This Week on Crypto Twitter: Outrage and Unity as Telegram and OpenSea Come Under Fire

By Sander Lutz

The crypto industry found itself in an increasingly familiar position this week: on the defensive, banding together to fight back against encircling government forces. 

The latest cycle of drama kicked off in full force late last weekend, when the French government abruptly arrested Telegram CEO Pavel Durov as he stepped off his private jet in Paris.

Immediately, crypto and decentralization advocates emerged as some of the strongest voices to defend Durov—who has himself recently turned Telegram into a major hub of on-chain activity and crypto transactions. 

Even Elon Musk jumped into the discourse to throw his support behind Durov.

The pushback against the French government—and French president Emmanuel Macron specifically—was so great that Macron took to Twitter to defend his pro-technology reputation and insist that he had nothing to do with the arrest. 

But the subject of Durov’s prosecution continued to snowball over the course of the week, becoming a focal point—and rallying cry—for Crypto Twitter. A community organization representing developers and users of The Open Network, Telegram’s blockchain of choice, soon drafted a letter demanding Durov’s release. It has subsequently received over 4.3 million signatures.

On Wednesday, Durov was indeed released—after being charged by Parisian prosecutors with numerous crimes related to his alleged refusal to remove illegal content from Telegram. He is currently barred from leaving France as he awaits trial. 

But that’s only half the drama. On Wednesday, OpenSea CEO Devin Finzer announced that the NFT marketplace had become the latest crypto company to receive a Wells Notice from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The notice indicates that it will likely soon be sued by the regulator. 

The outcry on Crypto Twitter was swift and far-reaching. While all sorts of crypto projects and firms have already been sued by the SEC, the OpenSea development indicated that the regulator could go after the heart of the NFT world, an unprecedented and eyebrow-raising escalation. 

NFT creators and politicians alike lambasted the move, which appears to have set up an all-or-nothing battle over the fate of the American NFT market.

Jonathan Mann, a musician who releases a new song every day as an NFT—and who also preemptively sued the SEC over its NFT stance last month—dedicated a song this week to the news. 

And Wiley Nickel, a pro-crypto House Democrat, decried the move, despite it sourcing from within his own political party. 

Across Crypto Twitter, speculation flourished as to what an SEC assault on NFTs could mean for average crypto users. As to be expected, the feverish news cycle was ripe with memes. 

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