Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
The two most striking conversations this week on the world’s largest microblogging platform were Elon Musk’s beef with Dogecoin co-creator Jackson Palmer, and Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin’s musings on a letter sent to Washington by crypto skeptics.
On Monday, Australian news outlet Crikey published an interview with Palmer, who was promoting his new podcast, Griftonomics, when he laid into the crypto industry.
“I wish it was the end of crypto, but it’s not,” Palmer said, before turning his thoughts to Musk: “He’s a grifter. He sells a vision in hopes that he can one day deliver what he’s promising, but he doesn’t know that. He’s just really good at pretending he knows.”
Palmer also said that he wrote a Python script that would automatically detect and report spam bots in a Twitter user’s mentions. The Dogecoin-loving Musk allegedly reached out to Palmer and asked for the script, but, according to Palmer: “It became apparent very quickly that he didn’t understand coding as well as he made out. He asked, ‘How do I run this Python script?'”
You falsely claimed ur lame snippet of Python gets rid of bots. Ok buddy, then share it with the world …
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022
The Tesla CEO responded by saying his children wrote better code than Palmer. Musk also called Palmer “a tool.”
My kids wrote better code when they were 12 than the nonsense script Jackson sent me.
Like I said, if it’s so great, he should share it with the world and make everyone’s experience with Twitter better. If he does, you will see what I mean.
Jackson Palmer is a tool.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 31, 2022
Palmer didn’t reply directly to Musk’s provocations, but he defended his spambot catcher in a subsequent mini-thread.
I never said it was super complex, but this simple script definitely worked in catching and reporting the less sophisticated phishing accounts circa 2018… They’ve since evolved their tactics.
I shared it with a lot of people, and it worked for them. https://t.co/iKPFsYHXEG
— Jackson Palmer (@ummjackson) May 31, 2022
On Wednesday, the Financial Times reported that a letter signed by 26 anti-crypto computer scientists, tech bloggers, and academics, including many former FAANG employees, had been presented to U.S. lawmakers.
The letter urges regulators to “take a critical, skeptical approach toward industry claims that crypto-assets are an innovative technology that is unreservedly good,” and it asked them to “resist pressure from digital asset industry financiers, lobbyists, and boosters.”
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin appeared to respond to the letter in a tweet thread on Friday.
A big difference between the “new idealistic movement” scene 10-15 years ago vs today is that back then it felt possible to be on all the good-guy teams at the same time. Today, much more adversarial thinking and conflict.
I’ve been trying to understand.. where to from here?
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2022
Buterin also stated that crypto fans were upset and confused that British-Canadian tech blogger Cory Doctorow was a signatory to the letter, because they’d considered him an ally. In 2018, Doctorow delivered a keynote speech called “Decentralize, Democratize, or Die” at DevCon, the annual Ethereum developer conference.
As Cory mentioned, crypto was at first just decentralization enthusiasts, but now there’s also various types of “money people”.
This is an inevitable part of becoming bigger. In non-financial movements too, various classes of normies and often soon grifters move in over time.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2022
Buterin also mentioned that he’s unhappy with the amount of infighting in the crypto community. He suggested it was a byproduct of success, because as businesses scale up they find themselves in more direct competition with each other.
One important factor is that all of those movements *got much bigger* in the last decade. When something is small, even if you don’t like it, it’s not a threat, so it’s easy to live-and-let-live. When everything is big, more competition, so more incentive to point out problems.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2022
I guess the conclusion is, peacekeeping and cooperation-seeking needs to be an explicit effort rather than peace being an assumed default.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 2, 2022
Elsewhere
Lachlan Markay of Axios provided a pithy account of how Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-SC), who’s being investigated by the House Committee on Ethics for an alleged pump-and-dump scheme involving the “Let’s Go Brandon” coin, spent the last 10 days of 2021.
Wild chain of events:
Dec 21: Madison Cawthorn buys up to $250k in Let’s Go Brandon Coin
Dec 29: His IG post predicts LGB is going “to the moon”
Dec 30: Previously undisclosed endorsement deal sends LGB skyrocketing
Dec 31: Cawthorn sells off LGB holdingshttps://t.co/yioN3uPJly
— Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) June 1, 2022
On Thursday, branded NFT creator Nifty’s announced a major partnership with Warner Bros.
Tweety’s coming to Nifty’s! And that’s not all folks. 😉
We’re partnering with @WarnerBros to bring you Looney Tunes: What’s Up Block?, a story-driven @LooneyTunesNFT program for the ultimate fan. There will be 10,000 Tweety Avatars at $80 each and more characters coming soon! pic.twitter.com/a7pqsXf0NM
— Nifty’s (@Niftys) June 2, 2022
Also that day, blockchain sleuth ZachXBT wrote a lengthy thread about Animoon, an NFT scam that couldn’t be more blatant to anyone even dimly aware of recent pop culture.
Barry Silbert, founder of the Digital Currency Group (which includes crypto asset management giant Grayscale), took issue with a proposal by the New York State Senate to impose a two-year moratorium on all fossil fuel-powered proof-of-work crypto mining, calling it a “job killer.”
.@SenKennedy — we’re one of the biggest employers in western NY with 150 employees in Rochester and we’re building a second massive office in Buffalo. This moratorium bill is a job killer and sends a terrible message to crypto entrepreneurs. Please support innovation and vote no https://t.co/ON90oeYRbc
— Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) June 3, 2022
But State Senate Bill S6486D passed 36-27 on Friday morning. It’s now headed to the desk of Gov. Kathy Hochul, who gets 10 days to sign it into law or veto it.
Coinbase, in the wake of a Q1 loss of $430 million, announced on Thursday it would not only be freezing hiring, it also would be rescinding offers recently accepted by candidates. Recruitment company Blind tweeted a job offer letter, which promised recipients the company wouldn’t be rescinding offers, alongside an email doing exactly the opposite.
Coinbase sent a welcome email to new hires 2 weeks ago promising that they won’t rescind offers (1st image).
Yesterday, they sent the rescind emails (2nd image) leaving candidates in frustration.
We have a referral thread going on to help those who were impacted 👇 pic.twitter.com/lIQe0ph4rk
— Blind (@TeamBlind) June 3, 2022
And finally, Kanye West has decided that it is indeed time to ask him about NFTs.
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Source: https://decrypt.co/102060/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-elon-musk-and-dogecoin-co-creator-jackson-palmer-exchange-words
