My information consumption is now 1/4 X, 1/4 podcast interviews of the smartest practitioners, 1/4 talking to the leading AI models, and 1/4 reading old books. The opportunity cost of anything else is far too high, and rising daily.
Week in Crypto Adoption: a16z Floods Pakistan, France Rejects Digital Euro for Bitcoin, Venezuela Survives on USDT.
From Kyrgyzstan's CBDC + reserve combo to Pakistan's corner-store revolution, Venezuela's survival economy, France's anti-CBDC pivot, and Australia's licensing clarity!
Let’s unpack this week’s crypto adoption madness. 🧵
1/8
TV in the 90s: you turn it on, you watch.
TV 2025:
- turn on, wait for it to load
- popup: TV wants to update, 1.5GB. No.
- scroll sideways, find prime video app or etc
- popup: now app wants to update, 500MB. No!!
- App launching... App loading…
- select account screen
- 🫠
As many of you know, a couple days ago I was drained of around 170k usd worth of crypto and nfts. 3 of my other friends were also drained in the exact same way on different days. I am making this post for you all to be aware of this scamming tactic so you do not fall for it the same way, because i would not wish this on even my worst enemies! I will be merging all the tactics they used on my friends as well, so not all of this happened to me specifically. Yes it is a little silly to get drained this way but we were not aware it was even possible, and we just wanted to be kind to newcomers, so it was the good of our own hearts that was taken advantage of 🤍
1. These drainers will join some sort of discord server or group chat you are in, lurk for weeks to understand some of you and your friends lore and inside jokes
2. Theyll target someone in that chat ( in this case me and my friends) , tell you that your friend invited them to the server and at this point they will have tons of info about your friend from lurking so itll seem like theyre actually mutuals
3. Theyll ask if you have any nfts , in this case they were asking my friends and I if we had a milady because they wanted to buy one to join the milady community. If you show them your milady they will stalk your wallet and ping you as a target
4. Theyll invite you to play a casual game with them in a voice chat. They will probably tell you something along the lines of “ here, the game is cheap let me buy it for you for helping us get to know this nft community”, and give you the steam code to add the game to your library . I like to be kind to mutual friends ( or what I thought were mutual friends at least ) so I figured playing with them to make them feel more welcome wouldnt hurt
5. After you input the steam code and redeem the game, they will tell you to join their server to play with them all. They will give you their server ip for the game and you join it. I am being told that The steam code they give you is not the trojan, rather when you join their server in the game it has a trojan mod on it, which then gives them full access to your device and all passwords
6. While you are mindlessly playing with them they are in your device stealing your money and hacking your discord. They will delete all your contacts and dms on discord and leave all the servers you are in . You are lucky if they just take the money and fuck off , but if they got any personal info they most definitely will use it to blackmail you ( I dont have any personal info on my laptop so this part doesnt really affect me)
Moral of the story is just be aware that people are lurking and gathering info on your friends to make it seem like they are mutuals. Do not play with them and do not accept any STEAM game codes, or join anyones STEAM games
Love you all and stay safe!
With today's bipartisan cloture vote on the GENIUS Act, the United States takes another important step toward establishing itself as a global leader in digital asset innovation.
Stablecoins are critical infrastructure for the future of payments — creating efficiencies that benefit consumers and small businesses alike.
Thank you to the Senators and staff whose dedication and hard work have been instrumental in getting to this point. We look forward to supporting a full Senate vote.
“Welcome home.” 🇺🇸
@BoHines says it’s time for America to back builders and lead on crypto.
Hear from Bo on how U.S. crypto policy is evolving at Accelerate in NYC next week
Lots of you have been asking for the updated Global M2 vs. Bitcoin chart. Well, here it is…
And yes – it still tells the same story:
We’re going higher…
I got tired of the "Web3 games is dead" talk on social media and wrote a piece on @CoinDesk on why YGG continues to believe in Web3 gaming. Read it here: https://t.co/boZOsWk0YB
I got tired of the "Web3 games is dead" talk on social media and wrote a piece on @CoinDesk on why YGG continues to believe in Web3 gaming. Read it here: https://t.co/boZOsWk0YB
I take this seriously. Starting next year, I plan to only publicly mention (in blogs, talks, etc) L2s that are stage 1+, with *maybe a short grace period* for new genuinely interesting projects.
It doesn't matter if I invested, or if you're my friend; stage 1 or bust.
Multiple ZK-rollup teams have told me they're on track to be stage 1 by year end. I'm excited to see that happen!
Of course we should not throw away training wheels become we're actually confident that the proof systems are secure; that would be irresponsible. But stage 1 (75% threshold on council to override the proof system, 26%+ of council must be outside the rollup team) is a very reasonable moderate milestone. The multisigs I'm in have not had a single liveness failure in years, let alone 26%.
The era of rollups being glorified multisigs is coming to an end. The era of cryptographic trust is upon us.