This Week On Crypto Twitter: Good for Meme Coins, Bad for (Alleged) Crypto Criminals

Bullish enthusiasm reigned over Crypto Twitter this week, as market-wide price pumps for Bitcoin, altcoins, and numerous meme coins spread smiles all around—unless, of course, you were a fallen crypto executive in the crosshairs of the U.S. government. 

The Bitcoin ecosystem carried on its weeks-long upward climb unabated, with BTC, numerous Bitcoin Ordinals collections, and the protocol’s ORDI token all seeing substantial gains. On Twitter, enthusiasm for the sprint reached near-delirious levels, with many Bitcoin maximalists attempting to will the world’s top cryptocurrency to keep on rising, forever. 

Over on Solana, SOL continued to rise as well in recent days, pushing forward a remarkable streak for the altcoin that’s steadily progressed since October. Most enthusiasm this week, though, centered around BONK, the network’s top meme coin, which achieved the (probably) coveted honor of becoming one of the top three dog-themed coins in crypto on Tuesday. The coin is up an incredible 1,019% in the last month, according to CoinGecko. 

Those gains, combined with heightened activity and price gains for several other meme coins including PEPE, DOGE, and SHIB—plus hundreds of millions of dollars accumulated this week from DeFi airdrops—all coalesced to induce a giddy frenzy on Twitter, where crypto users appeared almost fully convinced that the enduring crypto winter might finally be over. 

Things probably didn’t feel quite so rosy, though, if you happened to be a crypto founder caught up in criminal proceedings with the U.S. Department of Justice. 

On Thursday, a report revealed that Montenegro is set to extradite Terra founder Do Kwon to New York, where the LUNA and UST creator will face criminal fraud charges levied by the U.S. government. 

And just hours later, a federal judge in Seattle formally forbid Binance founder Changpeng Zhao from returning home to his family in the UAE while awaiting sentencing for violating U.S. money laundering laws, deeming crypto’s richest man a flight risk with “enormous wealth” and “no ties to the United States.” 

Some Twitter users pondered how the ruling might impact Zhao’s social life, as the crypto founder is now likely doomed to wait around Seattle until February. 

Zhao doesn’t appear to be particularly enjoying Seattle so far. 

But he shouldn’t have fear: there are plenty of ways for him to make the most of his time in the jewel of the Pacific Northwest, while waiting to see if he’s going to prison. 

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.