the holdings down, set Futures wallet (USDT) to 0 and remove the futures positions unless the prank is about them.

This guide’s account: 0.05 BTC at a unit price of 79,500, and 1,200 USDT. Home reads $5,175.00.

Prank one: “I just put my paycheck into Bitcoin”

The buy is the reason to use an exchange for this. There’s no confirmation step, so it plays in one continuous shot.

1. Tap Trade in the tab bar, then Buy/Sell at the top of the screen. The page opens on Buy, with a large 0 and your currency code beside it.
2. Under the amount, a row labelled Buy names the coin. It starts on your stablecoin, so tap it and pick BTC from Choose crypto to buy. Do this before you roll if you’d rather the shot started on Bitcoin.
3. Type 2400 on the keypad. The figure reads 2,400, and the line under it works out the coin: 0.030189 BTC. The second row, Payment method, says Card; tap it for Bank transfer or Balance.
4. Tap the green Buy BTC button. The screen goes straight to a tick over Purchase successful and “You bought 0.030189 BTC”, above a card listing You paid $2,400.00, Price 1 BTC ≈ $79,500, Payment method Card, Fee $0.00 and Status Completed.
5. Two buttons sit under it. View assets opens the Assets screen, where the Bitcoin row has grown; Done goes back to the Buy page. Neither times out, so hold the receipt up for as long as the shot needs.

One thing to script around. Whichever payment method the row names, the purchase arrives from outside the account: the coin is added and nothing is taken out, so the total goes up by what you “paid”, from $5,175.00 to $7,575.00. The line that fits is “I just bought”, with a thumb on You paid. “Look, my balance is gone” doesn’t.

Prank two: “Look what my futures did”

The Futures tab holds a desk with your open positions underneath, under a tab that counts them: Positions (1). Each position is a card with two figures in large type, PNL (USDT) and ROI, over its size, margin, entry, mark and liquidation prices, and three buttons: Leverage, TP/SL and Close.

Neither figure is typed. Under Futures positions you set Coin, Side, Leverage, Margin mode, Size (coins), Entry price (USDT) and, with live prices off, Mark price (USDT). The profit is the size times the move. Give this guide’s account a futures wallet of 500 and one BTC long, 0.05 at 20x from 71,400, marked at 79,500: the card reads +405.00 and +203.77%, and Home now counts the futures wallet and its profit in the total.

To end it on camera, tap Close on the card. A sheet titled Close Position slides up with the amount already filled in and the contract picked; tap Close Position. The receipt is headed Closed and lists Contract BTCUSDT Perp, the order as Market · Close Long, the price, the fee and a Realized PNL line that comes out a little under the card’s figure, because a close fills one tick below the mark. It stays until you tap Done.

Two cautions. Nothing on this desk is ever liquidated: a liquidation price is printed on the card and nothing acts on it, so a “I got liquidated” prank has to be staged; the liquidation skit guide shows how. And the small share glyph beside PNL opens a card with a referral code and a QR code on it. Leave Referral code invented and QR link (optional) empty, and don’t post the card on its own as a result.

Prank three: “Hold my phone a second”

You hand it over on Home and let them find the number. It holds up because most of what a thumb reaches for answers.

• What opens. All five tabs; More, beside the Markets heading; the Convert tile; and on Assets, the Crypto and Account lists, where Account shows the wallets the total is made of, Spot and Futures among them.
• What doesn’t. The Earn, Recurring and More tiles, the Exchange / Wallet switch at the top, the search bar, and the coins themselves: tapping a row on the board or in your assets opens nothing. Keep the conversation on the balance.
• What changes the account. Add Funds, and Send and Transfer on Assets, open a keypad and move real figures on the screen. If they play with one, the balance you set up is gone until you reset it.

Before you roll

• Install it first. Publish with Create home-screen app and open the link on the phone. On iPhone, in Safari, tap Share, then Add to Home Screen; on Android, in Chrome, tap ⋮, then Install app. A browser tab shows its address across the top.
• Your Edit button stays out of the shot. The installed app hides it while you film. Hold two fingers still on the screen for a moment and it comes back for five seconds; one finger never brings it up. It shows once, with a hint, the first time the app opens, and on iPhone the first two-finger hold asks you to sign in, so do both beforehand.
• Reset between takes. A purchase or a close is saved in the app on that phone, and it’s still there after you close it. Bring up Edit and tap Reset to published values before the next take.
• Know what the free tier shows. Free apps carry SIMULATED · POZER.COM in small print under the balance, on the Buy/Sell page and its Purchase successful screen, on receipts and on the futures share card. Use it: pointing at it is the easiest reveal there is. Pro at US$12.99/mo removes it.
• Silence the phone. A real notification mid-prank breaks it, and it can show them something private.

What ends a crypto prank early

1. The balance left in BTC, so the big number is a decimal nobody in the room can price.
2. Live prices left on, so the total on camera isn’t the one you rehearsed.
3. The coin you meant to buy missing from Holdings, and so from the list on the Buy page.
4. A real coin at a price its followers know is wrong.
5. A script that says the money left the account, on a screen where the total just went up.
6. Last take’s purchase still in the account.

The reveal

End it on camera, within a minute or two, and sooner if they reach for their own phone or start offering help. Say it plainly, then show them: hold two fingers on the screen, tap Edit and let them watch you retype the Bitcoin amount. Keep that moment in the cut, because a prank video without its reveal is a video of someone being lied to. Then ask before you post it.

If the joke is a balance in a wallet and not a trade on an exchange, the fake crypto wallet prank guide covers that version. For the stock-market one, see the fake trading app prank.