Cryptocurrency had a wild ride this week

Used to be, coins were for parking meters and gumballs. Now, they’re minting millionaires: according to Live Coin Watch, as of 6pm PST last night, the digital coin market currently had a total market cap of around $653B.

And this past week has been particularly exciting. Here are a few of our favorite “tales from the crypto”…

Bitcoin Cash launches on Coinbase, controversy ensues

Coinbase (one of the largest crypto exchanges) launched support for Bitcoin Cash (a cryptocurrency that split from Bitcoin back in August) yesterday.

But before the announcement, the currency rocketed in price from nearly $3.5k to $8.5k (almost 3x its price on other exchanges), sparking speculation of insider trading.

Coinbase halted and cancelled orders, disabled sales, and enacted a mass, forced logout. Trading has since resumed, and Coinbase co-founder Brian Armstrong is currently investigating the matter.

Litecoin founder dumps his entire stake

Charlie Lee, the founder of Litecoin (the world’s 5th largest crypto, with a market cap of  $17.7B), sold off all his coins after the currency surged 7.5k% last week.

On Reddit, Lee claimed his motive was to avoid a “conflict of interest” moving forward.

It hasn’t been revealed how many coins he held — but the coin only dipped around 4% following his post, easing crypto conspiracy theorists’ fears that the market could crash when a crypto “whale” sells.

The Winklevoss twins are now Bitcoin billionaires

In 2004, the 6’5” twins sued Facebook for stealing their concept to create the platform and received a $65m settlement in company stock.

That ballooned into $300m as the social media company grew — and, starting in 2013, they dumped almost all of it into Bitcoin.

Today, it’s paid off: according to the NYT, the WVTs have a combined net worth of around $2B, which they’ve used to launch their own crypto exchange, Gemini.