Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
The most important tweet on Crypto Twitter this week was an announcement on Friday by Twitter’s owner and CEO Elon Musk naming his replacement, Linda Yaccarino, as the platform’s new chief executive.
Musk will continue serving Twitter as CTO and executive chairman.
Yaccarino left her job as head of advertising at NBCUniversal on Friday morning to take on the job of helping Musk transition Twitter into X, his envisioned “everything app” that will incorporate social media and payments (possibly including crypto) along the lines of China’s WeChat.
Musk is also pro-crypto. His electric car company Tesla is currently one of the largest institutional HODLers of Bitcoin, even after it sold three quarters of its original holdings. He is a fan of Dogecoin, and his frequent tweets about it often pump the price. He even replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with the Doge meme for a few days, so a potential crypto integration is conceivable, especially as a payments option.
Elsewhere on Crypto Twitter this week, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong kicked things off by praising the UAE for its “clear rule book” when it comes to crypto regulations.
Coinbase is a publicly traded U.S. company, but the hostile domestic regulatory environment is driving it offshore. The company recently obtained a license to operate in Bermuda and used it to open an international exchange offering Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures. It is also currently talking with the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FRSA), a regulator of the Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM)—a crypto-friendly free economic zone in the UAE—about opening a regulated exchange there.
Circle’s EU strategy and policy director Patrick Hansen on Tuesday shared a chart showing just how MiCA is stealing the wind from U.S. sails. European Union lawmakers last month approved MiCA, or the Markets in Crypto Assets bill, which now means the bloc has a unified regulatory approach throughout its 27 member states and licenses granted to crypto companies in one country can be “passported” to another member state. The rules on stablecoins come into force in July 2024, while other requirements will not be enforced until January 2025.
On Tuesday, U.S. President Joe Biden positioned himself against the “MAGA House Republicans” aligned with “wealthy crypto investors” that look for loopholes to avoid paying tax. POTUS’s tweet was subsequently flagged by fact checkers who added the context that all crypto profits are subject to capital gains tax.
Also that day, a video shared by MicroStrategy chair and institutional Bitcoin whale Michael Sadler made the rounds. A keen and predictable Bitcoin acolyte, Saylor says that Bitcoin’s price “will chop its way up—with volatility—forever.”
Bitcoin mining revenue levels are now at the level they were at a year ago, according to a chart shared by Will Clemente, the co-founder of independent digital asset research firm Reflexivity Research.
Stablecoin issuer Tether’s revenue is well over a billion, according to its Q1 2023 attestation. This means it comfortably outpaces Blackrock, the largest asset manager in the world. At its peak, Blackrock became the first asset manager to steward $10 trillion in assets in Q4 2022, but this has fallen to $8.59 trillion as of Q4 2023.
Another day, another crypto scammer brought into the light by blockchain sleuth ZachXBT.
Independent Ethereum educator Anthony Sassano called Ethereum staking “up only” on Wednesday.
Retired ExxonMobil exec Tom Glass, who is currently seeking the Republican nomination for state House District 17, broke news that Texas lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of an update to the state’s Bill of Rights to include the right of the people to own, hold, and use digital currencies.
Finally on Thursday, Web3 law expert MetaLawMan wrote up a thread explaining just how important the news is that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief in support of Coinbase’s ongoing court petition to get the securities regulator to clarify its rules.
