Decrypt

Dominant personalities stole the narrative this week. Industry leaders also decried the conviction and sentencing of a Tornado Cash developer.

Catch up on this week’s biggest crypto and NFT gaming news and find some weekend reads in our latest roundup.

GameStop bull Roaring Kitty returned to the internet, prompting a huge meme stock and coin surge. And Bitcoin hit its highest price since the halving.

The Department of Justice charged Daren Li and Yicheng Zhang with orchestrating a “pig butchering” cryptocurrency scam.

“Only in crypto.” Meme coin Pacmoon rewarded one user with a hefty airdrop—which was bigger than expected thanks to a pal’s costly mistake.

Pavel Durov holds 1% of this year’s biggest gaming token, donated by players. And he’s not selling his Notcoin—not now, at least.

As other firms spend millions on pro-crypto candidates, Joe Lubin tells Decrypt that Consensys has resisted the impulse. Here’s why.

Jan Leike explains his resignation from OpenAI, citing a lack of support and concerns over the company’s focus on AGI over safety.

The price of Bitcoin just touched its highest point since last month’s halving, hitting a level not seen in more than a month.

The Bitcoin liquid restaking protocol is opening the door for Asian BTC capital to meet western projects, said founder Matt Ye.

GameStop filed to increase its total shares by 15% and the market hated it, tanking the price even further. The GME bull isn’t happy.

America’s biggest crypto exchange Coinbase is confident that the SEC will approve spot Ethereum ETFs very soon, despite broader pessimism.

Who’s next? Elon Musk announced that Neuralink is accepting applications for the second test subject for its brain chip trial.

Both GameStop shares and the unofficial GME meme coin on Solana have seen similar plunges from their high prices this week.

Video game retailer GameStop (GME) shot to prominence in early 2021 as retail investors drove a “meme stock” short squeeze.

GameStop has announced that it plans to sell 45 million shares after posting disappointing preliminary Q1 results.

One of Silicon Valley’s most well-known start-up incubators has signed a strategic collaboration with Polkadot.

In the wake of the attack, Pump.fun’s largest tokens have recovered. But some affected tokens remain in limbo.

Ubisoft’s iconic franchise is returning just a year after its last installment—and this time, we’re going to Japan in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

DTCC announced it had just concluded a tokenization pilot with Wall Street giants like JP Morgan and BNY Mellon, leveraging Chainlink’s CCIP.

Reddit stock spiked on the news while critics of the social discussion platform predicted AI bias would get worse.

Trained in part on TV sitcoms, researchers tout a new AI-powered tool that mixes voice input and emoji output to identify sarcasm with 75% accuracy.

The global music industry giant represents top artists that have already seen AI-generated knockoffs, from Michael Jackson to Celine Dion.

Once the top Solana NFT project, DeGods has faced ample challenges and criticism since bridging away. The founder addressed it all head-on.

UPDATE: Rockstar Games has narrowed the release window for GTA 6. Here’s when we’ll be able to play the next Grand Theft Auto.

Jennifer “Jenndefer” Duong has a brighter spotlight thanks to Fantasy Top and her content around Ethereum layer-2 network Blast. Here’s her story.

A purported former Pump.fun employee drained an estimated $2 million worth of Solana on Thursday. Here’s why he did it.

Trabucco said Salame was his “best friend” and deserves a “fair” punishment. Salame’s lawyers are seeking no more than 18 months imprisonment.

People tribally follow both Warren Buffet and Roaring Kitty, Stratos founder Rennick Palley says—even though they’re polar opposites.

Telegram-based game Notcoin dropped over 80 billion tokens to some 35 million players in an airdrop via The Open Network.