Top Stories This Week
Coinbase calls Pepe a ‘hate symbol,’ prompting calls to boycott the exchange
An email sent out to Coinbase customers describing the Pepe the Frog meme as a “hate symbol” co-opted by alt-right groups has drawn significant ire from the PEPE memecoin community this week. Two hours after the email was sent, the hashtag “#deletecoinbase” hit the trending sidebar on Twitter, with over 14,000 comments calling on users to boycott the exchange. Paul Grewal, the Coinbase’s chief legal officer, took to Twitter to respond to the outrage and apologized: “We screwed up and we are sorry.”
United State’s Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill restricting the use of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) in the state. The new law prohibits the use of a United States federal CBDC “as money within Florida’s Uniform Commercial Code (UCC).” It also bans the use of CBDCs issued by foreign governments and calls on other states to use their commercial codes to institute similar prohibitions. DeSantis said he was spurred into action by White House studies of the new financial technology. The law takes effect on July 1.
Milady (LADYS), the self-organized memecoin based on the anime avatar NFT collection of the same name, surged by over 5,250% on May 11 after Elon Musk tweeted a meme using the imagery of a Milady NFT. The tweet also boosted the collection’s average sale price. “LADYS is a meme coin without any intrinsic value or expectation of financial return. There is no formal team or roadmap,” said the token developers. “The coin is completely useless and for entertainment purposes only.”
Bitcoin Ordinals continue to inspire debate among the Bitcoin community. Soon after their introduction in January 2023, opponents of the technology began to raise concerns about its perceived flaws, citing slow speeds and rising transaction costs. Meanwhile, its supporters claim that the ordinals provide more opportunity, improve decentralization and ensure freedom of expression. The technology enables adding text, images and code on a satoshi — the smallest unit of Bitcoin.
To catch a scammer: Kraken builds fake crypto account to ‘bait’ fraudsters
Crypto exchange Kraken has provided a novel method for flagging malicious wallets — building a fake crypto environment to “scam bait” bad actors. Kraken created the “custom environment” for popular streamer Kitboga to frustrate a scammer posing as U.S. President Joe Biden. The punchline comes when Kitboga, who portrays an elderly person with a $450,000 balance in Bitcoin, infuriates the scammer after incorrectly typing his wallet address before sending over all of the funds.
