Article Reading Time:
2 minutes.
The cryptocurrency market is negativereacted to a joke about the insolvency of Ethereum (wETH) and entered the red zone after it was supported by the founder of the Tron project and the co-founder of Ethereum.
It all started over the weekendblockchain and ERC-721A developer under the pseudonym Cygaar published a joke on Twitter that wETH, an ERC-20 token based on Ethereum, will soon become insolvent.
</p>ATTENTION: WETH is about to be insolvent.
I will begrudgingly bail out anyone holding WETH at a rate of 0.5 ETH per WETH in order to save this space. You can thank me once the crisis has been advertised.
— cygaar (@0xCygaar) November 26, 2022
Cygaar immediately clarified that this was a prank to check whether anyone was paying attention to his posts on the social network.
However, Cygaar's joke went viral, especially after it was supported by Tron project founder Justin Sun and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
Quoting a tweet about "wETH insolvency"Justin Sun wrote that he "discussed the situation with his best friend Vitalik Buterin and together they are investing $2 billion in WEF to return all the funds."
</p>As a humble member of the crypto industry, Ipersonnally have discussed with my BFF @VitalikButerin and together we will invest $2b into WEF to recover all the funds. Stay #SAFU! Stay strong! https://t.co/UmjtljyRNz
—H.E. Justin Sun
At the same time, a significant part of the crypto community does notnoticed that Justin Sun actually has the abbreviation of The World Economic Forum, and not the name wETH.
As a result, a seemingly harmless prank by Cygaarcaused nervousness in the cryptocurrency market and acquired signs of panic. On Monday, November 28, as information spread among members of the crypto community, Bitcoin and Ethereum fell in price by more than 3% and 4%, respectively.
BTC price broke through support at $16,500 andwas trading at $16,174, while ETH fell below $1,200 and is currently trading at $1,172. The panic surrounding wETH showed that amid nervousness about the collapse of FTX, the crypto market has become especially susceptible to any negative news.
Formerly Popular Cryptocurrency AnalystBenjamin Cowen stated that Bitcoin and other digital assets could soon begin to grow, but it is more reasonable to expect a repeat of the 2018 scenario.