This week on crypto Twitter: More BlackRock banter as Ripple and Crypto.com grow globally

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

From a market perspective, the biggest talking point about crypto this week was an acquisition from last week: top investment firm BlackRock’s decision to apply to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for approval of a Bitcoin spot ETF.

While the SEC has dismissed such proposals like flies for years, the feeling is that this is different. It helps that BlackRock—the world’s largest asset manager with a whopping $9 trillion in assets under management—applied for 576 ETFs and was rejected just once.

This touch of experience and confidence helped drive the price of Bitcoin higher One-year high this weekend.

Footage of BlackRock CEO Larry Fink making the rounds explains the PR boost his company’s Bitcoin pivot represents.

Business analyst and popular crypto enthusiast Adam Cochran purchased an unofficial BlackRock NFT to celebrate the occasion.

The BlackRock news may have caused crypto prices to rise this week, but as usual in the cryptoverse, there was also a new amount of skepticism. Earlier this week, Cochran was seen giving his input on a proposal from Ethereum developers to increase the stake required for a network validator from 32 ETH to 2,048.

Crypto detective ZachXBT shared on Monday some of the toxic harassment he has faced from people trying to take advantage of him, as supporters rallied around his legal defense fund.

Blockchain journalist Colin Wu tweeted about an interesting bug that briefly happened on Binance.US. The formerly stalwart Binance is on the rise sued by the SEC for securities violations and cracks emerged in his public image after the SEC leaked incriminating chat logs of company employees discussing how they appeared to be aware the exchange was violating securities laws.

Like its US counterpart Coinbase, Ripple is currently on a global expansion path – and it has everything to do with the SEC’s crackdown on domestic blockchain companies.

Bitcoiners registered another high-profile convert in Washington on Thursday.

CNBC’s Mad Money Host Jim Cramer had a bit of a rant that day. Cramer was once all about crypto. but seemed to cool down a bit last summer.

Singapore-based exchange Crypto.com announced on Saturday that it has entered Europe.

Alex Gladstein, the chief strategy officer of the Human Rights Foundation, released a video from his organization that day warning the public about the troubling implications of a centrally issued digital currency – something that could mean the complete end of financial independence for those living under authoritarian regimes.

According to a joint report from Coinbase and The Block, which The Block editor Frank Chaparro tweeted on Sunday, many major companies are currently looking into crypto.

Finally, President Joe Biden said the following about our favorite cryptocurrency-related topic:

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