Discord pulls back on crypto after all internet screams at CEO

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Earlier this week, Discord CEO Jason Citron posted a tweet teasing the integration between the games-focused chat platform and Ethereum, setting off a veritable shit storm.

The talk about cryptocurrencies and blockchain collectibles such as NFTs, many of which run on Ethereum, has become extremely heated lately and seemed to spill over with Citron’s tweet. “Probably nothing,” the CEO tweeted on Monday, captioning a screenshot showing the Ethereum wallet’s integration with Discord. While crypto fans immediately applauded the tease, the response elsewhere has been swift and brutal. People crammed onto Citron’s tweet, which garnered thousands of responses and quotes, and many on social media pledged to cancel their paid Discord Nitro subscriptions if the platform integrated crypto. The backlash grew so much that when Discord sent a notice to users offering a free month of Nitro when signing up for users this week, a viral tweet encouraged people not to take the offer because they thought that it was a cover for the disastrous response to Citron. crypto tweet.

Now, it looks like Discord has heard the complaints. In a tweet on Wednesday evening, Citron clarified that Discord is not currently considering deploying integration with Ethereum wallets.

“Thanks for all the insight everyone,” Citron tweeted. “We currently have no plans to deliver this concept internally. For now, our focus is on protecting users from spam, scams, and fraud. Web3 has a lot of good ones, but also a lot of problems that we need to solve on our own scale. More soon. “

The Crypto and NFT projects put Discord in a strange position. Crypto is everywhere on Discord, with many projects in the NFT space and beyond keeping Discord servers busy with tens of thousands of users. People buy NFTs on Discord, and communities are run from servers. On the flip side, many crypto and NFT scams are also run from Discord, with servers shutting down overnight when scam developers decide to cut and run. It’s hard to imagine Discord ignoring all of this any longer, and even without the Ethereum wallet integration, Citron’s tweet implies that Discord is looking at fraud protection tools.

More than anything, however, the Discord incident revealed just how entrenched the battle lines have become in the crop wars against NFTs. Investors are making millions in the sparkling market and, quite possibly because of this fact, video game companies are all making openings towards integrating NFTs into their future products. At the same time, many video game players and people adjacent to video games despise them with fiery passion, either because of the environmental impact of proof of work tokens on Ethereum, the idea that blockchain collectibles are a scam based on mythical thinking, or both.

Most likely, we haven’t seen the latest incident like this because by all indications cryptos and NFTs are not going to go extinct imminently. And neither do the critics.

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