this week on crypto twitter
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

After two consecutive weeks of growth, crypto markets cramped up a bit. Even as reports of liquidity troubles appear to have slowed, investors were cautious.

This week, Bitcoin-HODLing corporations Block Inc. and MicroStrategy both reported significant impairment charges on their holdings. Block is down $36 million, while MicroStrategy is down a staggering $917 million. There also were massive attacks on Solana and the token bridge project Nomad. 

Reports of the Nomad exploit first appeared early Tuesday. A researcher at crypto/Web3 investment firm Paradigm called Sam Sun (Twitter handle @samczsun) inspected the situation and tweeted a lengthy play-by-play analysis of the smart contract configuration error that cost users $190 million.

The exploit ostensibly was easy to pull off for anyone with the know-how, resulting in a bit of a free-for-all as attackers piled in to loot the protocol. Nomad promptly offered a reward for anyone who returned the funds, and, as of Friday, had recovered $22 million.

‘Widespread’

Barely 24 hours after the Nomad exploit, reports started flooding in of a major Solana hack that may have drained up to $8 million.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao offered a solution: Send your funds to his company.

Justin Barlow, an investor at Solana VC firm Solana Ventures, was one of the casualties.

A few hours into the hack, Solana reported that almost 7,800 wallets had been victimized.

The team then posted a partial explanation, alleging that the exploit likely was due to stolen private key information. Solana also said affected users appeared to have been compromised through their Slope wallets.

Ava Labs CEO and Founder Emin Gün Sirer shared his thoughts, including some highly technical explanations about how the private keys were accessed.

Slope eventually responded.

Twitter user and blockchain developer @fubuloubu pointed out one of the downsides of IP.

Elsewhere

On Monday, the U.K. High Court ruled that Dr. Craig Wright, a man who claims to have invented Bitcoin, put forward false evidence as part of his latest defamation court battle against crypto podcaster Peter McCormack, who has repeatedly called Wright a liar. So McCormack was asked to pay him 1 pound ($1.21) in damages. Who says you can’t see a person grinning behind their tweet?

In other news, eagle-eyed crypto reporter Jacqueline Melinek wants to know why Gucci will be accepting APE.

Crypto fan Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) on Thursday pointed out how even extremely successful investors like Cathie Wood make mistakes. Pretty big ones, too: Looks like she sold the dip on Coinbase shares. Big time.

And no matter how you feel about crypto, there’s something odd about a Virginia pension fund investing in “yield farming” ... now. Is it not a little too soon after Terra and Celsius collapsed? Twitter finance analyst Sean Tuffy smells something fishy.

Arguably the week’s biggest story, MicroStrategy announced that Bitcoin-loving CEO Michael Saylor would be stepping down after 33 years on the job, moving into a new role as executive chairman. Phong Le, the company’s president, is set to fill Saylor’s shoes on Monday. Saylor is set to focus even more on Bitcoin. 

A popular blockchain sleuth believes that powerful forces are plotting to FUD Binance.

And finally, entrepreneur Liron Shapira tweeted a fascinating thread accusing blockchain game Axie Infinity of being “a blatant ponzi.”

The CEO of the studio behind Axie moving millions of dollars in tokens before disclosing a massive hack probably didn’t help matters.

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