This week on Crypto Twitter was chock-full of personalities stealing the show—some for positive reasons, others for… darker ones. Last Sunday, a years-dormant Twitter account belonging to Keith Gill, aka pic.twitter.com/YgjVqtgcNS— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 13, 2024Over the following days, the account posted scores of pic.twitter.com/qSUSX5MxeG— Roaring Kitty (@TheRoaringKitty) May 15, 2024The frenzy immediately pumped meme stocks like GME and AMC multiple times over in value, as well as related Pump and dump scheme resulted in $8B wealth transfer from retail to the oligarchy in a 1 week, not bad! $GME pic.twitter.com/BGA6ulmx9T— The Maverick of Wall Street (@TheMaverickWS) May 17, 2024Despite the fact that the tweets pumped stocks and meme coins by billions of dollars, it remained unclear throughout the week whether Gill was actually behind them. The influencer did not post any videos or photos of himself, and his Reddit and YouTube accounts—once frequently used—remain silent. In the vacuum of verifiability, some—including the conceptual digital artist Shloms—seized on the opportunity, time to come clean pic.twitter.com/lxx6MOOzTD— █̶̳̘͛̄̃͒̄̃͜█̴͇̱̅͒̅█̵̻̣̝͒̈̄̈͝͝█̴̞̜̻̝͍̂̽͜█̴̵̴̶̸̡̨̢̞̜ (@SHL0MS) May 13, 2024On Tuesday, in grimmer news, a developer of Ethereum coin mixer Tornado Cash—Alexey Pertsev—was The reaction on Twitter was swift, with crypto industry leaders decrying the sentence as overly punitive and unjust. Many in the industry have long praised Tornado Cash as a tool crucial to ensuring the privacy of crypto users. Shattered. Ashamed of the Dutch judicial system, blind and deaf to the true innovation and genius of Alexey & TC.As crypto builders, we are all Alexey. We keep fighting for him, his legacy and the cypherpunk values.https://t.co/pi0mpuJ03V— Eléonore Blanc (@blockblanc) May 14, 2024Today is a sad day. Tornado Cash developer Alexey Pertsev has been found guilty of money laundering and sentenced to more 64 months in prison.Privacy is a human right. Open Source is not a crime #FreeAlex #PrivacyMattershttps://t.co/UKXhlTn5P7 pic.twitter.com/oFMkqcS4ow— ENCOINS (@ENCOINS1) May 14, 2024On Thursday, Pertsev That same day, perhaps the most bizarre narrative of the week unfolded when, in real time, denizens of Crypto Twitter discovered that wildly popular meme coin generator Pump.fun had been hacked—and that the hacker, a disgruntled former employee of the protocol, was And now; Magick: everybody be cool, this is a r o b b e r y. What it do, staccattack? I’m about to change the course of history. n then rot in jail. am I sane? nah. am I well? v much not. do I want for anything? my mom raised from the dead n barring that: /x— staccoverflow ; j’arrête ; (@STACCoverflow) May 16, 2024Minute by minute, crypto users pieced together that the man really was the Pump.fun hacker—and that he was a fully doxxed Canadian citizen. Prominent industry figures who knew the hacker attempted to reach out to him, concerned. (The hacker drained $2 million in SOL from Pump.fun, then airdropped it in pieces to random NFT and token holders.)J what are you doing boss lol U know Trudeau will not be happy about this— mert | helius | hSOL (@0xMert_) May 16, 2024In a surreal sequence, as Pump.fun posted that it was looking into the hack and would cooperate with governmenWe are aware that the https://t.co/uE2QNKXkIT bonding curve contracts have been compromised and are investigating the matter.We have upgraded the contracts so the attacker cannot siphon any more funds. The TVL in the protocol right now is safe. We’ve paused trading — you…— pump.fun (@pumpdotfun) May 16, 2024Amid the saga, the hacker remained incredibly active online, openly acknowledging to anyone who asked that he was likely to face prison time—and just didn’t care. life without parole— staccoverflow ; j’arrête ; (@STACCoverflow) May 16, 2024Edited by Andrew Hayward
