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

After two straight weeks of growth, crypto markets a bit cramped. Even though reports of liquidity issues appear to have slowed, investors have been cautious.

This week, Bitcoin-HODLing companies Block Inc. and MicroStrategy both reported large impairment charges on their holdings. Block is down $36 million, while MicroStrategy is down $917 million. There were also huge attacks on Solana and the nomad symbolic bridge project.

Reports of the Nomad exploit first surfaced early Tuesday. A researcher from crypto investment firm/Web3 Paradigm called Sam Sun (Twitter handle @samczsun) inspected the situation and tweeted a long, detailed analysis of the smart contract misconfiguration that cost users $190 million .

The exploit was apparently easy for anyone with the know-how to pull off, which resulted in a bit of freedom for all as attackers huddled in to plunder the protocol. Nomad quickly offered a reward to anyone who returned the funds and by Friday had recovered $22 million.

‘Widespread’

Barely 24 hours after the Nomad exploit, reports started pouring in a major Solana hack which may have passed up to $8 million.

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

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

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

The team later released a partial explanation, alleging that the exploit was likely due to stolen private key information. Solana also said affected users appear to have been compromised by their Slope wallets.

Ava Labs CEO and Founder Emin Gün Sirer shared his thoughts, including some very technical explanations of how the private keys were accessed.

Slope finally responded.

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

Somewhere else

On Monday, the UK High Court ruled that Dr Craig Wright, a man who claims to have invented Bitcoin, had advanced fake evidence in his latest libel court battle against crypto podcaster Peter McCormack, who repeatedly called Wright a liar. McCormack was therefore asked to pay him 1 pound ($1.21) in damages. Who says you can’t see a person smiling behind their tweet?

In other news, eagle-eyed crypto journalist Jacqueline Melinek wants to know why Gucci will accept the EPA.

Crypto fan Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) pointed out on Thursday how even hugely successful investors like Cathie Wood make mistakes. Pretty big too: looks like she sold the Coinbase stock drop. Highligths.

And no matter what you think of crypto, there’s something weird about a Virginia pension fund investing in “yield farming”… now. Isn’t it a little too soon after the collapse of Terra and Celsius? Twitter financial analyst Sean Tuffy senses 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, moving into a new role as executive chairman. Phong Le, the company’s chairman, is expected to take over from Saylor on Monday. Saylor is about to focus even more on Bitcoin.

A popular blockchain sleuth believes powerful forces are plotting to FUD Binance.

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

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