Despite the hostility of many crypto users to Joe Biden’s crypto agenda, the president’s crisis of legitimacy this week has cut both ways for degens—who, surprise surprise, care first and foremost about profiting off the news one way or another.
On crypto betting site Polymarket, users have already bet over $326 million on questions related to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election, and whether Biden will drop out over newfound concerns about his age and mental fitness.
As political pundits and media figures heatedly debated this week whether Biden might drop out of the 2024 presidential election, Polymarket became one of the first places to approach the question with some decisiveness. On Wednesday, Vice President Kamala Harris officially became the site’s favorite to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.
By Friday, Biden had returned to the top spot on Polymarket, as prediction market volatility reflected the ongoing uncertainty of U.S. politics. But his diminished prospects overall have brought sustained misery to other degens. Namely: BODEN holders.
The Solana meme coin, based on a distorted illustration of the current president, was almost certainly not created as an earnest endorsement of Biden or his campaign. In fact, negative Biden-related stories—including the conviction last month of his son Hunter—previously boosted the token.
But lately, BODEN’s fortunes appear to have become tied to the question of whether or not Biden will remain in the 2024 race. When the president’s candidacy entered a new phase of crisis on Wednesday, BODEN crashed over 38% within 24 hours.
Holders of the token—whether they ever wanted to or not—found themselves in the position this week of becoming advocates for the politician they once loved to mock. Some BODEN holders attempted to find a silver lining, prophesying that should Biden somehow find a way forward through the next few weeks, the token would see unprecedented highs.
In the same vein, a Kamala Harris-themed Solana meme token soared nearly 400% this week—making yet another cohort of crypto traders into amateur political pundits overnight.
In a year that has pushed crypto to unprecedented heights of cultural and political prominence, this week brought some of the cycle’s most uncanny moments yet—thanks to Donald Trump.
On Monday, just one day after the former president survived an apparent second assassination attempt, he hosted Rug Radio’s Farokh Sarmad, a prominent Crypto Twitter personality, to discuss digital assets policy at his Mar-a-Lago estate. (Disclaimer: Rug Radio is Decrypt’s sister company.)
Due to the wild timing,...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
Degens had plenty to sink their teeth into last week on Crypto Twitter, with surprise developments emerging from numerous high-profile projects in the space.
At the top of the week, Friend.tech, the once-red-hot decentralized social network with financial incentives, announced that development of the project had effectively ceased after months of flagging momentum.
Admin and ownership parameters have been set to 0x000...000 to prevent any changes to...
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
While Crypto Twitter can often be brutally black-and-white when it comes to narrativizing major events, this week saw the industry splinter into shades of gray after Telegram CEO Pavel Durov broke a days-long silence following his release from police custody in France.
In a lengthy letter to the public on this week—posted first to Telegram and then to Twitter—Durov weighed in for the first time on his arrest and indictment last week by French authori...
