This Week on Crypto Twitter: Gary Gensler May Want Ethereum Under SEC Control, Tonga Will Make Bitcoin Legal Tender – Decipher

In general, the markets restored this week despite extremely volatile mid-week price movements of major cryptocurrencies. On Twitter, pundits were engrossed in Ethereum Merge updates, more crypto winter stories, and the latest saga of Gary Gensler’s unspoken war on Ethereum.

Terra CEO Do Kwon kicked off the week with a bang when he lashed out at self-proclaimed blockchain gumshoe @FatManTerra. In May, at the height of Terra’s collapse, FatMan, who claims to be affiliated with Terra Research Forumaccused Kwon of touching the top by cashing in hundreds of millions of dollars”directly out of LUNA’s market capitalization “over several years” to pay the salaries and operating expenses of Terra employees.

What was FatMan’s offensive tweet? Nothing to do with Do Kwon! FatMan tweeted that he was offering a “remaining allowance” for a Bitcoin “carry trade” to victims of the UST collapse. This time it was Do Kwon who called FatMan a cheat.

Kwon stood his ground when a tweeter suggested he was a hypocrite.

On Tuesday, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin gave an update on the long-awaited overhaul of the network into a proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. The second iteration of Ethereum is expected to address several key issues, including power consumption, scalability, gas fees, and speed. There was little to update us, however… Everything is going according to plan.

On the same day, a solo Bitcoin miner won a six-figure block reward.

On Wednesday, a former MP from the small Polynesian state of Tonga, Mataʻiʻuluaʻi Fonuamotu (aka Lord Fusitu’a), tweeted that his country is expected to make Bitcoin legal tender next month. Lord Fusitu’a is a self-proclaimed Bitcoin bull and is known for keep the world informed on the progress of Bitcoin adoption in Tonga.

Paolo Ardoino, the CTO of crypto exchange Bitfinex, praised El Salvador on the anniversary when Bitcoin became legal tender. In his thread, Ardoino compared the move to the italian renaissance. Ardoino makes a lot of hype for El Salvador, but a recent report from an American NPO indicates that the use of Bitcoin in the country was minimal since the entry into force of the law.

Peter Van Valkenburgh, research director at the crypto policy think tank Coin Center, said on Wednesday that the US government, the UN and various other organizations are free to use the crypto privacy mixer Tornado Cash, despite the service being blacklisted by the US Treasury Department. A rule for them, huh?

NFT fan Cirrus has mocked crypto influencers with a chart from Dune Analytics showing daily ETH trading volumes on the NFT OpenSea market.

Finally, Vermont regulators dropped the bombshell this week that bankrupt crypto lender Celsius was insolvent since 2019. Crypto podcaster Cas Piancey unearthed a tweet from 2019 to show everyone he’s known since the beginning.

Gensler versus Ethereum

It was news that apparently didn’t seem so important: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler back giving the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) oversight of Bitcoin.

Gensler has stated in the past that Bitcoin is not a security and therefore falls outside his jurisdiction. This week, Gensler reiterated his stance on both Bitcoin and the CFTC as the primary crypto regulator — a proposal welcomed by many, both in Washington and in the industry — while hinting that he hopes the SEC will have considerable jurisdiction over crypto.

Crypto lawyer Jake Chervinsky took to Twitter after the news broke and pointed out what Gensler is not saying to assert that the SEC chief still has Ethereum lined up in his sights.

Bitcoin enthusiast MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor read the news as bullish.

The next day, an SEC filing revealed that MicroStrategy would sell up to $500 million in Class A shares. Guess what he can spend the proceeds on? That’s right, adding to his 129,000 BTC war chest; the largest bitcoin corporate treasury in the world.