This Week on Crypto Twitter: Brian Armstrong and Jack Dorsey Blast Apple’s App Retailer Crypto Clampdown

It was a relatively quiet week in the cryptoverse. The most significant bit of adoption news came from Buckingham Palace on Thursday when British King Charles signed his assent to a reform bill that now recognizes crypto trading as a regulated activity. Similarly, European parliamentarians announced their own crypto-focused regulatory reforms.

These were hardly discussed on Twitter, though. More attention was given to Apple’s removal of decentralized social networking app Damus from the App Store. Apple had given Damus a fortnight to remove its Bitcoin tipping feature (via the Layer 2 Lightning Network) and bring the app into compliance by integrating it with Apple’s own in-house payments mechanism.

On Monday, Damus tweeted that it had updated its app to bring it into compliance, yet was still removed from the store. 

The following day, Bitcoin-loving Block CEO Jack Dorsey criticized Apple for encroaching on users’ and creators’ financial freedom. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong supported his argument. 

Crypto journalist Ekin Genç shared a chart on Monday highlighting the explosive growth of Ethereum staking over the last two and a half years. 

Crypto custodian and fintech infrastructure company Prime Trust LLC landed in hot water with Nevada’s Financial Institutions Division, according to Crypto Twitter news account @tier10k. The allegations are pretty damning. 

Solana co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Raj Gokal got excited about Futurama’s revival on Hulu. The new episodes appear to reference crypto and COVID. How very zeitgeisty!

That day, Brian Armstrong accused the U.S. of “squandering an early lead” in the adoption and regulation of crypto before reiterating his tireless call for sensible regulation. Coinbase is a publicly listed U.S. company, but it has recently been expanding into other territories due to the harsh domestic regulatory climate.

Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr is trying to position himself as the crypto-friendly option. Looks like he has Michael Saylor’s vote. 

Speaking of Bitcoin believers, if you’ve been wondering what MicroStrategy’s chairman has been up to lately, then wonder no more. He’s still Buying More Bitcoin. 

Bloomberg ETF expert Eric Balchunas explained how ARK Invest’s amended proposal to the SEC for a Bitcoin spot ETF has given the company a head start on BlackRock. BlackRock is the world’s largest asset management company, stewarding a whopping $9 trillion in assets. Of the 576 ETF applications it has made to the SEC, 575 of them have been approved to date, so it makes sense that other ETF-hungry firms are looking at BlackRock’s filing for tips for their own. 

Market data from Kaiko suggests that Bitcoin’s correlation with tech equities has hit a three-year low. 

Finally, self-proclaimed “Internet Detective Exposing Scams” Coffeezilla jumped on a bit of content by notorious influencer/scammer Logan Paul.

Paul did not respond.