A classic meme format just got a fresh coat of paint and the crypto timeline is absolutely feasting.

It all started when Polymarket dropped this gem:

BREAKING: Zohran Mamdani to require all New York elementary school students to learn Arabic numerals.

Of course, the joke is that “Arabic numerals” are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 — the exact numbers literally every American kid already learns in school. It’s a timeless roast of the “we can’t have anything foreign” crowd who don’t realize how deeply indebted modern civilization is to the Islamic Golden Age.

Helius Labs CEO Mert Mumtaz (@0xMert_) saw the opening and went straight for the jugular:

wait until Americans learn that "algebra" is actually an Arabic concept, derived from the Arabic word: al-jabr (like al-jazeera 🤯)

and then wait until they learn that algebra is the basis of all AI, which is the entire US economy

total Arabic victory

thanks Obama!

He wasn’t done. A few minutes later he hit the follow-up:

then wait until you realize that the arabs were behind your social media algorithms this whole time

incredible 6d chess

For anyone who somehow missed it: the word “algorithm” is literally a Latinized version of the name of Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, the mathematician whose 9th-century works laid foundational stones for what eventually became computer science.

Crypto Twitter — a corner of the internet that runs entirely on math, cryptography, and algorithms — lost its collective mind (in the best way). The thread racked up thousands of likes and hundreds of quote-tweets within hours, with people piling on everything from “wait till they hear about alcohol (al-kuḥl)” to “zero was also an Arabic export.”

Why this particular joke lands so hard in 2025 crypto circles is pretty simple: the industry is obsessed with both cutting-edge tech and historical irony. We spend our days trading tokens named after dogs and frogs, building on math that traces straight back to scholars in Baghdad and Persia a thousand years ago. The same people who scream “number go up” are suddenly confronted with the fact that the very concept of “number” going up was revolutionized by the civilizations some politicians love to demonize.

It’s peak timeline chaos: educational, savage, and genuinely funny all at once.

Whether this spawns its own $ALJABR or $KHWARIZMI meme coin remains to be seen (degens, the CA is still open), but one thing is certain — Mert just handed the timeline a masterclass in how to ratio ignorance with facts and still keep it light.

You can read the original thread here: https://x.com/0xMert_/status/1991476175378784441

Welcome to crypto, where the math is made up but the history lessons are real.