This Week on Crypto Twitter: Musk Welcomes New Twitter CEO to Come to X – Everything App
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
The most important tweet on Crypto Twitter this week was an announcement on Friday from Twitter owner and CEO Elon Musk naming his replacement, Linda Yaccarinoas the platform’s new CEO.
Musk will continue to serve Twitter as CTO and executive chairman.
Yaccarino left his job as head of advertising at NBCUniversal Friday morning to take on the job of helping Musk transition Twitter into X, his envisioned “everything app” that would include 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 biggest institutional HODLers of Bitcoin, even after that three quarters sold of its original stock. He is a fan of Dogecoin and his frequent tweets about it often pump up its price. He even replaced Twitter’s blue bird logo with the Doge meme for it a few daysso a potential crypto integration is conceivable, especially as a payment 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 US company, but the hostile domestic regulatory environment drives it offshore. The company recently received a license to operate in Bermuda and used it to open one international exchange offers Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual futures. It is also currently talking to 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 shared a chart on Tuesday showing how MiCA is stealing the wind from US sails. EU lawmakers last month approved MiCA, or the Markets in Crypto Assets bill, which now means the bloc has a unified regulatory approach across its 27 member states and licenses granted to crypto companies in one country can be “passed” to another member state. The rules regarding stable coins comes into effect in July 2024, while other requirements will not be enforced until January 2025.
On Tuesday, US President Joe Biden positioned himself against “MAGA House Republicans” along the lines of “wealthy crypto investors” looking for loopholes to avoid paying taxes. POTUS’s tweet was then flagged off fact checkers which added the context that all crypto profits are subject to capital gains tax.
Also that day, a video shared by MicroStrategy head and institutional Bitcoin whale Michael Sadler made the rounds. An ardent and predictable Bitcoin acolyte, Saylor says Bitcoin’s price “will go up — with volatility — forever.”
Bitcoin mining revenue levels are now at the level they were a year ago, according to a chart shared by Will Clemente, the co-founder of independent research firm Reflexivity Research.
Stablecoin issuer Tether has a turnover of well over a billion, according to the certificate for the first quarter of 2023. This means that it comfortably surpasses Blackrock, the largest asset manager in the world. At its peak, Blackrock became the first asset manager to manage 10 trillion dollars in assets in Q4 2022, but this has fallen to $8.59 trillion per Q4 2023.
Another day, another crypto scammer was brought to light by blockchain specialist ZachXBT.
Independent Ethereum guru Anthony Sassano called the Ethereum venture “just up” on Wednesday.
Retired ExxonMobil CEO Tom Glass, who is currently seeking the Republican nomination for State House District 17, broke the news that Texas lawmakers overwhelmingly voted for an update to the state’s Bill of Rights to include people’s right to own, hold and use digital currencies.
Finally on Thursday, Web3 legal expert MetaLawMan wrote a thread explaining how important the news is that the US Chamber of Commerce filed an amicus brief in support of Coinbase’s ongoing court petition to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to clarify its rules.
