This Week on Crypto Twitter: From DoJ scare to SBF’s spreadsheet – this week belonged to the memes!
The third week of 2023 has been in a whirlwind of activity – The past week on Crypto Twitter we saw all major heavyweight cryptos lending into the rally that resulted in the overall crypto market cap touching the coveted value of $1 trillion once again.

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ToggleIn this brand new series, we at CoinDCX want to keep you abreast of everything that has been happening on Twitter, crypto and everything in between. The third week of 2023 has been in a whirlwind of activity – primarily led by strong positive action coming out of the crypto market. The past week we saw all major heavyweight cryptos lending into the rally that resulted in the overall crypto market cap touching the coveted value of $1 trillion once again.
MONDAY – 16 JANUARY
The week began in a more or less uneventful manner, except for the king coin, Bitcoin continuing its strong rally over the $20,000 mark and the overall crypto market cap breaking past the $950 billion mark and edging closer to the $1 trillion mark!
TUESDAY – 17 JANUARY
On Tuesday – Maria Shen – an investor at the popular crypto venture capital firm Electric Capital took to Twitter to share some deep and positive insights regarding the crypto market as a whole. In the post, she talked about some of the key takeaways from the company’s fourth annual Developer Report. And from the looks of it, the budding blockchain developer space has shown consistent and continued growth throughout the year 2022, despite the raging bear market in that year.
2/ TLDR:
* Monthly devs grew 5% y/y while prices are down 70%+
* 23k+ monthly devs
* 471k monthly code commits
* 3.9k monthly devs in DeFi
* 61k NEW devs touched crypto code in 2022
* Several ecosystems outside of @ethereum have 500+ devs and are growing through this bear market pic.twitter.com/vP9KykJGQs— maria ⚡️ (@MariaShen) January 17, 2023
Read more: Top Blockchain Predictions 2023
WEDNESDAY – 18 JANUARY
Wednesday was a day that resulted in some spooks in the market. This was the day that began with some forewarning regarding a ‘international crypto action’ by the US Department of Justice. This seemed to have spooked the CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, more commonly known as CZ – that he turned to Twitter to post a very cryptic tweet (oh yes, strong pun!). But it was simply a link to one of its older tweets from the beginning of the year appealing to people to ignore FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), fake news and attacks etc.
— Madhur Sharma ⚡️ (@MadhurGovindam) January 18, 2023
But as it turns out, it was simply the DOJ taking quote-unquote “strict action” against a little known Chinese crypto exchange called Bitzlato – that quickly became the butt of many a memes and laughs on Twitter.
Bitzlato tagged wallets have $11k in them. At peak they had $6M. https://t.co/CF7yjYfEIS pic.twitter.com/JHEtAFuPfB
— Conor (@jconorgrogan) January 18, 2023
Apparently, this tiny crypto exchange at that point in time had about $11,000 worth of wallets with them and at its peak had about $6 million. And crypto Twitter went to town!
Huge opportunity emerging for exchanges to capture all that massive Bitzlato volume now.
— Hsaka (@HsakaTrades) January 18, 2023
vibes pic.twitter.com/NuLYoMfG5g
— 219.eth (@219_eth) January 18, 2023
Crypto Twitter was on a rampage, and there was no end to it.
If I had $1 for every Bitzlato meme posted in the past 30 mins, I would have more money than Bitzlato
— db (@tier10k) January 18, 2023
The announcement early in the day did spook the market resulted in some losses on the crypto prices front, but soon after the announcement was released – crypto prices quickly recovered back to usual levels. Fun day!
On this day, Sam Bankman-Fried or more commonly known as SBF – the disgraced founder of the once-third largest crypto exchange by volume – FTX – again took to express his flair for the written word, this time on a spreadsheet! On his substack newsletter that he started earlier this year – SBF outlined that FTX U.S “was and is solvent, likely with hundreds of millions of dollars in excess of customer balances.”
FTX US is solvent, as it always as been.https://t.co/XjcyYFsoU0 pic.twitter.com/kn9Wm9wxjl
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) January 18, 2023
On this day, we also saw news coming out from the battle brewing up between Winklevoss brothers’ led Gemini crypto exchange and the cash-strapped Genesis crypto lender. Turns out, now Genesis is preparing to become the latest from the crypto world to file for Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy code.
Read more: Crypto Tax India, Explained
UPDATE: @GenesisTrading prepares Ch. 11 bankruptcy filing. Expect an announcement no later than early next week (likely end of this week).
**DCG doing all it can to protect the DCG brand name, even if it means sacrificing a portfolio company and it’s creditors.
— Andrew (@AP_Abacus) January 18, 2023
THURSDAY – 19 JANUARY
Within hours of SBF posting his spreadsheet containing details to the operation of the US subsidiary of his crypto exchange – FTX, people went to town again and memes again began trending on crypto Twitter.
These funds, are they in the room with us right now? https://t.co/6spaLsHzob pic.twitter.com/msa6BwQrVj
— no longer an F1 fan (@burnersburners) January 19, 2023
But SBF carried on with his tirade despite all the criticism against him and firmly claiming that the US subsidiary of his crypto exchange, FTX – was still solvent and that the exchange should be turned back on.
I'm glad Mr. Ray is finally paying lip service to turning the exchange back on after months of squashing such efforts!
I'm still waiting for him to finally admit FTX US is solvent and give customers their money back…https://t.co/XjcyYFsoU0https://t.co/SdvMIMXQ5K
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) January 19, 2023
Immediately after this, we saw a major spike in FTT price, the native token of the FTX crypto exchange amid the speculations of a possible reboot of the now shuttered crypto exchange.
FTT jumps 33% on the news
John Ray gonna make it all back https://t.co/8LXEcOO9Zf pic.twitter.com/Iy3BvlaviM
— db (@tier10k) January 19, 2023
FRIDAY – 20 JANUARY
A solo #Bitcoin miner with only 10TH just won a block reward worth 6.25 $BTC (over $130,000).
They beat once-in-a-lifetime odds 🤯 pic.twitter.com/DPOugZb8jX
— Bitcoin Magazine (@BitcoinMagazine) January 20, 2023
Quite a day indeed!
On the same day, German luxury car brand, Porsche announced the mint price of its 7,500 piece NFT collection to celebrate its most iconic sports car of all time, the Porsche 911. Aptly priced at 0.911 ETH, it’s worth a little less than $1500 according to latest Ethereum prices.
The iconic 911. Not only a number – a legacy. Unveiling our mint price of 0.911 ETH.
— PORSCHΞ (@eth_porsche) January 20, 2023
Online crypto news publication took to Twitter to list out some of the biggest bankrupt crypto companies between 2022-2023. A handy guide to the result of the bear markets of 2022.
Bankrupt #crypto companies 2022-2023:
• Three Arrows Capital
• Celsius Network
• Terraform Labs
• Voyager Digital
• Core Scientific
• Babel Finance
• Hodlnaut
• Genesis
• BlockFI
• Zipmex
• FTX— Watcher.Guru (@WatcherGuru) January 20, 2023
SATURDAY & SUNDAY – 21 & 22 JANUARY
The weekend went by relatively in an uneventful manner, while at the same time we saw the overall crypto market cap surge once again to touch the milestone of the $1 trillion mark after a little less than three months – and at the same time scripting a 34% jump in the overall crypto market cap in the three weeks since the beginning of the year.
Catch the latest top crypto news daily on CoinDCX blog.
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