Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Even though it was the first two consecutive weeks of losses this year, Crypto Twitter was largely unfazed. Instead, a host of other topics took center stage this week.
On Monday, a crypto-savvy lawyer who tweets under the handle @MetaLawMan took aim at Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler for his agency’s opaque approach to crypto and for the SEC’s belligerent regulation-by-enforcement strategy. Three tweets into his thread he summarized the salient points of his criticism of Gensler.
4/ Given the pattern we have seen under the Gensler administration,
Gary will let all of us know when the SEC has made up its mind about Ether–by suing somebody for issuing or trading Ether.
— MetaLawMan (@MetaLawMan) February 27, 2023
The SEC made the rounds again later that day on Legal Twitter when lawyer Lisa Rubin commented on the agency’s lawsuit against Terraform Labs, the company that created the collapsed algorithmic stablecoin UST. Later in the thread, Rubin tweeted: “The strangest argument is that UST is a security because it can be traded for other securities. Remember, these are just allegations, a court has not ruled on these claims.”
Here’s why the SEC claims that the UST stablecoin is a security. This month the SEC charged Terraform and Do Kwon for defrauding investors in connection with Terra’s algorithmic stablecoin. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/tS0VmYlCjs
— Lisa Rubin (@lisaerubin) February 27, 2023
The following day, crypto sleuth @ZachXBT tweeted news of a multimillion-dollar heist on Algorand.
That same day, @ZachXBT replied to a multi-tweet thread by blockchain researcher Ivor Igamberdiev that accused trading firm Jane Street Group of having a massive hand in the collapse of UST. The blockchain detective concurred and shared a screengrab in which he appears to have messaged Terra CEO Do Kwon around the time of UST’s collapse arguing that Jane Street Group’s trading contributed to the spectacular depeg.
Popular crypto exchange Coinbase that day announced a new political crypto lobbying initiative called “Crypto 453” which aims to guide policymakers toward drafting pro-crypto policies if and when they do start formulating comprehensive crypto legislation.
1/ It’s time to advance pro-crypto policy in all 435 Congressional Districts across the U.S.
Introducing #Crypto435, our campaign to grow the crypto advocacy community and share tools and resources to make your voice heard.
Become an advocate today 👇 https://t.co/TPJhtoP9eC
— Coinbase (@coinbase) February 28, 2023
NFT collection Bitcoin Punks posted mammoth volumes on Tuesday, according to NFTstatistics.eth.
Dogecoin creator Billy Markson—who is a fervent no-coiner—jumped on a thread started by MicroStrategy chairman/Bitcoin bull Michael Saylor to argue that if Bitcoin isn’t a security, then Dogecoin isn’t either.
the amusing thing about this based cal statement is dogecoin (the OG shitcoin) was made for lulz with no premine, no sales, and no one controlling it
so if bitcoin isn’t a security than dogecoin shouldn’t be either
— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) February 27, 2023
Also that day, Visa’s head of crypto Cuy Sheffield took umbrage with a Reuters article saying that the payments giant was halting its crypto drive. Sheffield argued that however the industry evolves, blockchain will certainly have a space in the next generation of commercial fintech.
3/ Despite the challenges and uncertainty in the crypto ecosystem, our view has not changed that fiat backed digital currencies running on public blockchains have the potential to play an important role in the payments ecosystem
— Cuy Sheffield (@cuysheffield) February 28, 2023
On Thursday, John Rising, co-founder of the open-source user-friendly blockchain developer toolkit Stackup enthused about the user-friendliness of the latest Ethereum Improvement Proposal.
Part of its genius is that it doesn’t require the blockchain itself to do anything.
Instead it uses higher level infrastructure, so it works on any EVM chain TODAY.
— John Rising (@johnrising_) March 2, 2023
Finally, Tesla/SpaceX/Twitter CEO and Bitcoin/Dogecoin investor Elon Musk appeared to have grown cold towards crypto.
“I used to be in crypto, but now I got interested in AI”
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 3, 2023
Pssh! Musk was into AI long before he was into crypto.
Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.
Source: https://decrypt.co/122740/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-sec-legal-twitter-elon-musk-ai-crypto
