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Crypto’s counterculture NFT project Milady Maker saw a huge surge in volume yesterday following Elon Musk’s tweet of a Milady meme. Whether that bump is going to have the same impact as the Twitter chief’s affinity for dogecoin remains to be seen. 

Earlier in the day, Musk had liked a reply to his former girlfriend and singer Grimes, which mentioned the word “milady” and featured two memes about Miladys. Later on, he tweeted one of the memes, without adding context or clarifying whether he knew it was related to an NFT project.

Regardless, it sent the Milady NFT collection, NFT collections related to it and a token under its name that was only created a few days ago higher.

The biggest impact was to the main Milady collection. The project hit 7,433 ETH ($13.5 million) in trading volume, according to OpenSea, with more than 1,300 sales. The project had the largest trading volume on OpenSea, more than two and a half times that of popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, according to Martin Lee, a data journalist at crypto data site Nansen.

“It wasn’t just a small handful of wallets apeing in as well, it was by far the highest number of unique buyers. I saw a bunch of purchases well above floor,” he said, referring to the floor price, which is the lowest price available for an NFT collection.

Musk’s history with dogecoin

It’s not the first time Musk has started a crypto-related rally with a tweet. He has for years sent dogecoin on rollercoaster rides with his on-again, off-again affinity for the memecoin. Most recently, he sent it soaring about 27% after swapping Twitter’s blue bird for a Shiba Inu last month.  

Following Musk’s Milady tweet, the floor price rose from 3.8 ETH ($6,900) to as high as 7.2 ETH ($13,000) before it came back down to around 5 ETH ($9,000). 

Lee noted that there was a large amount of sales from existing holders who were cashing out on the increased attention. Lee said that there were 349 sellers against just 106 buyers, suggesting the new buyers were picking up multiple NFTs.

Some of the buying action came from pre-existing Milady holders. He noted that 11 wallets who have never sold a Milady bought more NFTs. In contrast, 26 wallets who had never sold a Milady previously, decided to sell.

Musk’s tweet also had an impact on the Redacted Remilio Babies NFT collection, which describes itself as an expansion of the Milady paradigm — with a schizophrenic reactionary aesthetics twist.

This collection saw a surge in trading volume to 1,570 ETH ($2.8 million), with 813 sales. Its floor price rose from 1.5 ETH ($2,722) to 2.4 ETH (4,356). 

A token called Miladys

On the fungible side of things, Musk’s tweet also caused a surge in the price of a token called milady meme coin (LADYS), which isn’t officially linked to the Milady NFT collection.

This token’s price pumped 3,000%, according to CoinGecko, and hit a $150 million market cap. It even saw a trading volume of $200 million.

However, there are a lot of red flags with the token. It was created just three days ago, according to crypto data site Arkham Intelligence, and a large percentage of its supply is owned by a very small number of wallets (and therefore individuals). 

One wallet spent $10,000 on milady meme coin and it’s now worth $2.7 million, Arkham noted. This suggests that, were these large wallets to sell, that could put a significant dent in the price of the token, which only has a limited amount of liquidity in its pool on the decentralized exchange Uniswap.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The crypto exchange set off a kerfuffle by describing the Pepe the Frog meme as having been co-opted as a hate symbol by alt-right groups.

As the world locked down for COVID, meme-assets like Dogecoin and Disaster Girl grabbed the attention of a younger generation of retail investors. Three years later, memes are driving value across financial markets. This feature is part of our “CoinDesk Turns 10” series.

The transaction fees debacle might be a short lived revenue bump for the miners but provides a glimpse of the future for the miners.

Paradigm, the VC fund led by Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, is moving to support the crypto exchange in its battle against the U.S. Securities and Exchange commission.

The firm filed an amicus brief on Wednesday in support of a lawsuit filed by Coinbase against the regulator last month that seeks to compel it to respond to a request for formal guidance for the crypto industry. The exchange used a writ of mandamus, a type of lawsuit reserved for “exceptional circumstances” in which a court can force federal officials to act.

“Chair Gensler’s refrain that crypto projects, including digital asset exchanges, should just ‘come in and register’ is an insincere admonition that is impossible to comply with,” Paradigm said in a blog post, arguing that the SEC has a legal obligation to provide the crypto industry with clear rules that are subject to judicial review. “By refusing to do so, the agency effectively paralyzes a major and growing industry.”

Coinbase first petitioned the regulator last July to propose and adopt rules that would govern the regulation of digital assets that are classified as securities. Gensler has pushed back against suggestions that there is insufficient clarity and warned crypto firms in April that they need to “comply with American laws.”

The widely watched dispute comes as a perceived hostile regulatory environment in the U.S. could push crypto firms offshore. Lawmakers in the country do seem to be getting the message, however slowly, and a joint committee hearing in the U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday showcased growing consensus about the need for new rules.

Paradigm says SEC delay has resulted in ‘de facto ban’ 

“Paradigm, and the entrepreneurs it backs, have a strong interest in ensuring that the SEC be held to account for its delay in responding to Coinbase’s rulemaking petition,” the VC fund said in its filing, saying that the delay has left the industry in a state of uncertainty. “The SEC has not provided clear rules and guidance for digital assets and digital-asset trading platforms, and yet, it continues to seek enforcement actions against participants in the digital-assets market.”

The VC fund said that the SEC’s refusal to respond to Coinbase’s petition for rules as resulted in a “de facto ban” on digital asset trading platforms. It argued that entrepreneurs it backs have been affected by the uncertainty. 

“Paradigm has a strong interest in ensuring the SEC follows the law,” the firm said, alleging that the SEC has flouted “bedrock principles” to provide companies fair warning for over a decade. “Instead, the SEC has chosen to regulate through press releases, ‘office hour’ videos posted on Twitter, enforcement actions and thinly veiled threats.”

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Binance Labs has grown its assets to $9 billion from $7.5 billion despite a bear market and the post-FTX collapse turbulence.

BlockFi custodial wallet users can receive nearly $300 million after a bankruptcy judge ruled that the wallets belong to clients, not the troubled crypto lender.

Judge Michael Kaplan weighed in on the months-long dispute over customer wallets during a hearing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey, CoinDesk reported.

“The court finds that all digital assets held by the debtors in custodial omnibus wallets are indeed client property, and not property of the bankruptcy estates, subject, of course, to possible avoidance and clawback rights,” Kaplan said.

The judge ruled against BlockFi repaying $375 million in funds that clients tried to withdraw from interest-bearing accounts, saying that “no transfer request by customers between the BIA and the custodial wallet accounts initiated after 8:15 p.m. on Nov. 10, 2022 were effectuated and completed.” 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

BlockFi custodial wallet users can be returned nearly $300 million, as a New Jersey judge ruled on Thursday May 11 that assets sitting in the wallets belong to clients rather than the estate of the bankrupt crypto lender.

Soon after Justin Sun announced on Twitter he would trade memecoins for “fun,” opportunists appear to have leaped into action, with several wallets gifting the Tron founder a load of near-worthless tokens.

Sending Sun memecoins — to make it seem as though he’s buying them — mirrors a common ruse intended to trick traders into thinking a particular token market is about to heat up, according to The Block Research Analyst Steven Zheng.

“It is not surprising that after Sun’s tweet we saw an influx of memecoins being sent to his account,” he said. “Oftentimes scammers and promoters send their tokens to popular influencer addresses to trick people into buying their coins.”

The developments come amid the ongoing craze around so-called memecoins, or tokens with little purpose beyond pure market speculation. Would-be promoters seeking attention via Sun’s extensive public platform — and using the network itself to do so — speak to the current moment.

It’s also an environment where would-be scammers have sought to exploit unsuspecting token holders. Earlier this week, a pepe-themed NFT scam circulated on Twitter that had been organized to appear legitimate. 

Justin Sun memecoin warning

PeckShieldAlert appears to have first noticed the activity and posted a warning to Twitter.

Sun “continues to receive multiple shitcoins following his tweets,” the post reads. “We have noticed that a scammer gang created a counterfeit four [coin] … days ago and used [a wallet in order to pretend] to be Justin Sun.”

Etherscan data indicates that Sun has been gifted several different memecoins, including WEED, METH and NGMI.

Sun did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The hashtag #DELETECOINBASE trended on Twitter for a second day after Coinbase published a newsletter for customers flagging that some groups believe Pepe the Frog has become “hate symbol” for the alt-right.

Pepe coin fans have been tweeting prodigiously for several hours in an attempt to get people to close their Coinbase accounts and move to other platforms to trade the memecoin.

The phrase was No.3 in the UK and No.2 in the U.S. on Twitter’s trending lists, at the time of writing.

Coinbase’s centralized exchange does not actually support trading in pepe. Coinbase users searching for the token receive this message: “Pepe isn’t supported on Coinbase. You can go to Coinbase Wallet to buy it on a decentralized exchange.”

The #DELETECOINBASE movement was given initial momentum by Borovik.eth, a pseudonymous Twitter user with 94,000 followers. He has been tweeting pro-Pepe memes all night.

The Coinbase newsletter was titled, “Behind the memecoin frenzy,” and contained a section labelled “What you should know about pepe, the memecoin of the moment.”

It read:

“Pepe, which was issued around three weeks ago with a comically huge supply of 420 trillion tokens, has been leading the memecoin activity. The token is based on the Pepe the Frog meme, which first surfaced on the internet nearly 20 years ago as a comic-strip character. Over time it has been co-opted as a hate symbol by alt-right groups, according to the Anti-Defamation League.”

Coinbase did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Block, but a representative told Cointelegraph that the company had “nothing further to add.”

Meanwhile, the price of pepe has continued to sink from its Friday peak. It stood at $0.0000016 this morning, down about 20% over the previous 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.