This Week on Crypto Twitter: CZ Calls Out Justin Sun, Sun Apologizes

The Fed’s mid-week announcement of the tenth consecutive interest rate hike since March 2022 capped crypto’s growth this week, leaving many leading cryptocurrencies level with—or a little south of—the prices they were trading at this time last week.

On Monday, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao flagged Tron CEO Justin Sun’s $56 million token transfer to the exchange, suggesting the Tron founder might use the funds to farm a soon-to-be-launched token called SUI.

Our team told Justin, if he uses any of these to grab the LaunchPool Sui token, we will «take action against it». SMH.

Binance LaunchPool are meant as air drops for our retail users, not just for a few whales.

On the bright side, blockchains are transparent… https://t.co/8Xs1oXjfVd

— CZ 🔶 Binance (@cz_binance) May 1, 2023

Sun immediately set the record straight on his end, calling the transfer a mistake and offering CZ an apology. Tron reps later confirmed to Decrypt that the refund had been executed.

We sincerely apologize for this oversight @cz_binance!

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) May 1, 2023

Zhao’s argument that Binance’s launchpool airdrops are “for our retail users” has broader significance when you consider the not-so-retail-friendly token distribution of SUI, as seen in this chart by crypto analyst Tom Dunleavy (@Dunleavy89).

SUI token distribution vs the competition pic.twitter.com/EteCE27Y8A

— Tom Dunleavy (@dunleavy89) May 3, 2023

Crypto researcher and critic Molly White (@Molly0xFFF) called out the “super weird reporting” around Binance’s claims that somebody with links in Congress is using ChatGPT to launch a smear campaign against it.

that congresspeople are sitting in their offices asking ChatGPT if CZ is a communist and then sending out formal inquiries based on it? or that someone is sending congresspeople ChatGPT printouts with false info, and Congresspeople are taking them seriously? 2/2

— Molly White (@molly0xFFF) May 2, 2023

Democrat 2024 Presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday added to the conspiracy theories on Crypto Twitter when he said he believes there is a top-down “war on crypto” that had something to do with the recent collapses of Silicon Valley Bank, Silvergate and Signature. Looks like Kennedy is getting ready to doxx himself as a man of the (crypto) people.

Ellen Brown makes a strong case the FDIC/SEC war on crypto caused failures of SVB, Signature, and Silvergate banks. FDIC and SEC have no authority to wage an extra-legal war on crypto that leaves major banks as collateral damage. #Kennedy24https://t.co/HMZuW7Rr1H

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 2, 2023

Web3 enthusiast and NFT collector Moritz (@Moritz_Web3) on Wednesday synthesized fifteen different media reports to start a rumor that Amazon will launch an NFT marketplace on May 15. He makes some big claims over the course of his fourteen-tweet thread.

The marketplace was originally scheduled to launch in 2022. New launch date after several delays is set to May 15.

I have gathered information from 15 differrent articles.

There is not a lot of official information out, so nothing is 100% confirmed yet.

(2/14)

— Moritz (@moritz_web3) May 3, 2023

Seb Krier, the International Policy Manager at Google’s Deepmind, tweeted news on Thursday of the White House’s cooperation with tech giants to ensure responsible AI innovation. Twitter/Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk added his two cents.

It’s a step in the right direction

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2023

El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, who made Bitcoin legal tender in his country, on Thursday announced that he signed into law an act that aims to help develop the country’s tech sector.

I’ve just signed into law, the INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY MANUFACTURING INCENTIVES ACT, that eliminates all taxes (income, property, capital gains and import tariffs) on technology innovations, software and app programming, AI, computer and communications hardware manufacturing. pic.twitter.com/rZtGzPgVzW

— Nayib Bukele (@nayibbukele) May 4, 2023

New York Attorney General Letitia James announced on Friday her “nation-leading legislation to tighten regulations on the cryptocurrency industry.”

— Prevent people who create crypto assets from also owning crypto platforms.

— Stop crypto companies from borrowing or lending investors’ assets.

— Provide investors with risk and conflict of interest information about crypto companies.

— NY AG James (@NewYorkStateAG) May 5, 2023

Remember last week when electro-pop star Grimes offered an even split on royalties for any creator who succeeds in crafting a pop hit using her AI-generated voice? She appeared to be encountering some difficulties in the venture this week.

I think grimesAI things r getting struck down from streaming and also we need to figure out how to best integrate ai sections into the grimes streaming pages if ppl want that etc but working w tunecore etc to solve this sorry again for delays I was thoughtlessly posting with no…

— 𝔊𝔯𝔦𝔪𝔢𝔰 (@Grimezsz) May 5, 2023

Finally, NFT enthusiast @CirrusNFT followed the trail of hype from one project to another.

For the second time in the last 14 hours… someone just sold a top 500 BAYC below floor and immediately put all the proceeds into $PEPE pic.twitter.com/BB3X28we3N

— Cirrus (@CirrusNFT) May 5, 2023

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