This Week on Crypto Twitter: Sam Bankman-Fried Emailed Witnesses and Bought “Cumrocket” Tokens - Decrypt
TL;DR The fifth week of the year was the fourth week of 2023 growth for crypto markets, with several altcoins surging in value. Disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried tried to link up with the new CEO and blockchain attorney Lisa Rubin shared news about the many bills relating to crypto that were considered in last year’s Congress.
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
The steady recovery of market leaders Bitcoin and Ethereum was outdone by several surging altcoins this week, including Polygon, Render and Shiba Inu. The fifth week of the year was the fourth week of 2023 growth for crypto markets.
Public interest in the cataclysmic unraveling of FTX continued unabated this week. On Monday, crypto news account @tier10k shared an email sent by disgraced former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried to a witness in the ongoing case against him for several financial crimes. An email in which he suggested to 'Witness 1' that they "use each other."
In a similarly obsequious tone, SBF also tried to link up with the new FTX CEO, bankruptcy lawyer John Jay Ray III.
Also on Monday, blockchain attorney Lisa Rubin tweeted some important but overlooked news about the many bills relating to crypto that were considered in last year’s Congress.
Any crypto bills introduced in 2022 are now wiped clean. The new Congress took office January 2023. This means for any crypto bills discussed last year to be considered, they will have to be re-introduced to the 118th Congress. #DC #Congress #cryptoregulation #cryptodaily — Lisa Rubin (@lisaerubin) January 30, 2023
On Tuesday, avid crypto fan Thomas Braziel shared a graph from the Examiner’s Report into bankrupt crypto lender Celsius. It’s more ammunition for crypto skeptics who say the space is covered in Ponzi schemes.
#Celsius - wow using the Examiner’s report and excluding CEL tokens, it seems Celsius was insolvent as far back as early 2021 pic.twitter.com/WCeC65Zp9t — Thomas Braziel (@ThomasBraziel) January 31, 2023
Twitter user @MyDogKopi, a declared fan of cryptocurrencies Avalanche and Fantom, on Tuesday announced an unfortunate rugpull from a so-called social token and NFT platform named Rally. The project’s website is down and the last activities from the official Twitter account were a like and a retweet back in September.
Hope y’all didn’t buy any NFT on @rally_io, cause they are about to be dust in the wind. They got your money, and you don’t have your NFT anymore. Might as well right-click it before the site is gone. pic.twitter.com/VzxyzYcsY1 — Kopitar.fire 👻🔺 (@MyDogKopi) January 31, 2023
That same day, Coinbase director Conor Grogan shared an incriminating list of purchases made by Sam Bankman-Fried and his former crypto hedge fund, Alameda Research. Last Sunday Grogan even accused the FTX clique of contributing to the bank run that collapsed Celsius by depegging Lido Staked Ethereum (stETH).
Some of the things that SBF/Alameda bought:
- 540 "Storyblocks" NFTs "AI generated short-stories for your Loot"
-$605 of CarolineDAO NFTs a "SimpDAO for Caroline Ellison"
-$135k of "CUMROCKET"
-~$20k of "TENDIES" pic.twitter.com/GKy9r3qYFT — Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 31, 2023
An account dedicated to Polygon news called @NarbTrading tweeted some bullish stats. More individual NFTs were sold on Polygon than Ethereum via leading marketplace OpenSea for the second consecutive month in January, according to analytics by Dune.
In January, OpenSea @0xPolygon had the highest amount of monthly active users since September 2021🤯 This is the second highest amount of monthly users ever. pic.twitter.com/pM0bZHjN7j — Narb (@NarbTrading) January 31, 2023
On Wednesday a Twitter account devoted to “making sense of DAOs,” which goes by the handle @DeepDAO.io, shared a table highlighting the pronounced growth in DAO treasury funds over January.
1/4 DAO treasuries jumped 38.5% in January, from $8.9B to $12.3B 👏 With their strong performance, the DAOs out performed both ETH (30.9%), and BTC (38.2%) In the top 20, the biggest gainers are @decentraland, @fraxfinance, @LidoFinance, and @CurveFinance Here are the top 20👇 pic.twitter.com/0rmhhEVyyv — DeepDAO.io (@DeepDAO_io) February 1, 2023
British thespian Anthony Hopkins continued his journey into the NFT space with a piano composition that has been in the works for a while.
Over the last few years, I’ve been composing this piano piece…
Your support and engagement continue to inspire me. Hope you enjoy it. @orangecometnft @opensea pic.twitter.com/QHtNUYo2Z4 — AHopkins.eth (@AnthonyHopkins) February 1, 2023
MasterCard’s former “NFT Product Lead” Satvik Sethi announced his resignation on Thursday in a multi-tweet thread. He also included harrowing allegations of workplace bullying and exploitation in the company.
I have resigned from @Mastercard. For the past year, I served as the ‘NFT Product Lead.’ I evangelized Web3 for Mastercard leadership & regional teams, as well as all our Fortune 500 clients & partners. This wasn’t easy but read on for why it was necessary, and what’s next 🧵: pic.twitter.com/kqiavsSIW7 — Satvik Sethi (@sxtvik) February 2, 2023