The price of Ethereum was reeling this week after predictions that the merge would be a “buy the rumor, sell the news” scenario largely played out.
Over on Crypto Twitter, people continued to discuss the network this week after U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chief Gary Gensler redoubled his offensive against crypto, also aimed at Ethereum.
It’s becoming increasingly evident that Gensler views Ethereum as a security. And on Monday, when the agency filed a federal lawsuit against crypto influencer Ian Balina, it put out an even more extreme view: that the U.S. government has jurisdiction over all Ethereum transactions, according to the SEC’s logic, because most of the network’s validator nodes are clustered in the U.S.
There it is
The supermassive black hole sized bad take at the heart of the Balina filing
It wasn’t all Gensler, prices and merge hangover. The Ethereum community also inaugurated the first ever International NFT Day on Tuesday. The day was marked by various organizations in the space, including NFT art market OpenSea and blockchain games developer/NFT company Dapper Labs.
Over on the hashtag #NFTDay, people and bots alike commemorated by flaunting their NFT pics and advertising scams.
1/ GM! We’re stoked to join @dapperlabs and many others in celebration of the first ever International NFT Day, on the 5th anniversary of the ERC-721 proposal!
As the first NFT marketplace, #NFTDay means a lot to us, and we’re humbled to be a part of this history.
Through the ERC-721 token standard, Ethereum played a pivotal role in the development and spread of NFTs, an invention which brought the concept of fungibility into the digital world, enabling multimillion dollar sales of digital art for the first time in history. Each NFT represents the sale and the scarcity of the artwork on an immutable blockchain ledger, so even if people right-click and save your unique million-dollar image, they won’t have ownership of it.
On Tuesday, the top NFT collection by sales over a 24-hour period was Gods Unchained, a new crypto-based collectible card game (CCG) developed by Immutable. Think of it as blockchain’s answer to "Magic: The Gathering." Immutable co-founder Robbie Ferguson could barely conceal his glee.
Crypto market intelligence company Messari shared a quote from former Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson, who now heads competitor Cardano. Pretty cringe if true.
“There wasn’t a lot of ponzinomics to offer,” said @IOHK_Charles when asked by @twobitidiot why VCs aren’t interested in Cardano.
Hoskinson is known for not holding back criticism of his former project. On merge day last week, he posted a meme likening the upgrade to a nightmare. When someone tweeted him asking where Cardano’s technology stands in relation to Ethereum, the CEO replied with: “About three years ahead on research, two on engineering. They will one day figure out that slashing is a really really bad idea.”
Finally, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, whose online video game store launched its first NFT game last week, was not happy about Apple’s new rules for app developers working with NFTs.
Blankos Block Party, an NFT-powered online creation game, launched today on the Epic Games Store, becoming the first Web3 title published on the popular PC gaming marketplace.
Mythical Games’ title was previously available from its own website after launching with an open beta in December 2020, and the company said in June this year that Blankos had amassed more than one million total users to date.
The studio announced plans in June to bring the free-to-play title to the Epic Games Store this y...
Daily Debrief Newsletter
Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.
This Week on Crypto Twitter
Decrypt's weekend roundup of tweets from the past week that led the crypto conversation.
In a year that has pushed crypto to unprecedented heights of cultural and political prominence, this week brought some of the cycle’s most uncanny moments yet—thanks to Donald Trump.
On Monday, just one day after the former president survived an apparent second assassination attempt, he hosted Rug Radio’s Farokh Sarmad, a prominent Crypto Twitter personality, to discuss digital assets policy at his Mar-a-Lago estate. (Disclaimer: Rug Radio is Decrypt’s sister company.)
Due to the wild timing,...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Degens had plenty to sink their teeth into last week on Crypto Twitter, with surprise developments emerging from numerous high-profile projects in the space.
At the top of the week, Friend.tech, the once-red-hot decentralized social network with financial incentives, announced that development of the project had effectively ceased after months of flagging momentum.
Admin and ownership parameters have been set to 0x000...000 to prevent any changes to...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
While Crypto Twitter can often be brutally black-and-white when it comes to narrativizing major events, this week saw the industry splinter into shades of gray after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov broke a days-long silence following his release from police custody in France.
In a lengthy letter to the public on this week—posted first to Telegram and then to Twitter—Durov weighed in for the first time on his arrest and indictment last week by French authori...
