Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Despite a drop in crypto prices set off by discouraging inflation figures, Crypto Twitter managed to have quite a lot of fun this week, inspired by reasons ranging from genuine technological progress to good old-fashioned schadenfreude.
On Wednesday, Ethereum’s much-anticipated Dencun upgrade went live, substantially lowering transaction costs across Ethereum layer-2 networks via a novel data storage method called blobs, which developers say could soon make gas fees a thing of the past.
Dencun went live, we’ve had blobs land in blocks on mainnet .oO 🎉
— timbeiko.eth ☀️ (@TimBeiko) March 13, 2024
In the hours and days following the software update’s successful adoption, multiple Ethereum layer 2 networks began showing radical drops in transaction costs.
By dramatically reducing transaction costs, developers hope Dencun will usher in a new age for Ethereum—one in which all manner of data can be stored on-chain without concern for cost or limited storage space. Already this week, crypto users began experimenting with that premise.
The same day Dencun successfully finalized, members of the ever-lucrative Dogwifhat (WIF) meme coin community rejoiced upon reaching their own milestone: raising nearly $700,000 to plaster the face of its cuddly, beanie-sporting namesake on the face of Sphere, the massive LED-screen covered arena in Las Vegas.
WIF continued its phenomenal, unceasing bull run on the news, pumping to—by Friday afternoon—a whopping $3 billion market capitalization. Although that’s fallen to $2.2 billion at time of writing, it is solidly the fourth largest meme coin in the world by such metrics, behind only Pepecoin, Shiba Inu, and the original meme token, Dogecoin.
The sheer absurdity of the fact that WIF community members easily raised enough funds—in mere days—to put their favorite meme on the largest screen in the world, signaled to some that the top may be in.
As if the good vibes weren’t already flowing, the week ended on a note that got everyone in crypto cheering together: the conclusive ruling by a UK judge that Craig Wright is definitely not pseudonymous Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakomoto.
Craig Wright is not Satoshi.
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) March 14, 2024
For years, Wright, an Australian computer scientist, claimed to have invented Bitcoin despite never being able to produce the private keys to Satoshi’s Bitcoin address.
Yesterday, high courts ruled that Craig Wright is NOT Satoshi Nakamoto, NOT the creator of #Bitcoin and NOT the author of the white paper.
Today, I bring you this unforgettable clip of CSW:
“Sorry, I’m going to court on this, that simple. I don’t need to face trolls in rooms.… pic.twitter.com/w5sV0XG0dZ
— ZacG (@zacguignard) March 15, 2024
In 2022, a British court ruled that Wright had submitted “deliberately false evidence” in a defamation case he filed against Peter McCormack, a podcaster who repeatedly called Wright a fraud for claiming to be Satoshi. After Wright was decidedly deemed a Satoshi imitator in court on Thursday, McCormack was there to celebrate.
Fun fact: Craig Wright offered me a settlement whereby he would end the lawsuit and pay off all my legal fees if I wrote a public apology and said I believe he is Satoshi.
Hard pass!
— Peter McCraigWrightIsNotSatoshi 🏴☠️ (@PeterMcCormack) March 15, 2024
Any historic moment needs a fitting anthem—and a 2023 tune from musician Jonathan Mann, bluntly titled “Craig Wright Is Not Satoshi,” quickly began making the rounds again on Crypto Twitter.
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/221988/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-dencun-dogwifhat-craig-wright-not-satoshi
