This Week on Crypto Twitter: Winklevoss Fells With Silbert Over $900M, SBF Donations Tied To Pro-Trump Organizations

The week was cautiously upbeat for an industry still reeling from last year’s turmoil. Prices has been growing all week with Solana leading the charge with a 36% rally, all the more surprising considering SOL’s price has been in free fall for the past two months following the FTX crash.

But there are still other crises in the industry, such as that of cryptocurrency exchange Gemini and its lending partner, cryptocurrency prime broker Genesis. Genesis presumably must 900 million dollars to users of Gemini’s Earn service, who have not been able to withdraw their money since FTX collapsed in November.

Gemini co-founder Cameron Winklevoss tweeted an edgy open letter on Monday to Barry Silbert, CEO of Digital Currency Group and, by extension, Genesis, its wholly owned subsidiary. “It is now becoming clear that you have engaged in bad faith standoff tactics,” Winklevoss wrote, accusing Silbert of squandering $1.675 billion of creditor and investor funds.

Silbert vehemently denied the allegations. Cameron got together and then several other tweeters piled up and fought.

Progressive political blogger Max Berger on Tuesday dived deep into disgraced FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s political giving story. Berger says SBF supported right-wing Democrats and right-wing billionaires to stem the rise of more progressive voices.

That same day, blockchain investigator @ZachXBT publicly mocked Twitch streamer and NFT creator DNP3, who had earlier posted a confession and apology for squandering investor funds at crypto casino Stake to fuel the his gambling addiction. He also said he is “working with a support group” to recover.

Cardano’s founder and creator, Charles Hoskinson, has provided a watertight economic argument for right-clicking and saving other people’s NFT profile photos.

On Wednesday, Financial Times Journalist Kadhim Shubber tweeted an update on Celsius’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings. Several tweeters responded by pointing out the advantage of the self-custody.

There were rumors of layoffs in Huobi on Thursday as communications from internal employees dropped. Friday it was confirmed that Huobi had become the latest popular exchange to announce mass layoffs following the bear market, after Coinbase and Crypto.com.

Finally, Ryan Selkis, co-founder of cryptocurrency market intelligence firm Messari, was briefly suspended from Twitter on Saturday for pretending to be Ryan Selkis.

“It’s good to be back in this hellish app I call home,” he posted following his reinstatement. “48 hours of ‘permanent hibernation’ Twitter got me excited for the year in decentralized finance, governance, social media, identity and hardware networks.”