This Week on Crypto Twitter: Bitcoin Whales Buy the Dip, Nic Carter Defends an Investment, SBF Memed as Atlas

Bitcoin has been struggling for three weeks to stay above $20,000, and this week was no exception—the world’s favorite cryptocurrency, as of this writing, was hovering just above $19,000. Many Bitcoin maximalists didn’t appear too concerned. And others have been buying the dip.

Microstrategy CEO and whale-sized Bitcoin HODLer Michael Saylor announced another large BTC purchase, although that didn’t seem to impress pro-gold economist Peter Schiff.

El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, also bought more BTC, which should be no surprise to regular column readers.

But Saylor and Bukele, in a bit of a twist, weren’t the center of attention during the week. Venture capitalist Nic Carter, himself a Bitcoin fan, stoked the wrath of the laser-eyed masses with one simple tweet on Tuesday, announcing his decision to invest in an Ethereum- and Solana-friendly wallet-based authentication tool called Dynamic.

The pain suffered by puritanical Bitcoiners when they learned that Carter also invests in other things perhaps was best exemplified by a tweet from Mission Bitcoin.

Carter responded by roasting the roasters.

He added: “I couldn’t care less about the laser eye crew.”

Dan Held, director of growth marketing at Kraken, was among Carter’s defenders.

$47 million

Crypto exchange CoinFLEX last month announced it had frozen withdrawals because of “continued uncertainty involving a counterparty.” This week, CEO Mark Lamb outed said counterparty as one Roger Ver, aka “Bitcoin Jesus,” a former Bitcoin evangelist who now shills Bitcoin Cash.

Shortly before Lamb’s tweet, Ver dismissed the idea as “some rumors” while also alleging CoinFLEX was actually in debt ... to him!

Lamb called Ver’s denial “tactics” and reconfirmed that, yes, Ver definitely owes CoinFLEX, not the other way around.

BlockFinalized

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried announced in June he was providing a $250 million credit injection to crypto lender BlockFi after the company announced it was slashing its workforce by “roughly 20%,” citing a “dramatic shift in macroeconomic conditions.”

In an interview with NPR last month, Bankman-Fried said his exchange has a responsibility to bail out ailing crypto companies in times of crisis. True to his word, the BlockFi deal was just finalized.

Finance and investing news account @Stocktwits memed SBF as Atlas.

Axios business editor Dan Primack did not love the deal.

Elsewhere

Newly surfaced reports revealed that some hedge funds allegedly borrowed “hundreds of millions” to short Tether after the collapse of Terra. Leon Marshall, head of institutional sales at Genesis Global Trading, confirmed to a British financial news outlet that his hedge fund had executed short sales worth “hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Tether CEO Paulo Ardoino responded to the reports in a lengthy thread, writing that that short-selling was just one dimension in a multi-pronged attack on Tether’s credibility that also relies on “FUD” and “troll armies.”

Ardoino also said Tether has endured many accusations that its USDT stablecoin is not backed 1:1 by cash reserves. He stressed that Tether is fully backed by attested reserves and plays ball with regulators, sharing some impressive stats on the number of redemptions Tether has handled.

On Wednesday, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission rejected digital asset manager Grayscale’s application for a Bitcoin spot ETF, saying the firm had not done enough to protect investors from “fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices.” The next day, Grayscale CEO Michael Sonnenshein tweeted that his company is suing the agency.

Finally, blockchain game Axie Infinity is no longer a profitable enterprise, according to a chart shared by Ryan Selkis, who founded crypto market intelligence provider Messari.

Gamers have been abandoning the play-to-earn title en masse.