Andrew MacLeod

Fintech + credit lawyer. Ex-UBS, Settle. Long tech, networks, and fatherhood.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@hasufl Sounds just like academia. Over there, they say “science progresses one funeral at a time.”

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@BackTheBunny Weapons-grade precision. Who’s driving your car?

https://t.co/Qc7dXGdz7p

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@adamscrabble TFW you have a bingo (plaited) and nowhere to place it!

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@Jason Andor all day

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@BillHughesDC Election gamesmanship, TV edition: how long can you delay calling the election - to max your ratings numbers for that sweet ad revenue - without being preempted by another network?

[nic carter @nic_carter]

so many of you will remember my reporting around "operation choke point 2.0" from the spring of 2023; TLDR, Biden's financial regulators, namely the Fed, FDIC, and OCC launched a crackdown on banks covering the crypto space...

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@collins_belton Repositioning for November after the SAB 121 shot across the bow last week?

The press about the FTX windup leaving customers whole (at least in bankruptcy process terms, if not in kind) surely helps this admin feel like it’s less radioactive.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@Miindslave @Rainmaker1973 Probably 3 days’ labor for an experienced framing crew, depending on number of guys and equipment used.

As others have pointed out, framing multiple stories without sheathing (for lateral strength) is questionable.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@lex_node this piece colored my thinking here: https://t.co/lroUcsO3CQ

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@collins_belton FB themselves are pretty incentivized to make sure SDNY gets this right. absent some recovery from the defendants, I imagine they are exposed via any TOS weaknesses, given it was an MEV-Boost exploit

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@RanierGrant privacy is necessary, but not sufficient. they can (and will) attack at the infra layer.

build the unstoppable infra first, then layer on the privacy.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@lex_node At least on the KYC/AML/sanctions side, it’s hard to see how crypto wins.

I appreciate the take, and agree this is a necessary path to plan for - but the Vietnam thesis is a bleak future.

Ps- Do you not worry what you unleash by building unstoppable privacy systems?

[MacroScope @MacroScope17]

I wonder how many really understand the bitter opposition by policymakers to Bitcoin and especially an ETF.

Gary Gensler doesn't really hate it because of investor protection (that's only a minor reason). Elizabeth Warren doesn't actually think its criminal use is significant. Obscure members of Congress who seem to pop up out of nowhere -- with Bitcoin, of all things, strangely on their minds -- and who repeat these tiresome objections (often in laughable letters to the SEC) are in many cases quietly pushed to do so by others, including from the Fed, who understand the real threat:

In a system that depends on irresponsible government spending (especially for perpetual war) and fiat printing to cover that irresponsibility, alarm bells cannot be allowed to work. There must be no pure price signals. And above all, an alarm bell must not also serve as a life-raft that's easily accessible to everyone, especially the general public, in the form of an ETF. There must be no escape hatch.

This is an unstated but important motivation for the longstanding resistance to Bitcoin and especially an ETF. It's also why the three-judge panel of a federal appeals court that in 2023 essentially forced the SEC to approve the ETFs may ultimately turn out to be the most unsung but consequential people in the history of U.S. financial markets. After that court's ruling, you could almost hear public policymakers and some influential private-sector figures -- names that everyone knows, and some very important ones who stay out of the news -- smack their foreheads and say, "Those damn judges, don't they realize what they've done?"

The system's defenders have always understood that life-rafts and escape hatches can't be allowed. Here's Christine Lagarde talking about Bitcoin in 2021 (ostensibly about the need for global cooperation on regulation, but the larger point was clear): "If there is an escape, that escape will be used." Here's a seminal essay by Alan Greenspan in 1966, when he was still in the private sector:

An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions...In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold. The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

I'd say the antagonism towards Bitcoin qualifies as "hysterical," wouldn't you? And in terms of "protection," in a political system defined by profligacy and incompetent policy (especially monetary policy in recent years), a free-trading asset that serves as protection and -- via its price action -- starkly highlights those two faults is resented and hated.

This is why the Bitcoin ETFs in particular are so important, and why they were bitterly resisted for so long and the SEC only approved them after being forced to do so by a court decision. Gold is usually slow-moving and can be suppressed -- and even if it does rise to $2500 or $3000, DC and the Fed certainly won't like it, but it won't set off systemic alarms and the public mostly wouldn't notice. But if the ETFs help drive Bitcoin into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, the headlines will be screaming and the public will start asking uncomfortable questions. With the Fed desperate to cut rates and a potential second inflation wave looming, it's easy to see why, from a policymaker perspective, the timing of ETF approval could not have been worse. And now Bitcoin and the ETFs -- as permanent, fast growing and highly visible canaries in the financial system -- will be perpetual burrs under the policy saddle.

A telling postscript: Decades after Alan Greenspan wrote that essay about gold, Ron Paul asked him to autograph a copy of it as Fed chairman, and he asked if Greenspan wanted to add a disclaimer to it. Greenspan replied "I stand by every word" and signed it.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@RanierGrant I think you’d like this book. https://t.co/2lNJpv3x3d

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@Drew_Morris Crypto - Steven Levy. Plenty of parallels to the fight about today’s crypto.

Underground Empire - Farrell & Newman. The methods we are using to wage the war.

Moneyland - Oliver Bullough. For a greater appreciation of the stakes.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@iampaulgrewal A/ in particular would better track the Currency Transaction Report scheme for cash transactions under the BSA; what happened to “same activity, same risk, same regulations?”

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@jmillspatrick @elialbrecht All about incentives.

You pay an attorney by the hour, they’re going to argue over every little detail, regardless of economic impact.

You pay them a salary (even better: a bonus structure tied to business results), now you have someone who closes deals.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

Amen.

[Brad Mills 🔑⚡️ @bradmillscan]

I'm starting to think @udiWertheimer is right.

I was very resistant to the whole "season 2" thing, I thought it was an egotistical approach to engagement farm crypto followers.

I'm starting to get it.

Season 2 isn't about monetary maximalism, @americanhodl8 helped me think it through.

"Season 2" is about the split of the monetary maximalist activist Bitcoiners from the platform maximalist entrepreneur Bitcoiners.

In Season 1, there was a lot of debate between the 2 camps & wars were fought over how we use & upgrade #Bitcoin to optimize blockspace & laser focus on the monetary use case.

This brought us things Bitcoin Cash fork, Liquid, Lightning Network, Nostr, Chaumian ecash like Cashu/Fedimint, RGB, etc.

In Season 1, projects that focused on using Bitcoin as an application layer (or anchor to Bitcoin for an application layer) like Counterparty, Omnilayer, Veriblock, Stacks, Rootstock, etc were mostly disregarded by the monetary maximalist, who won the culture war & controlled the narrative.

As we enter into the 5th epoch of Bitcoin, the "Season 2" seems like a misnumbering, ignoring the previous seasons of Bitcoin's history.

But Season 2 isn't about epochs or cycles.

Season 2 means the era of Bitcoin where the platform maximalist cypherpunk capitalists have just as much influence over Bitcoin as the monetary maximalists activists.

If you're not actively involved in both camps, you probably don't see the full picture.

I'm deeply embedded into the monetary maximalist camp, but I'm also participating in the platform camp. I was part of the original Counterparty burn. I used Omnilayer & I understand the psychology behind the platform maximalist cypherpunk capitalists.

What @rodarmor did was very punk rock, it was very cypherpunk, he used Bitcoin in a permissionless way.

Whether or not you view this as a bug, whether or not you view it as inefficient use of blockspace, or think how poorly designed BRC20 tokens & stamps are, there's something else happening here.

Not only are miners earning hundreds of millions of dollars extra by mining these transactions, but Bitcoin Platform Maximalists are coming out of the woodwork to come back to Bitcoin to use it.

They are bringing hundreds of millions of dollars in capital to build these projects using bitcoin transactions.

The miners are supporting it, the exchanges are supporting it.

Unlike the blocksize wars where they wanted to increase the blocksize with a fork - this is something that can’t be stopped because it’s using Bitcoin as it currently is, they are not proposing any changes to Bitcoin.

In fact, because of their use of Bitcoin blockspace, they are bringing forward problems in the way that we designed the UX of onboarding people to Bitcoin with lightning network.

There’s technical consensus for adding an upgrade to Bitcoin from the Monetary Maximalist camp that the Platform Maximalist camp is technically able to code up and push through.

These folks are actually having a meaningful & relevant impact on the conversation about Bitcoin scaling.

We are seeing a decline in the cultural relevance and influence of the “toxic maxi” and the increase in cultural relevance and influence of the “toxic wizard”

Whether you want to see it or not, whether you realize it or not, something is changing in Bitcoin.

This doesn’t mean that they are going to ruin bitcoin for the monetary use case - it just means that we will have to work harder to compete with them.

They are very hard workers.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@robustus @lex_node Really want to try a quest 3 specifically for this.

[Andrew MacLeod @angreww]

@GivnerAriel Watch it every year… don’t even regret it.