This Week on Crypto Twitter: War, the FTX Trial, and a New Tether Chief

News of war and persistent inflation brought crypto prices down this week as some investors dumped their riskier assets to hedge themselves against political and economic uncertainty. 

Last Saturday, the Palestinian militant group Hamas—widely recognized as a terrorist organation—infiltrated the Israeli border and began taking hostages and attacking military and civilian targets. Israel responded with heavy air strikes across Gaza—the locus of Hamas’s control. The human cost already numbers in the thousands.

DeFi enthusiast Yogi warned Binance that Hamas was using its network to collect donations. 

Crypto newsletter writer @Cryptadamus also flagged the exchanges believed to host accounts linked to Hamas.

The co-founder of crypto alerts platform ChartAlerts, who tweets under the handle @devchart, spotted someone or a group trying to capitalize on the tragedy. 

In other news that day, analytics by Messari revealed a marked growth in transactions on Ethereum L2s.

Meanwhile, all price gains made by XRP following favorable court rulings in the SEC’s ongoing lawsuit against the coin’s progenitor Ripple have been wiped out, tweeted crypto enthusiast Bill Morgan. 

Coinbase’s director Conor Grogan pointed out that nearly half of all Tether (USDT) in circulation was minted by Alameda Research, the trading firm that was ostensibly a “sister company” to FTX but in reality was directly controlled by the bankrupt exchange’s disgraced former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. 

Bored Bitcoin analysts entertained themselves early in the week by attempting to peg the price of Bitcoin to hype over the comeback of the McRib—a much-loved limited-run pork burger that is periodically and temporarily reintroduced by McDonald’s every so often.

Spotted! A Dogecoin reference in a line of code on a Tesla webpage. No doubt CEO Elon Musk, a long-time DOGE supporter and HODLer, is behind it somehow. 

Ever wondered what people’s reasons are for getting into crypto? Economist John Paul Koning shared the results of a Fed survey asking people that same question. 

On Tuesday, a court cross-examined FTX co-founder Gary Wang in the trial against Sam Bankman-Fried for fraud and mishandling customer funds. Journalist Matthew Russell Lee shared some of the juicy soundbites from the New York Southern District court. 

Bitcoin researcher @Namcios spotted an activist using blockchain to protest the detention of whistleblower Julian Assange. 

Speaking of whistleblowers, one former Alameda Research employee flagged the shockingly lax security he observed during his time there. 

On Wednesday, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas pored over Ark Invest’s refiled application to the SEC for a Bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF). He posted his observations in a small thread. 

On Friday, Tether CTO Paolo Ardoino announced that he is taking over as the chief executive, effective this December. 

When crypto enthusiast Zack Voell words it like this, one begins to suspect that there’s a magic money tree powering crypto exchange Nexo.

Finally, reports surfaced on Thursday that collapsed crypto lender Genesis had again halted withdrawals. Genesis had begun to collapse around the same time last year due to its significant exposure to FTX. A few tweeters saw the hilarity in another Genesis withdrawal freeze.

That same day, a new legal filing by Genesis proposed that FTX and affiliates can claim $175 million if they withdraw several other debt claims against the lender that may total over a billion. The settlement order was approved by the court the previous week.