Crypto markets tanked on Friday, but aside from the plethora of opinions, jokes, and venting about the damage, it was business as usual over on Crypto Twitter.
To start with, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey announced his resignation from the company on Monday—Elon Musk then trolled everyone later in the week about it. Also, former star of "The OC" Ben McKenzie has a new calling: crypto critic!
Read on to see our roundup of some of the most notable Twitter chatter this week.
Jack Dorsey kicked things off on Monday with the announcement that he's resigning from his position as CEO of Twitter. He tweeted his announcement with a letter, praising his former team and his successor, Twitter CTO Parag Agrawal. Many folks assumed Dorsey’s next career move would be crypto-related, due to his unabashed love of Bitcoin; and the indications are that they could be right.
Just one day later, Dorsey’s crypto-friendly payments company Square renamed itself to Block in an apparent nod to blockchain. The company also announced that Square Crypto—the arm of the company that supports Bitcoin developers—will now be called Spiral (Twitter handle: @spiralbtc).
Oh! Obviously Square Crypto no longer makes sense, so the team is changing its name to Spiral (@spiralbtc). This rebrand reflects their focus on #bitcoin as it continues to grow like a spiral from a single point, encompassing more and more space until it touches everything.
Following Dorsey’s resignation, Tesla CEO and Dogecoin-pumper Elon Musk trolled his followers and tweeted a meme in which Parag Agrawal’s face was superimposed on a picture of Stalin walking with his associates. In the meme, Dorsey replaces Nikolai Yezhov, a former Soviet spy who fell from Stalin’s favor, was executed, and was subsequently airbrushed out of the original picture.
Now, it looks like Dorsey left on good terms internally (though maybe not with Elliott Management, the activist hedge fund that reportedly wanted him out for years), so Musk is just raising a giggle. But as Dorsey leaves, it’s open speculation as to how far Twitter will continue to integrate crypto. The company made headway on this last month, when it announced it had founded a special blockchain team to “incorporate decentralized technologies into [their] products and infrastructure.”
Will Twitter now back away from Bitcoin, or go bigger on Ethereum with Bitcoin maxi Dorsey out of the way?
On Monday, hacker Jane Wong was able to reveal more about possible crypto features in Twitter’s pipeline. She managed to add her Ethereum wallet to Twitter’s ‘tips’ function. Wong says this feature has been buried there since September.
Next up, you may have missed this, but TV star Ben Mckenzie, who is perhaps best known for his roles as Ryan Atwood on "The OC" and young Jim Gordon on "Gotham," has become a fervent and vocal crypto critic. McKenzie’s made it a passionate hobby to call attention to the volatile and scammy underbelly of crypto trading, and criticize other celebrities who have promoted tokens.
Thank you @ben_mckenzie@SilvermanJacob for calling out the scam of cryptocurrency. I appreciate you calling out the other celebrities who either don't research what they agree to promote, or even worse, don't seem to care. https://t.co/bvY8IQUOkL
McKenzie has gotten so vocal about crypto recently that CNN did a profile of him in his new capacity as one of the sector's toughest critics. A cursory glance at McKenzie’s timeline shows that his crypto commentary is pretty wide-ranging, and very little escapes the glare of his headlamps as he scrutinizes the likes of Tether, DeFi, and various celebrity-backed projects.
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...
