Dustin Douglas

Finance, Crypto, & Trading Powered - Came for the news, stayed for the jokes

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

USDJPY snaps higher. BOJ on verge of total capitulation if they don't step in

[Omid Malekan @malekanoms]

With all due respect to Matt, the notion that Tempo will in any way be neutral is a fantasy.

First, the very fact the he is billed as the "project lead" while sitting on the board of Stripe, a corporation who is clearly central to this effort, and being a GP at a VC firm that will likely be heavily invested in it, is a problem. That screams "not neutral."

(counterintuitively, the better Matt is at being project lead, the less neutral the chain will be).

Second, he is conflating the chain being permissionless with it being public. Public means "anyone can transact or issue on it" and permissionless means anyone can be a validator. As stated by Matt, Tempo will start as a permissioned chain.

A permissioned chain will never be public.

To wit: will North Korea be able to freely issue tokens on Tempo? What if Do Kwon decides to launch an algorithmic stablecoin on there from jail? And then Putin says "we will route payments for our sanctioned oil being sold on the black market via stablecoins on Tempo"?

Will the permissioned, known, and regulated corporations who run the validators be OK with all of this? Will the general council of Visa declare "Yes: we are clearly violating many US Federal laws and risk losing or licenses and possibly going to jail, but the docs said Tempo is a public blockchain, so we will process all of these transactions?"

I don't think so. As I argued yesterday, permissioned networks do not provide validators the plausible deniability required for a chain to be neutral:

https://t.co/hBgm1SjR1O

Third, no permissioned network has ever successfully transitioned to being permissionless. Hyperliquid is trying, but they have a long way to go, and are a special use case because it's mostly an app-chain, one whose primary margin asset still remains "elsewhere", something that might be OK for perps but not for payments.

Tempo will have an even harder time transitioning, because per the announcement, there is heavy involvement from various payments incumbents, most of all Stripe.

To believe that the network can transition to permissionless is to believe that corporations that accrued hundreds of billions of dollars in value over recent decades by owning a network will now launch a new network that they own (cause it's permissioned) but then magically decide to give all the power and profits that come with it away, quite possibly to competitors that will try to destroy their incumbent businesses.

That is highly unlikely. As @ccatalini pointed out yesterday, even Libra's original plans to someday decentralize nwere pushed to the back burner rather quickly. And Facebook did not have an incumbent payment business to protect. Stripe, Visa, Nubank, etc etc all do.

Y'all really think they'll give it away?

This has never happened before in the history of shared corporate infrastructure - which is what Tempo will be on day one.

Every other shared corporate infra (Visa, Mastercard, CME, NASDAQ, SWIFT, The Clearing House, etc etc) has gone in the opposite direction - it has centralized power and become more permissioned and censorable over time.

This is literally why Satoshi invented Bitcoin.

And I say this not as an ideological opposition to Tempo, but as an observation of what will be debated in the conference rooms of every potential issuer, user, etc etc.

Y'all really think Mastercard will jump all over a permissioned network controlled by Stripe and Visa?

Or Amazon or Walmart - fresh off their endless lawsuits against Visa and Mastercard for being oligopolies?

Lastly, It's hard enough to bootstrap a PoS chain from scratch because of the "rich get richer" problem of staking. Ethereum is still the only PoS chain that's achieved a diverse token-holder set that can deem it "a neutral L1." It got there by :

a)having a tiny premine by modern standards and b)being PoW for years.

Tempo will start with a massively concentrated token holder set and permissioned validator set. To argue it'll easily become neutral is to make a whole bunch of assumptions that are contrary to the ideals and lived experience of this industry.

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

Is the President and his team intentionally tanking the market?

Will the Fed raise their inflation target to 3% because they can't get inflation under control?

I sat down to discuss these questions and more with @DariusDale42 today.

YouTube: https://t.co/SpNULYg0MJ
Spotify: https://t.co/kf81TU4yCH
Apple: https://t.co/sWy0wApET7

TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 - Intro
0:25 - What is a market regime change?
2:52 - “Kitchen sinking” the economy
7:10 - Consumer confidence and market expectations
9:13 - Impact of Trump’s policies
10:44 - Inflation expectations
17:09 - Market outlook
19:03 - Crypto strategic reserve

[zerohedge @zerohedge]

Crime-Battered NYC McDonald's Starts Carding People At The Door https://t.co/ApBjFcXMKm

[Axios @axios]

Russ Vought confirmed as Trump's budget director amid Dem protest https://t.co/PvIQRFUcFu

[Axios @axios]

Congressional Democrats denied entry to USAID building https://t.co/wRJMkbXcf8

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Don’t just open the Overton Window, knock down the whole damn wall!

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

https://t.co/9uYQt49uZw

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

"Reality is stranger than fiction??" ::Shrugs:: seems like a Jack Ryan/ Ethan Hunt plot

[VisionaryVoid @VisionaryVoid]

Some of the most incredible moments and images from Paris 2024 #OlympicGames

A thread🧵

1. This stunning image of Sofia Raffaeli from Italy has the internet buzzing with curiosity.

[First Squawk @FirstSquawk]

US CRUDE FUTURES RISE BY MORE THAN $1/BBL TO $76.25/BBL

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

"Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit." — Jawaharlal Nehru

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

"Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do." — Potter Stewart

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

Will Pornhub be the catalyst for implementing ZK- Proofs for Identity??? I mean porn is often at the forefront of technology...Streaming Video, Credit card verification, and of course blu-ray
https://t.co/ktqeSLN7S2

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

Excited to stand behind the Mensarius Oath, a pledge that aligns perfectly with values and actions needed today to ensure a tomorrow exists.
Learn more about the Oath and join the pledge:
https://t.co/7IETEHwoJa

[Chicago Venture Summit by WBC @ChicagoVCSummit]

The @ChicagoVCSummit by @WorldBizChicago is BACK!

🌎 #ChiVentureSummit Future-of-#ClimateTech
🗓️ October 5, 2023
📍167 Green St by @ShapackPartners

Lean more here ➡️ https://t.co/fl5pozXpXN

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

"100% of car brands received a “ding” from the Mozilla Foundation following research into 25 car brands’ privacy and security capabilities...ALSO 84% of the brands reviewed share or sell your data." If only we could own our own data... #blockchain https://t.co/TZptajLXyH

[CapitalandCoffee @CapitalnCoffee]

A heartfelt salute to the brave founders building amazing things. This clip encapsulates the admiration and respect that fuels our Capital & Coffee events. Let's continue to inspire each other. #BuildingTheFuture #CapitalAndCoffee

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

- This means miners help balance the grid by turning off when the grid needs help.

Why not just fix this hub and spoke system of a grid? Incentivize a more decentralized grid?

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

"The White House pitched a 30% tax on crypto miners' electricity usage in a stated bid to blunt the industry's environmental impact." This environmental narrative is washed. The only way to consistently make money in mining is by acquiring the most competitive energy rate

[Dustin Douglas @DustinDouglas8]

In most US states this means miners are drawn to renewable energy in the long term. How else can you justify outlays of millions of dollars, because some fossil fuel market is currently oversupplied. Not to mention a really big revenue source can be from Demand generation