This Week on Crypto Twitter: ‘Pharma Bro’ Shkreli Calls Out Vitalik, LUNA 2.0 Nosedives After Launch

It was the eighth consecutive week of broader crypto market losses—although Bitcoin proved to be one of the more robust coins over seven days, taking just a 2% hit—but Crypto Twitter was comparatively quiet.

That didn’t stop “Pharma Bro” and convicted fraudster Martin Shkreli—infamous for raising the price of toxoplasmosis drug Daraprim by 5,000%—barely five days out of prison from hopping on a Twitter Space and divulging his views on crypto.

Shkreli called Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin “full of shit” for his theory of the blockchain trilemma—a theory in which blockchain networks must make compromises in attempting to simultaneously balance security, scalability, and decentralization.

He called generative NFT collections like CryptoPunks and Bored Apes “retarded,” and said Web3 is just a “buzzword.”

The 39-year-old former hedge fund manager also denied that he was behind the Shkreli Inu shitcoin, though he claims to have received half the supply.

Elsewhere, Nick Johnson, a lead developer at Ethereum Name Service (ENS), announced on Monday that it’s been a record month. ENS is the blockchain equivalent of the Domain Name System, allowing users to register memorable wallet addresses composed of handpicked words, rather than the unwieldy string of random letters and numbers that traditionally characterize blockchain addresses.

That same day, FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried made an announcement that could one day open doors to a federally regulated Bitcoin spot ETF.

With the help of analysis by colleague James Seyffart, Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas unpacked Bankman-Fried’s tweet the next day, and explained that FTX’s proposal to bring its spot markets under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s jurisdiction “could […] satisfy the SEC’s requirement for a federally regulated spot bitcoin mkt.”

On Tuesday, Crypto exchange Uniswap announced it had set a new high-water mark.

Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications at crypto policy think tank Coin Center, mocked Radioshack’s crypto pivot on Wednesday using screenshots from the century-old electronics retailer’s own TikTok feed.

Terra also relaunched LUNA. It did not go well. This didn't surprise many, including Dogecoin creator Billy Markus (@BillyM2k).

FatManTerra claims new intel

Last week on Crypto Twitter, we mentioned @FatManTerra, an independent blockchain analyst who claims to be affiliated with Terra’s Research Forum. FatMan accused Terra CEO Do Kwon of quietly siphoning money from Terra’s ecosystem as the company was raking in serious profits, although he appeared to be ultimately won over by Kwon’s subsequent defense.

This week, however, FatMan alleged that several crypto industry whistleblowers had been in contact with him, but that it was too early to spill the beans.

FatMan then hit Kwon with new allegations that the Terra CEO used the illusion of a decentralized Mirror Protocol to quietly milk Terra’s ecosystem to benefit himself and cronies at Jump Crypto.

FatMan returned on Saturday with a similar allegation: that Kwon used Chai Corporation, a Korean company in which he is a major shareholder, to cash out LUNA in 2020 and 2021. It’s important to clarify that these are solely FatMan’s allegations, based on his interpretation of money flows in Terra’s blockchain.

As of this writing, according to CoinMarketCap, the new LUNA token was trading for $5.75 after briefly peaking at $19.54 shortly after launch.

Want to be a crypto expert? Get the best of Decrypt straight to your inbox.

Get the biggest crypto news stories + weekly roundups and more!