This Week on Crypto Twitter: Tornado Cash Dev Alex Pertsev Returns! CZ Says He’s Not That Rich

Bitcoin this week led a small market-wide rally after shares in First Republic Bank nosedived when the institution’s latest quarterly report revealed a decline in deposits. On Sunday, some of the leading cryptocurrencies appear to be shrugging off their intraweek gains, but there has been no explosive price movement in either direction. 

AI was a hot topic on Crypto Twitter this week. Electro-pop singer Grimes started the conversation on Monday when she offered 50% royalties to anyone that creates a hit using her machine-generated voice. In a follow-up tweet she said she would use smart contracts to issue the royalties. 

Later in the week, Avenged Sevenfold singer and Ethereum maxi M. Shadows gave his two cents to Grimes’s proposal. 

On Tuesday, Neeraj Agrawal—who heads communications at pro-crypto policy think tank CoinCentre—solicited donations for some Bitcoin developers who are currently embroiled in a legal battle with notorious industry troll Craig Wright, an Australian software developer who claims to be the man behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakomoto, the inventor of Bitcoin. 

Bankrupt crypto lender Voyager broke the news that Binance US had axed a deal to acquire the company’s assets. Voyager was one of the high-profile casualties stemming from Terra’s collapse last May. In a statement to Decrypt, Binance cited “the hostile and uncertain regulatory climate in the United States” as the main reason behind the decision to back out. 

Solana announced a new integration with ChatGPT that day.

Avid tech fan @Odin_Free shared a pie chart highlighting how regulators have driven Ethereum principal deposits out of the Kraken exchange. 

Bitcoin briefly plummeted on Wednesday. Will Clemente, founder of blockchain research firm Reflexivity Research, was watching the red candles. 

It turns out the world’s favorite crypto had fallen 7% in an hour after reports from Blockchain analytics firm Arkham said that wallets linked to the defunct Mt. Gox exchange and the U.S. government had moved huge Bitcoin stashes. Arkham CEO Miguel Morel said the transactions weren’t connected and Arkham itself later offered a somewhat perplexing explanation. 

The following day, analytics firm Glassnode showed followers how to track the Mt. Gox and U.S. government balances in question. 

Last year may have been hailed “Crypto Winter” for those in the thick of the industry, but for their lawyers and advisers it was a sunnier story, tweeted FTX creditor Sunil. 

Blockchain gumshoe ZachXBT is hot on the heels of a scammer who has so far created over a hundred different memecoins to rug investors with.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao wants you to know he’s not as wealthy or as competitive as everyone says he is. 

A self-proclaimed Bitfinex/Tether whistleblower posted a scathing critique of recent Coinbase investors. They’re not alone in thinking that Coinbase may be planning to relocate. The company itself has frequently mentioned the hostile regulatory climate in the U.S. recently and last week announced plans for global expansion, including Bermuda and, possibly, the crypto-friendly free economic zone, Abu Dhabi Global Market.

Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev returned to Twitter after he was released on bail to wait for his trial at home. Dutch authorities arrested him nine months ago on alleged charges of facilitating money laundering shortly after U.S. authorities sanctioned the crypto transaction privacy tool, claiming it was linked to North Korean state hackers Lazarus Group and may have laundered as much as $7 billion since 2019.

 Finally, why think about personal finance when you can just outsource it to ChatGPT?