Crypto Twitter scrambled at the start of the week as dire global economic numbers flooded the crypto market with a sea of red. Coming out of the weekend, renowned Bitcoin hater Peter Schiff said to brace for a “Crypto black Monday.”
#Bitcoin just sank below $58K. If it takes out it's July low by tomorrow's U.S. #StockMarket open, #BitcoinETFs will gap down by more than 15%, 30% below their Jan. highs. A loss of that magnitude may finally trigger mass ETF liquidations. If so, brace for a #Crypto black Monday.
“Bitcoin HODlers are in denial,” he noted later. “You guys are whistling past a crypto graveyard—don't say I didn't warn you.”
Given the steep fall-off for traditional financial markets around the world, the price of BTC indeed plunged below $50,000 on Monday, falling 12% in 24 hours. While there was a lot of gnashing of teeth and despair to spare, plenty of Bitcoin faithful held firm, including MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor.
The worldwide financial turmoil brought many a rapid education in international finance and the Japanese yen, a subject in which crypto fanatics seemed to suddenly become experts.
[guy who’s just learned about the Yen carry trade] ah you see it’s all about the Yen carry trade
A brief distraction from the calamity? The long-awaited announcement of the winner of the “veepstakes,” when U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate. For crypto bettors on the prediction market Polymarket, it was an upset pick, with the strongest odds favoring Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro.
Users of crypto-backed prediction market Polymarket were overwhelmingly taken off guard this morning by Kamala Harris’ choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz—a dark horse contender—as her running mate, upending millions of dollars worth of bets.
For the last week, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro was the market’s runaway favorite, commanding odds above 60% until just minutes before Harris instead chose Walz to be her choice for vice president.
Just four days ago, Walz, an outspoken Midwestern p...
The outcome sparked conversation about how accurate Polymarket—or prediction markets in general—might actually be.
polymarket had walz at 3% on friday; can we acknowledge that degenerate gamblers are maybe not always great predictors of the future?
By the middle of the week, crypto markets started to stabilize, with Solana seeing surprising strength. Missing from the recovery, however, was second-largest cryptocurrency Ethereum, which continued to struggle even with new spot Ethereum ETFs on the market. Market watchers joked that Solana and Ethereum were both going to hit the same big, round number—just headed in opposite directions.
Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the biggest crypto buzz this week surrounded Donald Trump—or at least his family. Trump's sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., teased that “a big announcement” was coming for the crypto and decentralized finance (DeFi) space.
Given the messy controversies surrounding Donald Trump and his newfound affection for Bitcoin and crypto—on top of an endless series of Trump-themed meme coins—more than a few people were skeptical. YouTube investigator Coffeezilla said it would just be a “new crypto grift.”
The announcement also sparked buzz about what it might be, and a significant segment of Crypto Twitter was ready to believe it would be an official token—unlike DJT, the last rumored token that turned out to have no proven connection to Trump. Very quickly, attention converged on a “Restore the Republic” (RTR) coin on Solana, and its market cap rocketed past $100 million.
Then Eric Trump popped the bubble with a warning about “fake tokens,” prompting RTR to collapse almost entirely.
Friends: Beware of fake tokens! The only official Trump project has NOT been announced! You will hear it here first. https://t.co/33wfKyaMVB
In fact, it wasn't the only Trump-themed meme coin to plunge last week. DJT, the other token briefly believed to be tied to the former U.S. President, also collapsed in price after a developer-linked wallet sold billions of tokens in what some traders categorized as a "rug pull."
As the week ended, crypto investors looked back at the wild week and were relieved to see it wasn't the end of the world. Prices rebounded, with Bitcoin popping above the $62,000 mark on Friday and other cryptocurrencies similarly clawing back their respective lost gains.
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...
