This Week on Crypto Twitter: 11,000 Venezuelan Soldiers Bring Down Jailhouse Bitcoin Mining Operation

Slow news made for good news as yet another static week for the market has reinforced the sense that the prices of leading cryptocurrencies have somewhat stabilized this year.

It was also a quiet week over on Crypto Twitter. It began with a huge apology from crypto-friendly game engine developer Unity after the company substantially revised its controversial Unity Runtime Fee last week, much to the anger of developers over on social media.

We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of…
— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023

DeFi liquidity protocol Balancer was attacked on Wednesday for a quarter of a million dollars. Blockchain sleuth @ZachXBT tracked the eye-watering booty as it was getting drained.

NFT collector @DoItBigChicago was very underwhelmed when the physical counterpart of his Gucci/Yuga Labs collaborative NFT pendant arrived.

NFT Statistics account @Punk9059 noticed the hefty royalties accumulating to creators over on the new decentralized social token platform Friend.tech.

One of the reasons FriendTech has taken over your feed: total fees paid to “creators” in the past 10 days:
FriendTech: 4,090 ETH
All ETH NFTs: 610 ETH pic.twitter.com/9S8oe1dt71
— NFTstats.eth (@punk9059) September 19, 2023

A video of American software developer and early Bitcoin pioneer Hal Finney talking about zero-knowledge proofs 25 years ago resurfaced on Twitter midweek. The footage is from the 18th annual International Cryptology Conference at University of California, Santa Barbara in 1998, aka “Crypto ’98”.

Dogecoin flipped Bitcoin for stability on Friday, reported Crypto Twitter news outlet @DeItaOne.

🔸Dogecoin Beats Bitcoin in Price Stability Amid Crypto Trading Lull
Volatility in dogecoin (DOGE), the largest meme cryptocurrency by market value, has dwindled so much that it now looks more stable than the digital asset industry leader, bitcoin (BTC).
According to…
— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) September 22, 2023

But undoubtedly the strangest story of the week broke on Thursday. In Venezuela, authorities discovered that inmates in one of the country’s maximum security prisons were mining Bitcoin using thousands of ASICs. Stranger still, the police bust sounded more like a full-scale invasion than a procedural operation, replete with 11,000 soldiers. The loot they captured from the entrepreneurial felons included grenades, rocket launchers, sniper rifles and previously confiscated mining machines!

There were bitcoin miners in one of the most dangerous places in Venezuela👀
Recently, we saw an intervention in Tocorón, one of the most known jails in the country, in which the criminals were in control.
Besides all the weird things that they had, they even had some bitcoin… pic.twitter.com/xEfZfj9NJN
— Javier ₿astardo 🏴‍☠️ (@criptobastardo) September 22, 2023

Tocoron el mejor ejemplo de la incapacidad de cúpula militar en los temas de seguridad. Ni la policía ni los componentes militares tienen municiones para entrenar pero los presos de Tocoron no tienen ese problema. En una celda se localizaron cajas de municiones de la FAB, además… pic.twitter.com/Da1ibcC5kc
— Iván Simonovis (@Simonovis) September 21, 2023

En Tocoron minaban sin problemas, tenían miles de equipos de minería , será que el decomiso en la operación caiga quien caiga estos equipos fueron a parar en el cárcel por parte de los mismo funcionarios.
👇 pic.twitter.com/5hlVMheJP2
— Juan 🇻🇪 (@BitcoinVES) September 21, 2023

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Source: https://decrypt.co/198536/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-11000-venezuelan-soldiers-bring-down-jailhouse-bitcoin-mining-operation