Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
The prices of leading cryptocurrencies sustained a steady ascent for the third straight week, with market leader Bitcoin setting a 2022 high of $48,000 on Monday. Over on Crypto Twitter, things were a bit calmer than usual.
There was a trickle of notable announcements.
On Tuesday, crypto whale tracking bot Whale Alert tweeted that an account containing 1,000 Bitcoins had been activated for the first time in nearly eight years. Back in 2014, the stash was worth around $583,859—today, more than $47 million.
💤💤💤💤 A dormant address containing 1,000 #BTC (47,370,290 USD) has just been activated after 7.7 years (worth 583,859 USD in 2014)!https://t.co/KZVqzoR2ge
— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 29, 2022
Bruce Fenton, the former executive director of The Bitcoin Foundation and current managing director of Boston-based crypto fintech firm Chainstone Labs, announced on Wednesday that he’s running in New Hampshire for a U.S. Senate seat.
I will not stand by while my country and our values are destroyed by politicians in Washington DC.
We must build a future based on liberty, peace, sound money, human rights and voluntary interaction.
I’m running for the United Senate representing New Hampshire. #NHPolitics
— Bruce Fenton (@brucefenton) March 30, 2022
The former chief operating officer at Robinhood, Christine Brown, announced that “after 5 amazing years” she’s leaving the crypto trading platform “to start something new.” She didn’t elaborate but assured followers she’s “excited to be staying in the crypto space,” so we certainly haven’t heard the last from her.
After 5 amazing years at @RobinhoodApp, I’m moving on to start something new.
I joined RH when it was under 100 people—before we even offered a crypto product. Watching us grow through IPO and serving more than 22m users has been the greatest professional experience of my life.
— Christine (Hall) Brown (@christine_hall) March 29, 2022
The bulk of Twitter’s attention this week was turned towards two calamities: the Ronin bridge exploit and Mark Wallace’s Shitcoin. (Oops! Typo! That should have read: Mark Wallace’s “AcceptCrypto” coin.)
The Mark Wallace affair
Dogecoin pumping YouTuber Mark Wallace was faced with allegations of a rug pull after his “AcceptCrypto” token blew up 12,000% and then crashed to nothing just minutes after launching on Wednesday.
A “rug pull” is a type of exit scam where a crypto project solicits funds from the public only to disappear suddenly without fulfilling its promises, usually a token drop.
Since Wallace stayed online and bore the brunt of the anxious angry tweets himself, he probably isn’t the one who pulled the rug. Still, when examined, the whole chain of events is fishy.
In a now-deleted tweet on Wednesday, Wallace was really excited about AcceptCrypto’s 12,000% surge just minutes after launch. And then it tanked.
Dogecoin creator Billy Markus piped up and called Wallace a “scammer.” This isn’t the first time Markus has been at loggerheads with Wallace. Initially, Wallace planned to call his cryptocurrency “AcceptDoge,” but he quickly reversed his decision after a stern word from Markus on Twitter last month.
i don’t enjoy calling out scammers.
calling out scammers leads to harassment and death threats. always. because evil is evil.
but in this case, the reputation of dogecoin was on the line. if community members didn’t take action, this disaster would have been named “accept doge” https://t.co/2EWPI83f73
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) March 30, 2022
Self-proclaimed “internet detective” Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) called AcceptCrypto “another shitcoin” and posted a video clip of Wallace defending himself from accusations by irate investors in the project’s Telegram group.
Wallace denies responsibility for taking investors’ money. He said he suspects a glitch or some other oversight may have happened on Solidity Finance’s end. Wallace tapped the company to audit his smart contracts, and said he doesn’t believe the problem is a result of foul play on their end.
This was not a rug pull or a scam. Liquidity was never taken out or touched, and there is approximately 600k USD inside of this project between marketing/dev taxes, the liquidity pool, and liquidity. No tokens owned or distributed for the token’s purposes have been sold either. pic.twitter.com/Lw6ajsw75x
— Accept Crypto Token (@AcceptCryptos) March 31, 2022
Roningate
On Tuesday, blockchain gaming company Sky Mavis announced that a someone had used hacked private keys to drain the $622 million treasury of its popular metaverse gaming project Axie Infinity. The stolen funds were stored in Ethereum and USD Coin on the Ronin bridge, a sidechain of the Ethereum network.
One Twitter user reacted to the news by calling Axie’s team “genius” for storing its entire treasury in Ronin.
That same day, Axie co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin had to appear onstage at the NFTLA conference and talk about Axie’s optimistic vision for the future. Twitch gamer Brycent (@Brycent_) commented on Jiho’s admirable stoicism despite having fallen prey to one of crypto’s biggest-ever hacks just hours earlier.
Feel really bad for Jiho, takes a strong individual to go on stage and talk about a hack at an NFT conference right when It happens with no pre-processing.
— brycent 🚀 (@brycent_) March 29, 2022
Jiho’s teammate at Axie and Ronin, Kathleen Osgood, also defended her boss.
he’s an incredible leader than can handle anything with grace. honored to be working with him.
— Kathleen Osgood 🧝🏻♀️ (@kosgoood) March 29, 2022
But the Ronin bridge exploit could have a silver lining: The attacker(s) may have been clumsier than first assumed, according to Igor Igamberdiev, a blockchain researcher.
All told, the Axie show goes on. The bank-breaking theft did little to scuttle the release of Axie Infinity: Origin, a significant update to the game. Originally due out last week, Origin will now launch this week.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/96758/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-axie-infinity-hacked-for-622m-dogecoin-influencer-matt-wallaces-accept-crypto-coin-tanks
