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- 😡 Bitboy & Ben.Eth: Scammers or creative geniuses?
😡 Bitboy & Ben.Eth: Scammers or creative geniuses?
PLUS Arbitrum & LSD starts to PUMP!
GM Legends,
Bitcoin and Ethereum look like they are anticipating the chaos that might ensue during the Bitcoin 2023 conference later this week. Generally speaking, Bitcoin pukes during Bitcoin conferences whilst Ethereum LSD tokens are outperforming the rest of the market.
Bitboy Ben and Eth Ben have been causing controversy in recent weeks with $BEN coin and the $PSYOPs mammoth presale leaving crypto Twitter confused, disgusted and feeling fomo.
Let’s tuck in!
Need to know.If you’ve only got 2 minutes.
The big story.😡 Bitboy & Ben.Eth: Scammers or creative geniuses?
DeFi insights.🖼 Aveo launch Aveo OTC📅 Trader Joe gets ready for Full Send SZN 2🦧 Degen corner: The next rotation: Arbitrum or LSD?
In the news. 🐮 Worldcoin eyes up $100m funding 🐻 Greed proves scams are easy👨🏻💼 What the FED?! J Powell speaks on Friday
Plus Twitter reads from @BackTheBunny, @rektdiomedes and @alpha_pls!
🔥 The big story.To make you think.
Right… THIS HAS GOT TO STOP.
Question: Would you send SEVEN MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLARS to a jpeg of a monkey?
Let alone pay for a $35 bill at Starbucks for 2 properly posh frappa-moca-loca-almond-latte-cinos ☕.
What have we just witnessed here? A creative anomaly? A social experiment? Or a public rug pull?
Let’s dig into this.
Crypto runs in cycles with its final form always ending with an iconic meme. Our beloved Pepe is the final form of this parabolic run.
Meme Trading | J1002
Fun fact: Bitcoin has always been dumped shortly after meme season. Let’s hope this time it’s different!
The TLDR Story of the Ben’s
Meme season is full of frens, fun and fruitful devs hoping to score it big.
So big that they can retire with their magical internet moonies.
Timeline of idiocy -
Eth_Ben made $BEN coin
Bitboy_Crypto copes a bag, acquires and shills $BEN
Meme coins with Names associated with them begin to take hold
Both Ben’s make bank
Eth_Ben makes new coin
Eth_Ben makes BANK from the $BEN acquisition, whilst still (at the time of writing) holding $6m in tokens as Bitboy_Crypto uses his 1M+ social media presence to influence the token price, as seen from the chart below.
Image Courtesy of Dexscreener
Both Bens made bank ball’n off $BEN LARP but…
From Public Experiment to Political Statement?
What looked like a public experiment (as all memes are) is starting to look like a political public awareness play to potentially push Bitboys' “for the people policy bill”.
Remember when Bitboy became the “SBF bounty hunter” during SBF’s downfall which had a political underlying right?!
I want everyone to understand. $BEN is not a memecoin. It’s a crypto adoption tool. This is what we will be turning it into.
Three pronged plan:
- Government Lobbying
- Public Awareness
- Strategic Crypto Education
If you are against $BEN, you are against crypto. Period.
— Ben Armstrong (@Bitboy_Crypto)
May 11, 2023
Ok so there might be more to this than meets the eye and we’ll dig into that at a later date.
Chapter 2: $PSYOPs
If greed is the drug, then FOMO is the fuel.
Once the euphoric feeling of greed, public recognition and green $$$ candles are combined it’s hard to stop.
I remember mum telling me as a kid that “it never hurts to ask, because in the worst case, it doesn’t happen and the best case… you get what you ask for.”
This leads me to the next social experiment, Psyops.
A social experiment that has led to almost $7 million United States dollars fuelled by FOMO being sent to his presale wallet…
A social experiment that many are expecting to end in tears (it will).
Remember Hex and the recently launched Pulsechain from Gucci fanboy Richard Heart?
Yeah… let’s hope Psyops holders don't get Hex’factor’d.
The Ben’s are playing the game of Psyops.
Psyops you say? Well, I asked ChatGPT to explain the word Psyops to me as if I was a 2-year-old. This is what it said.
“using special words, pictures, and tricks to make people think or feel a certain way. It's a way to change what people believe or how they act by using clever communication.”
A game that when in a position of significant influence can and will be dangerous as they taketh from the blind and giveth to the flush.
NOTE: At the time of writing the token is open for trading so make sure to check the contract first and do your own research before making any stupid decisions.
Our Take
This feels like a perfectly played social experiment that on the face of it looks like “meme coin name meta” but seemingly has an underlying agenda that is “Psyopsing” the attention of crypto Twitter towards a political agenda.
It is an abuse of power and social status that makes a joke of those working hard in the industry to make an honest buck and be part of the next big technological revolution.
And no… I’m not salty that no one made a name meta coin of me haha!
PS. 🫠🤦♂️
I was the developer of @eth_ben first $PSYOP contract. I have never worked with someone more unprofessional or deranged and due to this I left the team before payment. I have credible evidence that Ben does not intend for this to be a fair launch or even project 👇
— vydamo (not Yung Dot former ftx insider) (@vydamo_)
May 16, 2023
Be honest ANON...
Did you buy into the presale?
👀 DeFi insights & project updates.Project updates, governance reports and industry secrets.
The World of DeFi
Aveo - New product: Aveo OTC allows traders to trade altcoin options on-chain. (Twitter)
Camelot Dex - will be integrating with DefiEdge, providing advanced features to their concentrated liquidity AMM. (Twitter)
DefiLlama - 0xKofi, DefiLlama contributor is building a plugin to go on top of ChatGPT. (Twitter)
GND - xGND unlock happening on May 17th. (Twitter)
Hashflow - Complete the latest quest to earn new roles released in Discord. (Guild.xyz)
Lido Finance - V2 went live and release last weeks analytics. Lido on Polygon grew almost 35% (Twitter)
Trader Joe - new quests are live on Zealy in the run-up to the, yet to be announced, “Full Send SZN 2” (Zealy)
unshETH - will now be deploying to Arbitrum. 3 chains, 1 token. (Twitter)
Vega Protocol - classed as “the world’s best dex” is now live on alpha mainnet. (Twitter)
VirtuSwap - Details on the up coming airdrop will be released over the next 7 days. (Twitter)
Y2K - $MAI has been added to the latest weekly vaults. (Twitter)
Governance Updates
Optimism - The yearly “Treasury Appropriation Proposal: Foundation Year 2 Budget” draft is live on the Optimism governance forums. This gives an overview of OP applications and a review of the Year 1 budget. (Governance Forums)
📊 Degen corner.Charts, smart money or a degen idea.
What’s next Arbitrum or LSD?
Are the meme szn profits being rotated into Arbitrum gems…
TVL filtered via 24hr Volume | Defillama.com
Or straight back into LSD’s?
LSD filtered via 7d change | Defillama.com
Two narratives to look for over the summer months. Arbitrum charts look fairly bottomed out whilst LSD continues to evolve bringing more function to the Ethereum token.
Some fun stats over at wenmerge.com including 173,932 ETH of rewards are eligible to be withdrawn.
🗞 In the news.The important bits.
Worldcoin eyes up $100m funding as the a16z backed iris scanning crypto project is in “advanced talks” for a fresh $100m investment. (Decrypt)
BlockFi to liquidate lending business after sale attempts fail. (The Block)
Optimism’s mainnet upgrade to Bedrock goes live on June 6th at 4PM UTC. During the upgrade downtime transactions, deposits, and withdrawals will be offline. (Twitter)
Kava token PUMPS ahead of tomorrow’s (May 17th) mainnet upgrade to Kava 13. The upgrade includes a bridge to transfer assets from Cosmos to Kava. (CoinDesk)
Greed proves scams are easy. The social experiment that captured 43,000+ Twitter accounts led by Voshy to teach and prove to traders just how easy it is to get scammed in crypto. (CoinDesk)
👨🏻💼 What the FED?!
Key events coming up for the rest of the week. The ECB (European Central Bank) President Lagarde speaks later today (Tuesday) and Friday.
Key Events This Week:
1. Retail sales data - Tuesday
2. Housing starts data - Wednesday
3. Jobless claims data - Thursday
4. Existing home sales data - Thursday
5. 14 Fed speakers including Powell
6. Retail companies report earnings
RT & LIKE if you enjoy these previews!
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter)
May 14, 2023
🐥 Twitter reads.In case you missed it.
@BackTheBunny breaks down the sociopolitical evolution of one of the most popular NFT collections, Milady.
THE MILADY SOCIOPOLITICAL EVOLUTION
To shock puritans:
1970-90s: devil worship, rock, tattoos
2020s: *insert wrongthink heretical belief*
A counterculture is blowback. It's intentionally offensive to establishment beliefs. Find it repellent? Good, it’s meant to gatekeep you 🧵
— 𝙱𝚞𝚗𝚗𝚢 𝙶𝚞𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚊 (vietnam farmer) 🪷 (@BackTheBunny)
May 16, 2023
@rektdiomedes releases yet another mind-bending Twitter thread… this time featuring Gandalf.
Thread: Why The Intellectually-Curious Will Dominate The 2020's
🧵
One of my favorite parts of The Lord Of The Rings is where Gandalf goes to Minas Tirith to search the depths of its archives for information on the Ring Of Power...
1/x
— rektdiomedes (@rektdiomedes)
May 15, 2023
@alpha_pls takes a look into Vertex Protocol on Arbitrum. PS… there IS an airdrop happening for users of the platform.
CEXs have historically had much better performance vs DEXs.
I think that's about to change.
There is a DEX live on @arbitrum, which is ready to compete!
5 reasons why you should try @vertex_protocol today: 🧵👇
May 15, 2023
And on that note, thanks for reading, catcha apes in the next edition!
blocmates team 🫡
🤝 A final word.
A quick word from our super awesome sponsors who help us make this all possible...
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