This Week on Crypto Twitter: Michael Saylor Leaves CEO to ‘Focus More on Bitcoin,’ Nomad and Solana Get Hacked

After two consecutive weeks of growth, crypto markets a bit cramped. Although reports of liquidity problems appear to have subsided, investors remained cautious.

This week, Bitcoin HODLing companies Block Inc. and MicroStrategy both reported significant writedowns on their holdings. Block is down $36 million, while MicroStrategy is down a staggering $917 million. It was also massive attack on Solana and token bridge project Nomad.

Reports of the Nomad exploit first surfaced early Tuesday. A researcher at crypto/Web3 investment firm Paradigm named Sam Sun (Twitter handle @samczsun) inspected the situation and tweeted a lengthy play-by-play analysis of the smart contract configuration error that cost users $190 million.

The exploit was seemingly easy to pull off for anyone with the knowledge, resulting in a bit of a free-for-all as attackers flocked to pillage the protocol. Nomad immediately offered a reward to anyone who returned the funds and who by Friday had recovered 22 million dollars.

‘Widespread’

Barely 24 hours after the Nomad exploit, reports started pouring in about a great Solana hack which may have drained up to 8 million dollars.

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao offered a solution: Send your money to his company.

Justin Barlow, an investor in Solana VC firm Solana Ventures, was one of the victims.

A few hours after the hack, Solana reported that nearly 7,800 wallets had been compromised.

The team subsequently released a partial explanation, claiming that the exploit was likely due to stolen private key information. Solana also said that affected users appeared to have been compromised through their Slope wallets.

Ava Labs CEO and founder Emin Gün Sirer shared his thoughts, including some highly technical explanations about how the private keys were accessed.

Slope finally answered.

Twitter user and blockchain developer @fubuloubu pointed out one of the downsides of IP.

Elsewhere

On Monday, the British Supreme Court ruled that Dr. Craig Wright, a man who claims to have invented Bitcoin, presented. false evidence as part of his latest defamation court battle against crypto podcaster Peter McCormack, who has repeatedly called Wright a liar. So McCormack was asked to pay him £1 ($1.21) in compensation. Who says you can’t see a person grinning behind their tweet?

In other news, eagle-eyed crypto reporter Jacqueline Melinek wants to know why Gucci will accept APE.

Crypto fan Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) points out Thursday how even extremely successful investors like Cathie Wood make mistakes. Pretty big too: Looks like she sold dip on Coinbase shares. Big time.

And no matter how you feel about crypto, there’s something strange about a Virginia pension fund investing in “yield farming” … now. Isn’t it a bit early after Terra and Celsius collapsed? Twitter financial analyst Sean Tuffy smells something fishy.

Arguably the biggest story of the week, MicroStrategy announced that Bitcoin-loving CEO Michael Saylor would step down after 33 years on the job, and step into a new role as executive chairman. Phong Le, the company’s president, will fill Saylor’s shoes on Monday. Saylor is set to focus even more on Bitcoin.

A popular blockchain pundit believes that powerful forces are planning to FUD Binance.

And finally, entrepreneur Liron Shapira tweeted a fascinating thread accusing blockchain game Axie Infinity of being “an obvious ponzi.”

The CEO of the studio behind Axie moving millions of dollars in tokens before revealing a massive hack probably didn’t help matters.