This Week on Crypto Twitter: Will Musk’s Everything App ‘X’ Tap Crypto for Payments?

It was another underwhelming week for crypto markets as they appeared to cautiously price in the effects of yet another interest rate hike by the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. While this change was only 25 basis points, U.S. interest rates are now the highest they’ve been in 22 years. 

Over on Twitter—or should we call it X? Let’s stick with Twitter for now—many voices reacted loudly to Elon Musk’s rebrand, the first step towards his envisioned “everything app.” 

It would take a whole separate article to capture the sprawling outcry, but seeing as both Musk and Twitter hold a place in the hearts of crypto fans, it’s worth highlighting that—according to a tweet by researcher Asuna Gilfoyle—Twitter may be tapping crypto for payments. Musk’s long affiliation with Dogecoin and Bitcoin make them obvious choices for the native currency.

Also of note, Twitter literally hijacked the original account holder of the @X handle after extensive public speculation as to the handle’s potential worth to the company. It’s worth noting here that Twitter prohibits the sale of accounts and reached out offering the former account holder some merchandise and a meeting with the bosses.

If you’re one of the many who don’t like the aesthetics of the rebrand, you can do something about it, thanks to software engineer @0xCygaar.

Digital artist Beeple, who currently holds the record for the biggest NFT sale ever made after netting $69.3 million for his collection EVERYDAYS: The First 5,000 Days, was seen soliciting advice on Monday for his first ever purchase of an NFT profile pic.

On Tuesday, Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu reported mass layoffs (30%) at the Seychelles-headquartered KuCoin exchange. 

KuCoin CEO Johnny Lyu dismissed the news as unfounded rumors and reiterated the company line about the firings being part of a regular performance appraisal.

That day, crypto law expert @MetaLawMan wrote a thread outlining the four options he believes are left to the SEC in its ongoing lawsuit against Ripple. 

Tweeter @SpreekAway shared news of a major exploit affecting lending protocol EraLend.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted a video of an around-the-block queue of people waiting to get their eyeballs scanned so they can receive free crypto from his side project Worldcoin. Worldcoin had a slightly underwhelming and controversial launch week, including a short-lived bump in the value of its native token WLD. It didn’t help that Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin said the project has “major issues” of privacy, accessibility, centralization and security and said that it could take years for the protocol to work satisfactorily.

A grisly and deeply unfortunate crypto-related murder story made the rounds on Thursday. 

Longtime Yuga Labs hater @PopPunkOnChain said he received calls from people who took one of his troll tweets seriously. See how misinformation sticks?

Caution: under no circumstances should you download one particular Korean real-time strategy classic on Steam. 

Jason Lowery, the author of an academic thesis about the military-strategic significance of Bitcoin, was seen doing some self promotion on Thursday. Aaand it sold out!