After a string of successive high octane weeks for the crypto industry, this week brought a much-needed dose of surreal absurdity and bullish optimism—namely, in the form of multiple high-flying memecoins.
First, in the immediate (we’re talking 15 minutes cold) wake of the death of famed Bitcoin hater and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger on Tuesday, a memecoin named after him spiked an astonishing 31,000%—before, of course, crashing to zero. Before the fall, degens pumped north of $4 million into the token.
Charlie Munger meme coin up 31,500% in the last hour
Just a day later, controversial American diplomat Henry Kissinger passed away at 100—triggering, you guessed it, a selection of eight Kissinger-themed coins across three blockchains (Choicest of them all? No doubt, Kissinger69ObamaBidenInu420). Collectively, the Kissinger coins saw over $250,000 worth of trading volume.
I just found out Henry Kissinger died, through the fact an alt coin appeared on my feed called "KISSINGER".
Not to be outdone, Elon Musk delivered a distinctively off-the-wall (even for him) public appearance at a New York Times event on Thursday, which crescendoed with the world’s richest man repeatedly and expliciting telling Twitter advertisers—who recently abandoned the platform after Musk made an antisemitic post—to “go fuck yourself.”
Within hours, the outburst generated a slew of “Go Fuck Yourself” memecoins, including one with a $7.28 million market capitalization—no laughing matter.
Could the influx of such highly capitalized ridiculousness this week bode well for hopes of an imminent crypto bull market?
Well, in adult news, signs increasingly point to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) coming, finally, to a decision on an intensely hyped spot Bitcoin ETF in early January.
Window is officially Jan 5th to Jan 10th. Really this means that any potential approval orders are going to come on either Monday Jan 8, Tuesday Jan 9, or Wednesday Jan 10. Mark your calendars people. https://t.co/8ob8Y6pgU5
With optimism about the financial product—which analysts estimate could infuse the crypto market with over $1 trillion from traditional financial institutions and investors—at an all-time high, dreams of a bullish future on the horizon have overtaken the prevailing mood on Crypto Twitter.
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...