Number go up is a tongue-in-cheek bitcoin meme about the price of bitcoin rising over time, written in broken caveman grammar on purpose. It started in 2017 as a way for critics to mock crypto speculators who seemed to care only about the price, and bitcoiners adopted it as a self-aware joke, often shortened to NGU.
The phrase is funny because it is so blunt. Behind it sits a longer argument about supply and demand, and right next to it sits a very real risk of taking a joke too seriously. This guide covers both.
A jab from the 2017 bubble
Late 2017 was a wild time in crypto. Prices were climbing fast, new tokens appeared every week and plenty of buyers had no idea what they owned. Skeptics found the whole scene ridiculous.
According to research by longtime crypto critic David Gerard, the earliest known use of the phrase in this sense appeared on the Something Awful forums on October 5, 2017. A user there wrote a short post in mock caveman speech, playing a speculator who only understood that the number on the screen should go up. The point was simple: these people don't understand the technology, they just want the price to rise.
The phrase hopped to Twitter within weeks. Gerard traced early uses there to November and December 2017, including on accounts that existed mainly to make fun of bitcoin.
How bitcoiners flipped the insult
Bitcoiners have a habit of adopting the jokes made about them. Magic internet money started as a laugh and became a nickname; HODL started as a typo and became a creed. Number go up followed the same path.
In bitcoin hands, the phrase became a deliberately dumb summary of a serious idea. The argument goes like this: bitcoin's supply is capped near 21 million coins, new issuance is cut in half roughly every four years, and if more people want to hold a fixed amount of something over time, its price in other currencies tends to rise. Our guide on why there are only 21 million bitcoin explains the supply side in detail.
So when a bitcoiner says NGU, they are often doing two things at once: making fun of themselves for sounding like the speculators in the original joke, and pointing at the supply schedule they think explains the long-term trend.
Number go up technology
A popular variation is number go up technology, sometimes written as NGU tech. It is a joking way to describe bitcoin as if rising prices were a feature someone engineered on purpose, like a new app. You will see it in posts that tease other projects too, as in "their whitepaper is 80 pages, ours is number go up technology."
The joke cuts both ways. Fans use it to suggest that bitcoin's simple, predictable rules are the real innovation. Critics use it to suggest that bitcoin has nothing to offer except its price. Which reading you hear depends on who is talking.
You may also see people search for number go up inside crypto or number go up gif. Both point to the same meme: reaction images of charts drawn by a child, cavemen holding stone tablets and similar visual gags.
What NGU does not mean
This is the part that matters most. Number go up is a joke, not a forecast, and it says nothing reliable about tomorrow, next month or next year.
History makes that clear. Bitcoin has been through several long bear markets in which its price fell by more than half and stayed down for a long time. People who bought near a peak and needed the money soon afterwards did not find the meme very funny. The supply schedule is fixed by the protocol, but demand is not, and nobody can promise that it rises.
So read NGU the way you would read any sports chant: an expression of enthusiasm, sometimes with a wink. Nothing in this guide is financial advice, and we never predict prices.
How bitcoiners use the phrase
A few typical examples show the range:
- As a reply to a long technical thread: "Cool, but does number go up?" (teasing someone for overthinking).
- As self-mockery: "I read three books on monetary history and my main takeaway is NGU."
- As a shrug during a price drop: "Number go down this week. Zoom out."
- As a rebuttal to over-engineered projects: "We have NGU technology, thanks."
Notice how often the joke is aimed at the speaker. That self-awareness is a large part of why the meme survived. It sits close to another popular jab, have fun staying poor, which tends to land far worse; our guide on what HFSP means explains why.
Shirts that keep the joke a joke
We print the meme in full, with a light touch. The Number Go Up tee stacks the three words in large white capitals over an orange arrow that climbs in steps, landings and all, which is a fair picture of how long-term charts tend to look in the meme's version of events. If your bitcoiner prefers the zoom-out side of the joke, the Bitcoin Wiggle tee is one big yellow B inside wobbly white rings, a coin that seems to still be spinning. For people who follow the supply schedule itself, the Halving 2028 tee shows an orange coin split cleanly in two, marking the next halving, which is expected around April 2028 at block 1,050,000. Each tee is printed when you order and ships from the USA.
Source: David Gerard, The origin of number go up in Bitcoin culture (May 27, 2019).
