Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Crypto prices remained pretty frozen over the last seven days, except for Dogecoin. DOGE was undoubtedly the star of both Crypto and Twitter (and by extension, Crypto Twitter) this week, after the microblogging platform’s illustrious CEO, Elon Musk, changed the iconic blue bird logo to a picture of Doge, the Shiba Inu behind the iconic meme that inspired the coin.
Musk memed the makeover on Monday. He also reminded everyone that he first warmed to the idea last month.
In response to logo change, DOGE ballooned 20% in less than an hour, although the rally ran out of steam by Thursday, when the coin posted an intraday loss of over 8%. Twitter has since reverted to the old logo.
Also on Monday, Will Clemente, who co-founded digital asset research firm Reflexivity Research, shared some stats from blockchain analytics firm Kaiko highlighting the fact that throughout March, Bitcoin had reached its strongest correlation with gold in more than a year.
This was largely down to a lack of confidence in TradFi institutions after serious liquidity crises swept through banks on both sides of the Atlantic, affecting Credit Suisse, and crypto/tech-friendly banks like Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature. In most cases, governments intervened.
On Tuesday, Uniswap’s inventor Hayden Adams shared some stats that showed his exchange outpacing Coinbase throughout most of 2023 so far. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong jumped on the tweet to inform readers that his exchange had a lot to do with Uniswap’s hefty numbers.
Congrats and well deserved!
We should clarify this refers to Coinbase’s centralized exchange tho. Coinbase also uses Uniswap in our DEX trading products, so we are in fact the front end for some of that volume labeled Uniswap.
It’s all collaborative 🤝 Uniswap is awesome!
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) April 4, 2023
That day, Mark Lamb, the co-founder of crypto exchange CoinFLEX issued an open letter to Bitcoin evangelist and Bitcoin Cash promoter Roger Ver offering him an “olive branch” of “two years of free trading on OPNX,” a newly-launched claims exchange co-founded by Lamb. Alongside Ver, he included in his tweet Peter Smith, CEO and founder of crypto exchange Blockchain.com, which allegedly also owes CoinFLEX millions.
The “olive branch” refers to ending a longstanding feud between the two. Lamb alleges that Ver owes CoinFLEX for an outstanding loan, the debt for which Lamb currently claims is $84 million. In June last year, Lamb previously claimed the debt was $47 million.
On Wednesday, MicroStrategy chairman Michael Saylor went and—yep, you guessed it—bought more Bitcoin.
MicroStrategy has acquired an additional 1,045 #bitcoin for ~ $29.3M at an average price of $28,016 per bitcoin. As of 4/4/2023 @MicroStrategy holds 140,000 bitcoin acquired for ~$4.17 billion at an average price of $29,803 per bitcoin. $MSTR https://t.co/IBufTxalnv
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) April 5, 2023
That day, Coinbase’s Chief Legal Officer Paul Grewal wrote a multi-tweet thread summarizing the arguments of a prominent legal challenge to the sanctions imposed on crypto transaction privacy mixer Tornado Cash back in August last year.
Argument #2: the law only permits the govt to sanction a person’s property. Property is something capable of being owned or controlled. But no one can alter, delete or otherwise control the 20 smart contracts at the core of the TC software. They function w/o human control. 5/10
— paulgrewal.eth (@iampaulgrewal) April 5, 2023
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, who will be challenging Biden for the presidency in 2024, posted a long rant against the idea of a dollar-pegged cryptocurrency being released by the Federal Reserve. The problem is, Kennedy either accidentally or purposefully misread the very news article he linked. The Fed’s new digital payments system “FedNow” is not a CBDC! “Fake news!” as 45 would say.
The Fed just announced it will introduce its “FedNow” Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) in July. CBDCs grease the slippery slope to financial slavery and political tyranny.
While cash transactions are anonymous, a #CBDC will allow the government to surveil all our private…
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) April 5, 2023
In real CBDC news, the European Central Bank appeared to be getting closer to releasing a digital euro this week.
JUST IN: 🇪🇺 European Central Bank President reveals plans to launch a digital euro (CBDC), says there will be control over payments. pic.twitter.com/szCFxBkZDR
— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) April 6, 2023
On Thursday, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao made his views on the AI arms race known.
Blockchain/crypto is a neutral technology to improve efficiency and reduce costs of transactions. And people worry about (regulating) that.
AI is a technology that may take over our world and make us irrelevant. And no one is worried. 🤷♂️
I am pro AI, as I am pro innovation. But… https://t.co/ANuvtdvYzZ
— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) April 6, 2023
Finally, on Saturday, Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu tweeted a reminder that Meta’s experiment with NFTs is about to come to an end.
Facebook and Instagram will stop supporting NFT on April 11; Instagram stated that it will no longer be connected or associated with third-party digital wallets; it will begin to delete digital collection data in system, including wallet addresses. https://t.co/jP1uhwPXVh
— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) April 8, 2023
Stay on top of crypto news, get daily updates in your inbox.
Source: https://decrypt.co/125783/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-elon-musk-logo-change-doge-dogecoin
