This week on Crypto Twitter: Axie Infinity Hacked for $622M, Dogecoin influencer Matt Wallace’s Coin Tanks “Accept Crypto”.

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

Prices of the leading cryptocurrencies rose steadily for the third straight week, with market leader Bitcoin hitting a 2022 high of $48,000 on Monday. Over on Crypto Twitter, things were a little quieter than usual.

There have been a lot of notable announcements.

On Tuesday, crypto whale-tracking bot Whale Alert tweeted that it had activated a 1,000-bitcoin account for the first time in almost eight years. In 2014, the stash was worth around $583,859 — more than $47 million today.

💤💤💤💤 A dormant address with 1,000 #BTC ($47,370,290) just activated after 7.7 years (worth $583,859 in 2014)! https://t.co/KZVqzoR2ge

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) March 29, 2022

Bruce Fenton, former executive director of the Bitcoin Foundation and current executive director of Boston-based crypto fintech firm Chainstone Labs, announced on Wednesday that he is running for a seat in the US Senate in New Hampshire.

I will not stand by and see my country and our values ​​destroyed by Washington DC politicians.

We must build a future based on freedom, peace, sound money, human rights and free interaction.

I’m running for the United Senate, representing New Hampshire. #NHpolitics

— Bruce Fenton (@brucefenton) March 30, 2022

Former Robinhood Chief Operating Officer Christine Brown announced that she is leaving the crypto trading platform “after 5 amazing years to start something new.” She didn’t elaborate, but assured her followers that she was “excited.” stay in the crypto space‘, so it’s certainly not the last we’ll hear from her.

After 5 great years at @RobinhoodAppI move on to start something new.

I joined RH when there were less than 100 people – before we even offered a crypto product. Watching us grow through the IPO and serve more than 22 million users has been the greatest professional experience of my life.

— Christine (Hall) Brown (@christine_hall) March 29, 2022

The bulk of Twitter’s attention this week focused on two disasters: the Ronin Bridge exploit and Mark Wallace’s Shitcoin. (Oops! Typo! That should have read: Mark Wallace’s “AcceptCrypto” coin.)

The Mark Wallace Affair

Dogecoin-pumped YouTuber Mark Wallace faced allegations of carpet-pulling after his “AcceptCrypto” token blew up 12,000% and then crashed into nothing just minutes after launch on Wednesday.

A “rug pull” is a type of exit scam in which a crypto project solicits funds from the public, only to suddenly disappear without fulfilling its promises, usually a token drop.

Since Wallace stayed online and bore the brunt of the fearful angry tweets himself, he’s likely not the one pulling the rug. On closer inspection, however, the entire chain of events is lazy.

In a now-deleted tweet on Wednesday, Wallace was genuinely excited about AcceptCrypto’s 12,000% surge just minutes after launch. And then it stunk.

Dogecoin creator Billy Markus came forward and called Wallace a “cheater.” This isn’t the first time Markus has gotten in trouble with Wallace. Wallace originally planned to name his cryptocurrency “AcceptDoge,” but he quickly changed his mind a strict word by Markus on Twitter last month.

I don’t like calling scammers.

Calling scammers leads to harassment and death threats. always. because evil is evil.

but in this case Dogecoin’s reputation was at stake. If community members hadn’t acted, this disaster would have been called “Accept Doge” https://t.co/2EWPI83f73

— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) March 30, 2022

Self-proclaimed “internet detective” Coffeezilla (@coffeebreak_YT) called AcceptCrypto “another shit coin” and released a video clip of Wallace defending himself against accusations from angry investors in the project’s Telegram group.

Wallace denies responsibility to take investors’ money. He said he suspects an error or other oversight may have happened on Solidity Finance’s side. Wallace asked the company to audit its smart contracts and said he didn’t think the problem was due to foul play on their part.

This was not a carpet pull or a scam. Liquidity has never been taken out or touched and there is approximately $600,000 within this project between marketing/development taxes, the liquidity pool and liquidity. Also, no tokens were sold, owned or distributed for the purposes of the token. pic.twitter.com/Lw6ajsw75x

— Accept crypto tokens (@AcceptCryptos) March 31, 2022

Roningate

On Tuesday, blockchain gaming company Sky Mavis announced that someone had used hacked private keys to drain the $622 million treasury of its popular metaverse gaming project, Axie Infinity. The stolen funds were stored in Ethereum and USD Coin on the Ronin bridge, a sidechain of the Ethereum network.

One Twitter user responded to the news by calling Axie’s team “awesome” for keeping their entire treasury in Ronin.

That same day, Axie co-founder Jeff “Jiho” Zirlin had to appear on the stage at the NFTLA conference and speak about Axie’s optimistic vision for the future. Twitch gamer Brycent (@Brycent_) commented on Jiho’s admirable stoicism despite falling victim to one of the biggest crypto hacks of all time just hours before.

Feel really bad for Jiho needs a strong person to go on stage and talk about a hack at an NFT conference right when it happens without any preprocessing.

— Brycent 🚀 (@brycent_) March 29, 2022

Jiho’s teammate at Axie and Ronin, Kathleen Osgood, also defended her boss.

He is an incredible leader who can handle anything with grace. honored to work with him.

— Kathleen Osgood 🧝🏻‍♀️ (@kosgoood) March 29, 2022

But the Ronin Bridge exploit may have a silver lining: according to Igor Igamberdiev, a blockchain researcher, the attackers may have been more clumsy than first thought.

All in all, the Axie Show goes on. The bank-breaking theft did little to stall the release of Axie Infinity: Origin, a major update to the game. Originally scheduled for release last week, Origin is now launching this week.