Decrypt’s Art, Fashion, and Entertainment Hub.

Discover SCENE

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

Degens had plenty to sink their teeth into last week on Crypto Twitter, with surprise developments emerging from numerous high-profile projects in the space. 

At the top of the week, Friend.tech, the once-red-hot decentralized social network with financial incentives, announced that development of the project had effectively ceased after months of flagging momentum.

Admin and ownership parameters have been set to 0x000...000 to prevent any changes to their fees or functionality in the future.

This change does not affect the separate web client operated at https://t.co/YOHabcBL3H which will continue to function as is. No fees from either…

— friend.tech (@friendtech) September 8, 2024

ADADBacklash to the announcement was swift, given the tens of millions of dollars raked in by the so-called “SocialFi” experiment over its brief history—and the stigma in crypto against abandoning projects. 

yikes

could have allowed for a community takeover but naw

just crush the hopes of the people who believed the most and were still using the cursed app in spite of the team’s failures https://t.co/tZLIqPbnHf

— scoopy trooples (@scupytrooples) September 9, 2024

Friend.tech’s team later came back online to clarify that the project wasn’t shutting down and would remain functional. But many degens didn’t care. The creators were splitting, and that was the only signal they cared about.

Ruganese for...

"we're done and it's now a community-run project" pic.twitter.com/6kOWUEacXB

— Grail.eth (@graildoteth) September 9, 2024

Meanwhile, over on the national political stage, crypto enthusiasts once again appeared to overestimate their influence during a week that was dominated by former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris’ first and likely only live presidential debate. 

ADADCrypto lobbyists and fundraisers pushed hard to get a crypto-related question featured by ABC in the televised event, but their demands went unheeded. Neither crypto nor Bitcoin was mentioned once during the 90-minute session.

Tomorrow is the first debate between @realDonaldTrump and @KamalaHarris.

Join us in asking @abc to include a crypto question!

We've made it easy for you to call for the candidates to speak up about their position on cryptocurrency:https://t.co/KRelojjwnH pic.twitter.com/e1gfH56YvB

— Stand With Crypto🛡️ (@standwithcrypto) September 9, 2024

That result—while perhaps not unexpected—appeared to surprise degens, who waged nearly a million dollars on crypto betting site Polymarket over whether digital assets would be discussed during the high-stakes showdown. 

Bitcoin was not brought up once during the debate.

The moderators should be fired.

— Bitstein (@bitstein) September 11, 2024

But they would not be disappointed for long. On Thursday, two days after the debate, Trump announced that his family’s long-rumored DeFi project, World Liberty Financial, will launch on Monday via a Twitter Spaces event co-hosted by Rug Radio, Decrypt’s sister company. 

.@WorldLibertyFi pic.twitter.com/rHEGQXl4jL

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 12, 2024

In the teaser, Trump said that the project will “embrace the future with crypto, and [leave] the slow and outdated big banks behind,” a framing that some—including crypto attorney Gabe Shapiro, who previously advised the project—noted would be unthinkable coming from the former president just months ago. 

would you have predicted Trump saying 'leave behind slow and outdated big banks banks for DeFi' 12 or even 6 months go? pretty wild. . . https://t.co/XqgZuHxYNC

— _gabrielShapir0 (@lex_node) September 12, 2024

ADADAs to be expected on CT, though, even among those supportive of Trump’s embrace of crypto, there were qualms. 

NOOOO TRUUUUMMPPP, DON’T LAUNCH A DEFI AAVE CLONE GOVERNANCE TOKENS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH GOVERNMEEEEENNNTTTT pic.twitter.com/fSR0COaEuz

— Autism Capital 🧩 (@AutismCapital) September 12, 2024

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

Daily Debrief Newsletter

Start every day with the top news stories right now, plus original features, a podcast, videos and more.Your EmailGet it!Get it!