This Week on Crypto Twitter: Winklevoss Beefs with Silbert Over $900 Million, SBF Donations Tied to Pro-Trump Organizations

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Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

It’s been a cautiously optimistic week for an industry still rocked by last year’s turmoil. Prices have been rising all week with Solana leading the way with a 36% rally, all the more surprising given that the price of SOL has been in freefall for the past two months following the collapse of FTX.

But there are still other crises in the industry, such as that of crypto exchange Gemini and its lending partner, crypto prime broker Genesis. Genesis owes $900 million to users of the Geminis Earn service, who have been unable to withdraw their money since FTX collapsed in November.

Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss tweeted a pointed open letter Monday to Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group, and by extension, Genesis, its wholly owned subsidiary. It is now becoming clear that you engaged in bad faith stall tactics, Winklevoss wrote, accusing Silbert of squandering $1.675 billion in funds from creditors and investors.

Silbert vehemently denied the charges. Cameron joined, then several other tweeters piled in and bickered.

DCG did not borrow $1.675 billion from Genesis

DCG has never missed an interest payment to Genesis and is current on all outstanding loans; the next loan maturity is May 2023

DCG delivered a proposal to Genesis and your advisors on December 29 and received no response

Barry Silbert (@BarrySilbert) January 2, 2023

On Tuesday, progressive political blogger Max Berger delved into FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Frieds’ disgraced history of political donations. Berger says SBF has supported right-wing Democrats and right-voting billionaires to curb the growth of more progressive voices.

I spent some time looking into SBF’s political donations and what I found was quite shocking.

SBF was working with AIPAC and Trump supporting billionaires to stop the growth of the team and the electoral left.https://t.co/S5gra6NsRv

Max Berger (@maxberger) January 3, 2023

On the same day, blockchain sleuth @ZachXBT that day publicly pilloried Twitch streamer and NFT creator DNP3, who had previously posted a confession and apology for squandering investor funds in the crypto-casino Stake to feed his gambling addiction. He also said he was working with a support group to recover.

The founder and creator of Cardano, Charles Hoskinson, made a foolproof economic case for right-clicking and saving other people’s NFT profile pictures.

I liked the picture so I used it as my profile picture. The artist and owner of NFT don’t care because it has increased the value of their work and product having a historical association with me. I get a cool PFP for a little while. This is called an economy. Pretty cool isn’t it?

Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) January 3, 2023

On Wednesday, Financial Times reporter Kadhim Shubber tweeted an update on Celsius’ ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. Several tweeters responded by pointing out the benefit of self-guarding.

On Thursday, there were rumors of layoffs at Huobi as internal employee communications waned. On Friday, it was confirmed that Huobi had become the latest popular exchange to announce mass layoffs following the bear market, after Coinbase and Crypto.com.

BREAKING: Huobi shut down internal employee communication groups and feedback channels.

What’s going on at @HuobiGlobal

Garlam (@GarlamWON) January 5, 2023

Finally, Ryan Selkis, co-founder of crypto market intelligence firm Messari, was briefly suspended from Twitter on Saturday for impersonating Ryan Selkis.

It’s good to be back in this hell on earth app I call home, he posted on his re-entry. 48 hours of permanent suspension from Twitter got me excited for the year in the areas of decentralized finance, governance, social media, identity and material networks.

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