In last week’s Crypto Twitter roundup, we included “Desperate Housewives.” Star Bitcoin, Vitalik Welcomes Trolls, FWB DAO Expels Co-Founder”>Eva Longoria‘s candid announcement that she’s “Leap into the #NFT space.” She had asked her 7 million followers for advice on where to start and, as you might expect, the replies were replete with people telling her about their NFT projects.
She didn’t dally. On Monday, she changed her profile picture to her first NFT purchase: a World of Women NFT. World of Women is a collection of illustrations by artist Yam Karkai “with 10,000 artworks of diverse and powerful women,” according to the designation. (Karkai made decrypt‘s list of most innovative NFT artists from 2021.)
Longoria joins Reese Witherspoon as owner of World of Women. And whether it was thanks to Longoria, or thanks to the collection signing with Guy Oseary for Hollywood reputation (just like Bored Ape Yacht Club), that Price floor rose this week.
Andre and Klay go crypto
NBA legend Andre Iguodala announced Monday that he and Golden State Warriors teammate Klay Thompson receive a portion of their salaries in Bitcoin through mobile payment service Cash App.
I am happy to announce that I have part of my salary in BITCOIN w. Cash app! bitcoin is the future @klaythompson and I are both believers. To make bitcoin more accessible, we’re giving back $1 million worth of bitcoin to fans today. Drop your $cashtag w. #PaidInBitcoin & Follow @CashApp
– others (@andre) January 10, 2022
The two NBA stars join a long list of professional athletes who have poured a portion of their salary into Bitcoin, including Aaron Rodgers, Odell Beckham jr., Russel Okung, and Trevor Lawrence. (FTX investor and pitchman Tom Brady has said he would “I wish that“, but it didn’t.)
Not everyone welcomed the move. University of Toronto law professor Anna Su replied: “Love you and Klay but hope you can use your platform to advocate for more sustainable crypto mining practices. no future if crypto destroys the planet.”
Hi @other Love you and Klay but hope you can use your platform to advocate for more sustainable crypto mining practices. no future if crypto destroys the planet
– Anna Su (@theannasu) January 10, 2022
Vitalik asks to be roasted
On Thursday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin made sure everyone had some fun as he swallowed his pride and shared some of the cruelest roasts he’s received on Twitter, also asking for more: “What are the craziest and craziest reviews of me? seen on Twitter or elsewhere?”
What are the craziest and craziest reviews of me you’ve seen on Twitter or anywhere else? Here are a few good ones, I wonder what else people have seen that I haven’t seen! pic.twitter.com/2qvwgNkHyM
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 13, 2022
Some of the jokes were very dark, like one made by users @FirstFedora: “His destiny was to shoot down a school, unfortunately he failed.” Many interviewees teased Vitalik’s skinny physique @XRPmemeguy: “The most positive thing about Vitalik going to jail is that he finally gets 3 decent meals a day.”
But our favorite was this harmless wordplay gag on “italic” Buterin, which was our meme of the week in the Decrypt email for weekend debriefing on Saturday.
Buterin also released a series of polls asking his Ethereum-loving followers which altcoins they would use in a world without Ethereum. In the first round, the options were Bitcoin, USDC, Solana, and Cardano. Surprisingly, Cardano beat Bitcoin with 43% of the 600,000 votes versus Bitcoin’s 38%.
Poll for the Ethereum community. You wake up in 2035 and 80% of all transactions + savings in the world are in a currency other than ETH. Which would you prefer?
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 13, 2022
Buterin then asked the same question in another poll, this time with different options: TRON, Binance Coin, Neo, and China’s digital yuan (CNY). TRON was the clear winner, garnering 51% of the 359,000 votes, more than double the votes of all other options.
Poll for the Ethereum community. You wake up in 2035 and 80% of all transactions + savings in the world are in a currency other than ETH. Which would you prefer?
– vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 13, 2022
FWB boots its own
Tuesday brought a moment that could be a touchstone for the future of how decentralized organizations deal with issues surrounding member behavior — and it all played out on Twitter.
It started when 25-year-old Cooper Turley, a mega influencer in DAO land, tweeted, “What you do after 8pm shows how badly you want to win.” Jackson Dame, another crypto influencer, the community and makes content for the Ethereum wallet Rainbow, called Turley’s tweet promoting an unhealthy work-life balance – something Turley’s tweets had been criticized for in the past. Dame called Turley a “bad influence”.
so many thoughts on this and honestly the one I will leave to all of you is how sad I am that coopah keeps doing this…it’s the straw that broke the camel’s back that I no longer follow had to – influencers keep having a bad influence again even after feedback https://t.co/MRFptuVRwi
— dame.eth (@jacksondame) January 11, 2022
Dame then found and tweeted some of Turley’s tweets from high school, which included repeated use of the n-word and homophobic slurs.
Turley apologized for the tweets on Wednesday morning, saying: “It was then that I developed a terrible habit of casually using racial and homophonic slurs to conform.” He wrote: “They were unacceptable and deeply hurtful. I was young, stupid and carefree. That doesn’t change how awful those comments were, and still are.”
On Friday, popular DAO Friends With Benefits (FWB), a crypto-backed social club that Turley helped found, announced that Turley had been removed from the DAO leadership following a committee vote and also suspended as a member for two “seasons.”
The Code of Conduct Committee issued the formal recommendation for removal from the FWB DAO leadership, which the member agreed to.
— Friends With Benefits ($FWB) ???? (@FWBtweets) January 15, 2022
FWB’s actions drew their own criticism from those who think booting a member over tweets from nine years ago is a step too far for a decentralized crypto organization.
Notice how much peacock work went into making the show trial seem so important, even though it is a completely opaque trial by an unknown group with no published outcome.
An unknown party wielding the power to kick people out of the DAO without transparency or accountability? https://t.co/dlx9xNliFJ
— Banteg (@bantg) January 15, 2022
Doesn’t sound like you get many benefits from being friends with them
– iny (@ in21) January 15, 2022
Turley has announced that he will be retiring from the many DAOs he is involved with, but that probably won’t be the end of the discussion surrounding this event. It raises crucial questions about how crypto communities will deal with similar controversies.