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This Week on Crypto Twitter: Fantasy Top Tops the Charts, Trump Courts Crypto
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
This week, a gamified competition between Crypto Twitter influencers generated a frenzy of posts and millions in profits, as major public figures like Tom Brady and Donald Trump returned to crypto waters.
fantasy top– an Ethereum NFT game that pits social media fan bases against each other in a fantasy football-like competition – made waves this week as tribes of Crypto Twitter users commented furiously and reposted to support their chosen influencers. The game was worth it US$1.25 million to creators this week, plus potentially millions more in Blast Gold as part of the game’s success.
At the end of the first round of the game this week, influencers took victory laps alongside their followers; Several accounts shared their rewards with fans that took them to the top.
While most of the buzz surrounding Fantasy Top has been positive, given its incredible profitabilityothers were more skeptical, given the long history of “SocialFi” projects with no apparent use case beyond generating speculative interest, which typically collapse after stopping.
Meanwhile, in the real world, Tom Brady has caught some harsh jokes in his Netflix discussion earlier this week about his current commitment to crypto and his former ties to failed exchange FTX. Many crypto users still welcomed the brief dominant moment in the spotlight as a sign that the crypto could still climb higher.
The biggest major news about crypto’s impact came on Wednesday, however, when former President Donald Trump hosted a to have lunch to holders of their NFTs at their Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
At the meeting, Trump declared his intention to adopt crypto in the United States if he is re-elected, sending many crypto users into a frenzy.
At the same event, another NFT holder asked Trump about BODEN, a meme coin mocking President Joe Biden. Simply making a joke about it – saying he didn’t think the currency looked like a good investment – BODEN emerged the next day.
Notably, users of crypto betting site Polymarket had already bet nearly $100,000 on whether Trump would reference the currency by July. But read the fine print: Trump had to say the word “Boden,” which he couldn’t. So close, yet so far.
For all the frivolity, Trump’s event contrasted sharply with Pres. Joe Biden supporting the SEC earlier in the week, and many commentators saw a serious election problem developing. “Crypto voters will be heard in this election,” tweeted former TIME and Bloomberg technology journalist and MoonPay executive Keith Grossman. “What is really needed is not division, but rather a clear regulatory framework that is NOT politicized.”
Edited by Ryan Ozawa.