Famous Crypto-Meme Twin Grichka Bogdanoff Dies Aged 72

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Grich­ka Bog­danoff, who accord­ing to a pop­u­lar cryp­to meme was – like his broth­er Igor – capa­ble of chang­ing the mar­ket with a sin­gle phone call, has died at the age of 72 fol­low­ing a peri­od of illness. 

The Bog­danoff twins Grich­ka and Igor (Source)

The twin celebri­ties and sci­en­tists first rose to fame as co-hosts of the tele­vi­sion show ‘Temps X’, which blend­ed sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion ele­ments and ran from 1979 to 1987. The twins remained in the pub­lic con­scious­ness thanks to their dis­tinc­tive appear­ance and fre­quent appear­ances on celebri­ty tele­vi­sion shows such as ‘The Masked Singer’.

To cryp­to pro­po­nents, how­ev­er, the Bog­danoffs are con­sid­ered to be some­thing clos­er to a god­like force capa­ble of super­hu­man abil­i­ties and of alter­ing finan­cial mar­kets with a sin­gle phone call. This birthed the ‘He bought? Dump it’ cryp­to meme that shows Igor Bog­danoff hold­ing a mobile phone to his ear. 

Over time, the out­landish nature of the twins’ pow­ers has grown, reach­ing fresh heights of myth­ic impos­si­bil­i­ty with each retelling of the tale.

Some attrib­ut­es the broth­ers are said to have included:

  • Mak­ing the Rothschild’s bow before them
  • Talk­ing to aliens on Earth and beyond
  • Psy­chic powers
  • IQs over 9,000
  • Con­trol­ling spe­cial nanobots called Bogdabots (which are inside your body right now)
  • Own­ing every genet­ic research facil­i­ty in the world
  • Know­ing exact­ly when you buy bit­coin, so they can dump the market
What hap­pens when a Bog­danoff makes a call

The real Bogdanoffs

While Grichka’s leg­end will be remem­bered fond­ly by the cryp­tos­phere, the real Grich­ka and Bog­danoff sto­ry is no less fas­ci­nat­ing. Born on August 29, 1949 in Saint-Lary, France, the Bog­danoff broth­ers were descend­ed from sev­er­al noble lines includ­ing the Kolowrat fam­i­ly of Bohemia in the Czech Repub­lic. Of the two broth­ers, Grich­ka was the younger, being born 40 min­utes after Igor.

The two were raised by their mater­nal grand­moth­er Count­ess Bertha Kolowrat-Krakowská in her cas­tle in South­ern France. In 1925 Count­ess Kolowrat-Krakowská’s affair with Roland Hayes, an African-Amer­i­can lyri­cist, result­ed in a divorce to her aris­to­crat­ic hus­band, the loss of sev­er­al estates and titles, and access to her four elder children. 

The affair also pro­duced a sin­gle daugh­ter, Maria Dolores “Maya” Kolowrat – the twins’ moth­er. Maya Kolowrat lat­er mar­ried Yuri Mikhailovich Bog­danoff, a Russ­ian polit­i­cal immi­grant descend­ed from a noble line. In the 17th cen­tu­ry, the Bogdanoff’s had even styled them­selves with the high title of ‘Prince’ by decree of Russ­ian Tsar Feodor III.

While Per­son­al scan­dals and the tumul­tuous his­to­ry of Europe’s 20th cen­tu­ry had left the Bog­danoffs far poor­er and much dimin­ished, they remained a fam­i­ly of con­sid­er­able wealth, if not standing. 

The broth­ers’ ear­ly years pro­vid­ed ample oppor­tu­ni­ty to study the many books in their grandmother’s cas­tle library, and through the many staff and work­ers who passed through its doors, the twins learned Ger­man, French, Russ­ian, and English.

Fame and the Bogdanoff affair

In 1979 the broth­ers shot to fame with their TV show ‘Temps X’. The show com­bined sci­ence and sci­ence fic­tion ele­ments and intro­duced the French pub­lic to major US and UK shows which had pre­vi­ous­ly remained unknown to them. Some of the pro­grams fea­tured in ‘Temps X’ includ­ed cul­tur­al touch­stones such as The Twi­light Zone, The Pris­on­er, Star Trek, Bat­tlestar Galac­ti­ca, and Doc­tor Who.

Fol­low­ing the con­clu­sion of Temps X in 1987 the twins drift­ed in and out of the lime­light. In 1999 Grich­ka Bog­danoff received a PhD from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bur­gundy. In 2002 Igor received a PhD of his own, also from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bur­gundy. Both passed with a grade of ‘hon­or­able’ – the low­est pos­si­ble award.

Between 2001 and 2002 the broth­ers pub­lished a num­ber of papers in sci­en­tif­ic jour­nals which were vet­ted and approved by peer review. In Octo­ber 2002 how­ev­er, the legit­i­ma­cy of these papers was thrown into ques­tion by physi­cist Max Nie­der­maier who said, “The abstracts are delight­ful­ly mean­ing­less com­bi­na­tions of buzz­words … which appar­ent­ly have been tak­en seriously.”

Nie­der­maier lat­er retract­ed his ini­tial state­ment, but the con­tro­ver­sy grew arms and legs as fur­ther scruti­ny of the twins’ papers brought a fresh wave of alle­ga­tions and crit­i­cisms. The alleged fail­ure of the peer review process became known as ‘the Bog­danoff affair’ and left a cloud over the pair’s work.

The legend of the Bogdanoffs

In lat­er years, the appear­ance of the Bog­danoffs became the focus of much media spec­u­la­tion. When the Bog­danoffs attend­ed the Cannes Film Fes­ti­val in 2010 the press attrib­uted their ris­ing cheek­bones and elon­gat­ed chins to cos­met­ic surgery. Igor and Grich­ka strong­ly denied ever hav­ing under­gone any sur­gi­cal procedures.

On Decem­ber 15 of 2021, Igor and Grich­ka Bog­danoff were admit­ted to hos­pi­tal in Paris, suf­fer­ing from com­pli­ca­tions due to Covid-19. Grich­ka Bog­danoff died on Decem­ber 28. For all the tall tales of super­hu­man pow­ers, it appears that Grich­ka Bog­danoff was just as human as the rest of us.

The death of the younger Bog­danoff broth­er marks the pass­ing of a man as mul­ti­fac­eted as mul­ti-faced. Born to a fam­i­ly mired in polit­i­cal and per­son­al con­tro­ver­sy, Grich­ka nev­er­the­less went on to great suc­cess, only to lat­er become mired in con­tro­ver­sies of his own creation.

Per­haps there is some final irony in the fact that when the inter­net remem­bers Grich­ka with the inevitable ‘Good­night sweet Prince’ epi­taph it will bestow upon him the title which his fam­i­ly once held, and lost, so long ago. 

In the crazy and incred­i­ble world of cryp­to cul­ture, hid­ing among the many grains of a moun­tain of salt, you may just find one small grain of truth. 

Grich­ka Bog­danoff, 1949–2021.

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