This Week on Crypto Twitter: HODLers Joke Through Bitcoin Bloodbath, Twitter Tries Ethereum NFT PFPs

The crypto market was already having an unpleasant 2022, however crashed even more durable this week, shaving nearly half a trillion {dollars} from the worldwide market cap in 24 hours between Friday and Saturday. Bitcoin and Ethereum sank to costs not seen since summer time final yr.

Crypto Twitter, because it sometimes does, turned to humor and memes to get by the distress. And in fact, whereas pundits had been targeted on the value crash, that was removed from the one chatter on Crypto Twitter, which turned its consideration to mocking one DAO’s confusion over mental property and Twitter’s controversial leap into verifying NFT PFPs. 

Market distress… and memes

The crypto market has been miserable all yr, however issues received a lot worse this previous week. HODLers principally coped with the massacre with jokes and memes. Without additional ado, right here had been only a few of our favorites.

…And not all of the tweets in regards to the market crash had been jokes. Many outstanding crypto traders and entrepreneurs went with earnest, optimistic encouragement harking back to the “put our heads down and build” mantra of the final crypto winter in 2018.

The Dune Bible DAO fiasco

Devoted Decrypt readers might do not forget that again in December we reported on Spice DAO, one other within the current parade of decentralized autonomous organizations that shaped with the aim of shopping for a bodily asset. The group forked out $3 million for Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Dune Bible.” The uncommon ebook is a storyboard for an unmade film (to not be confused with David Lynch’s “Dune” in 1984, or the 2021 adaptation directed by Denis Villeneuve).

Last Saturday, Spice DAO unveiled its post-auction grasp plan: it deliberate to “make the book public” and “produce an original animated limited series inspired by the book and sell it to a streaming service.”

But proudly owning a duplicate of the doc doesn’t equate to proudly owning the industrial rights to the story. And the contents of Jodorowsky’s “Dune Bible” are already public, viewable on a Google drive right here. The group’s obvious confusion confirmed a few of the flaws individuals have recognized with DAOs and their bold goals.

When Monday rolled round, Crypto Twitter (and the mainstream media) had a subject day making enjoyable of the group’s misconceptions. Gary Brannan from the online collection “Two of These People are Lying” tweeted: “I have genuinely spent 10 minutes starting at this but, no, it really DOES appear to be true that a bunch of cryptobros just spent €2.6 MILLION – 100x the asking price – for a book at auction in the mistaken belief that they would therefore own the copyright in it.”

Ethereum crew lead Péter Szilágyi reacted to a proposal that the DAO burn the unique ebook with this harsh indictment: “And we wonder why people hate crypto. I’m ashamed to have enabled someone to even think about doing this.”

On Thursday, Spice DAO posted a Twitter thread addressing “common misconceptions” in regards to the challenge, and confirmed it now understands that it doesn’t personal the rights: “Yes. After two months of outreach, conversations with former business partners and consultations with legal counsel we were not able to reach an agreement with any of the rights holders involved in the creation of the contents of the artist’s book.”

Spice DAO additionally performed down the ebook burning, saying that it was a proposal by a stranger, which had been left up on the Discord server, till the neighborhood flagged it as inappropriate and the publish was taken down. 

In spite of the main setbacks, Spice DAO has since tweeted that it’s going to proceed to push for a “Dune” animated collection based mostly on Jodorowsky’s Bible. They’ve received Alex Garland on their want listing for the screenwriter…

Bukele mocks pretend information about Moody’s, buys the dip

El Salvador’s Bitcoin-maxi president is a common fixture on this roundup. And this week his account was busier than regular. 

On Monday, finance website Investing.com tweeted out this screaming headline: “MOODY’S DOWNGRADES EL SALVADOR SOVEREIGN DEBT DUE TO #BITCOIN TRADES.” The tweet additionally included a map of El Salvador, with the identify modified to “El Hodlador.”

Bukele blasted an all-caps reply: “BREAKING: EL SALVADOR DGAF.” 

It seems Investing.com’s headline was unsuitable, in keeping with Bloomberg. Moody’s had downgraded El Salvador’s credit standing final July, however has not modified the ranking since.

When Bukele isn’t angrily replying to critics, he’s proudly declaring that he purchased the Bitcoin dip, and on Friday he did so once more. He replied to one in all his personal tweets from the week earlier than, when he complained about lacking the dip, and added: “Nope, I was wrong, didn’t miss it. El Salvador just bought 410 #bitcoin for only 15 million dollars.”

Budweiser, Burger King, and Netflix are crypto curious

The large model information on Crypto Twitter this week was that Budweiser bought its first NFT. The Bud Lite Twitter account shared the information with a sq. specs emoji to indicate it had purchased a Nouns NFT. The account additionally modified its profile image to showcase the avatar.

Nouns is a DAO which mints one distinctive NFT avatar a day. The avatars are low decision a la CryptoPunks. What’s fascinating about Nouns is that the cash for every NFT will get funneled into the DAO’s treasury. NFT holders then vote on how the cash is spent. Each NFT is value one vote, and holders select from tasks and initiatives that may turn into open-source mental property

Meanwhile, Burger King on Tuesday hinted it’s interested in NFTs—or it was simply trolling. The quick meals big’s UK arm tweeted: “ok we’ll bite what’s an NFT.” 

Netflix’s “Netflix Engineering” solicited the identical NFT recommendation from its followers, tweeting: “What are your thoughts on NFTs?”

Twitter debuts NFT PFPs, to the chagrin of NFT haters

On Thursday, Twitter rolled out verified NFT profile photos. But there are a couple of catches: the function is at present just for Twitter Blue subscribers, solely on iOS (although Android customers can nonetheless see the NFT profile photos), and solely within the U.S., U.Okay., Canada and New Zealand. 

The new function lets you show you personal an NFT (if it is minted on Ethereum and verified by OpenSea), and Twitter will mirror the verification with a hexagonal border.

But the hexagon shortly turned an object of ridicule and goal for NFT haters.

Tesla CEO and Dogecoin pumper Elon Musk was additionally unimpressed with the function. He tweeted: “This is annoying” earlier than later including: “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”

The subsequent few weeks will show out whether or not the NFT fanatics embrace the hexagons regardless of the ridicule, or fold to the noise and make the function a failure. Musk is true about these spambots, although.