SNL crypto skits: every bitcoin, NFT and Dogecoin bit we could confirm, from 2017 to 2022

A guide to the Saturday Night Live crypto sketches we could confirm on the show's official YouTube channel and in the press, grouped by format, with the cast, the date and the gag that drives each one. After that: lookalikes from other shows, and what a crypto sketch needs on screen.

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Hardware wallet app screen composed in Flexdger Wallet: a portfolio named Lantern, a total balance and its change for the day above a row of Transfer, Swap and Buy buttons, a market row and a perpetuals card, then the list of holdings with each amount and its move for the day, in a dark theme with a lavender accent.
Composed in Flexdger Wallet. Every figure on it was typed in; nothing is held, sent or received, and no chain is read.

Flexdger 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.

The list of Saturday Night Live crypto segments is short, and every entry below was confirmed on the show's official YouTube channel and in at least one news report. The segments come in three formats: two cold opens, one musical parody and two Weekend Update pieces. Dates are the nights the episodes aired in the US.

The five segments in date order

Each official clip was posted to YouTube that night or in the early hours after, and the press coverage cited below followed within days. The list leaves out passing one-liners in monologues and Weekend Update jokes that never earned a clip title or a write-up, so read it as the main segments, not every crypto joke the show has told.

Format one: the cold opens

Visit with Santa, December 9, 2017

This is the answer to "snl bitcoin skit 2017". The episode was hosted by James Franco and opened with Kenan Thompson as a mall Santa and Kate McKinnon as his elf. Children bring Christmas requests that keep turning awkward, according to the official clip description, and most of the questions are really about the news.

The crypto content is a single line close to the finish. A girl says she wants no gifts this year, only for everything to be okay. Once Santa reassures her, she adds that, just in case, she is putting all her money in bitcoin. Bitcoin.com News reported on it on December 11, 2017, reading it as proof of how far bitcoin had reached into mainstream culture. It is one line rather than a sketch about crypto, yet it is the bit people remember from that year. The gag is a hedge: the child accepts comfort and then bets her savings anyway.

Trump NFT Cold Open, December 17, 2022

The show began with James Austin Johnson as Donald Trump unveiling a set of NFT digital trading cards, with Mikey Day as Donald Trump Jr. and Cecily Strong as Kimberly Guilfoyle. Salon, writing the day after, pointed out that it was Strong's last episode and described the card art being mocked: Trump as an astronaut, a cowboy, a man on an elephant. The engine is the infomercial, a sales pitch so open about itself that the pitchman ends up doing the critic's job.

Format two: the NFT rap

On March 27, 2021, in the episode hosted by Maya Rudolph, SNL aired a sketch titled simply NFTs. It parodies Eminem's Without Me. Pete Davidson plays a student doing Eminem, dressed as Robin in a nod to the original video. Chris Redd plays Morpheus from The Matrix, and Kate McKinnon plays Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who is asked to explain NFTs in rap. Musical guest Jack Harlow appears as a man with a mop and delivers the briefest explanation of all. Cointelegraph covered it the next morning.

The official clip description calls it a rap explaining cryptocurrency. The comedy lives in the distance between how sure the explanation sounds and how little it clarifies, and that is why people still pass it around when someone asks what an NFT is.

The sketch then did what it joked about. A week later CoinDesk reported that Saturday Night Live had put its 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. Flexdger Wallet is not affiliated with OpenSea.

Format three: Weekend Update

The Dogefather, May 8, 2021

No other SNL crypto segment is as tied to a real coin. Elon Musk hosted on May 8, 2021. A week earlier, on May 1, a fan had asked for a Dogefather sketch and he replied with one word, "Definitely"; Decrypt reported the following day that Dogecoin rose 10% after the reply.

On the night itself, Dogecoin came up early in the show, in a Mother's Day exchange with his mother, Maye Musk. Later Musk showed up on Weekend Update as Lloyd Ostertag, a financial expert who tells Michael Che his nickname is the Dogefather. The mechanism is old and dependable. Che keeps putting the same question, what Dogecoin actually is, and each reply sounds surer and says less, until Che sums it up with "So it's a hustle" and the expert agrees. NBC News recapped the episode the next day.

Prices moved alongside the comedy. NBC News passed along a social media post claiming Dogecoin lost 30 billion dollars in value during the broadcast, a figure the article did not verify. This guide makes no claim about why any price moved.

The crash, May 14, 2022

By spring 2022 the mood of the joke had changed. 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". If you are hunting for the SNL bitcoin crash skit, this is it, and the joke is simply the size of the drop.

Late Night with Seth Meyers

"Bitcoin skit seth meyers" is a genuine autocomplete suggestion, but no standalone bitcoin sketch turned up on the official Late Night with Seth Meyers YouTube channel. The closest hit is a Back in My Day segment uploaded in June 2021 and titled Cryptocurrency, Bill and Melinda Gates, in which Seth recalls a simpler, though very recent, time. Other crypto moments on that show are monologue jokes and guest interviews rather than sketches, so a specific Seth Meyers bitcoin bit you remember is most likely one of those.

Four lookalikes from outside SNL

Part of the "snl bitcoin skit" traffic is really people looking for one of these. Each is on an official YouTube channel under the title given.

The five comic engines behind them

Line the segments up and each turns up when crypto was already in the headlines: the 2017 surge, the NFT spring of 2021, the Dogecoin weekend, the 2022 slump. Topical comedy needs an audience that arrives already knowing the news. Nearly all of the examples run on one of five engines:

What almost never appears is a real account. Performers and words carry the jokes, and when a figure shows up, it is whatever the scene needs.

If you are writing one yourself

Choose an engine, give it a character the audience already recognizes, and keep the reveal to one beat. For premises, money skit ideas offers thirty with the props each needs, and crypto video ideas covers formats for channels that post weekly.

The prop nearly every crypto sketch wants is a phone screen: the convert showing off a balance, the crash reveal, the pitchman's wallet. Build it for the job, the way film crews build their prop phone screens. Flexdger Wallet is a mockup of a crypto wallet that runs in the browser, drawn after Ledger Live. You choose the name, the avatar, the tokens and the balance the script calls for, prices are real and moving, and there is nothing to install. Try it in the demo, which needs no account, and read the larp wallet guide for 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.

The SNL segments follow the same rule without announcing it. Everyone watching knows the Dogefather is a character and the trading cards are a bit. Your skit gets the same protection when nothing in it could be cut out of the clip and mistaken for a real record.

Sources

Questions

Which SNL sketch is the "bitcoin skit" from 2021?

Strictly speaking, neither of the two 2021 crypto sketches is about bitcoin. The March 27, 2021 NFTs sketch is a parody of Eminem's Without Me with Pete Davidson, Chris Redd, Jack Harlow and Kate McKinnon as Janet Yellen. The May 8, 2021 Weekend Update piece has host Elon Musk as Lloyd Ostertag, a financial expert who calls himself the Dogefather.

Where is the 2017 SNL bitcoin joke?

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. A child who asks for no gifts, only for everything to be okay, adds that just in case she is putting all her money in bitcoin. Bitcoin.com News covered it two days later.

Did SNL do a bitcoin sketch in 2025?

People search for one, but when we checked on November 8, 2026, we found no 2025 SNL sketch about bitcoin on the show's official YouTube channel or in news coverage. The crypto sketches we could confirm aired between 2017 and 2022. A newer memory may be a short Weekend Update joke, not a full sketch.

Is there a bitcoin sketch on Late Night with Seth Meyers?

Not a standalone one on the official channel, as far as we found. The nearest match is a June 2021 Back in My Day segment titled Cryptocurrency, Bill and Melinda Gates, where Seth looks back on a recent, simpler time. Elsewhere the show has crypto monologue jokes and guest interviews.

Who is Janet Yellen in the SNL NFT sketch?

Kate McKinnon plays Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen in the NFTs sketch from the March 27, 2021 episode, hosted by Maya Rudolph. Pete Davidson plays a student rapping as Eminem, dressed as Robin in a nod to the Without Me video, Chris Redd plays Morpheus, and musical guest Jack Harlow plays a man with a mop.

How can I watch the clips?

Saturday Night Live posts its sketches on its official YouTube channel, and each clip in this guide is there under its official title, such as NFTs - SNL or Trump NFT Cold Open - SNL. The descriptions point to Peacock and nbc.com for full episodes.

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