This Week on Crypto Twitter: Fantasy Top Tops the Charts, Trump Courts Crypto

Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt

This week, a gamified competition among Crypto Twitter influencers generated a frenzy of posts and millions in profits while major public figures like Tom Brady and Donald Trump waded back into crypto waters.

Fantasy Top—an Ethereum NFT game that pits social media fan bases against each other in a fantasy football-like competition—made waves this week as tribes of Crypto Twitter users furiously commented and reposted to support their chosen influencers. The game paid out $1.25 million to creators this week, plus potentially millions more in Blast Gold, as a cut of the game’s success.

Preventing Bots and shortening the Main Competition 🏁

To safeguard Fantasy participants and uphold a meritocratic environment, we’ve decided, together with the heroes, to end the competition slightly ahead of schedule, preemptively thwarting any surge in malicious activities.… pic.twitter.com/BKp0rYL6Io

— fantasy.top (@fantasy_top_) May 8, 2024

As the first round of the game concluded this week, influencers took victory laps alongside their followers; several accounts shared their bounties with the fans who pushed them over the top.

OMG!😭Can’t believe I won ! Thank you @fantasy_top_ team ! ❤️ keep doing the great work. 💪💪💪🚀🚀🚀

Never fade #1 Blast Dapp giving 50 ETH to each person in the top 3 of Main Tournament 1, sources. pic.twitter.com/U1wfkAfETl

— Herro (@HerroCrypto) May 10, 2024

While most of the buzz surrounding Fantasy Top was positive, given its incredible profitability, others were more skeptical given the long history of “SocialFi” projects with no apparent use case other than generating speculative interest, which typically collapse after stalling.

Unpopular opinion: fantasy top is an extremely boring ‘game’ that’s only pumped by KOLs because it allows them to monetize their reach

— Rodo (@0xRodo) May 10, 2024

Meanwhile, in the real world, Tom Brady caught some rough jokes at his Netflix roast earlier this week over his current commitment to crypto and former ties to the failed FTX exchange. Many crypto users still welcomed the brief mainstream moment in the spotlight as a sign that crypto can still climb higher.

Wealthy celebrities roasted Tom Brady about crypto, and it got a huge round of applause.

So much higher. 📈 pic.twitter.com/6NlxlP5CkY

— Daito 💚 (@DaitoYoshi) May 10, 2024

The biggest mainstream news to impact crypto came on Wednesday, however, when former president Donald Trump hosted a dinner party for holders of his NFTs at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

At the gathering, Trump declared his intent to embrace crypto in the United States if re-elected, sending many crypto users into a frenzy.

BREAKING: DONALD TRUMP IS FINE WITH CRYPTO pic.twitter.com/SCJDKdHQUB

— Frank (33.3%) (@frankdegods) May 9, 2024

At the same event, another NFT holder asked Trump about BODEN, a meme coin mocking President Joe Biden. Simply by making a quip about it—saying he didn’t think the coin sounded like a good investment—BODEN surged the following day.

Trump Speaks on $BODEN at NFT Event

“That’s a Lotta Money for a Coin, I Don’t Like That Investment”

Audio Source: @realDannyNelson pic.twitter.com/8NcpuCc6ZI

— db (@tier10k) May 9, 2024

Remarkably, users of the crypto betting site Polymarket had already waged nearly $100,000 on whether Trump would reference the coin by July. But read the fine print: Trump had to say the word ‘Boden,’ which he failed to. So close, yet so far.

please save me donald trump

say $boden pic.twitter.com/lfOVTk5lQ4

— Polymarket (@Polymarket) May 10, 2024

For all the frivolity, Trump’s event was a stark contrast to Pres. Joe Biden backing the SEC at the start of the week, and many commentators saw a serious election wedge issue developing. “Crypto voters will be heard this election,” former TIME and Bloomberg tech journalist and MoonPay exec Keith Grossman tweeted. “What is really needed is not division but rather a clear regulatory framework that is NOT politicized.”

First and foremost, I am 100% biased. I love crypto.

And, while crypto may not be an issue for everyone in this upcoming election it is definitely an issue for some and the constituency it attracts is very real and larger than one might expect.

Back in March, @paradigm…

— Keith A. Grossman 🟣 (@KeithGrossman) May 11, 2024

Edited by Ryan Ozawa.

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