I'm seeing crypto folk falling into the trough of dispair after an abysmal bull market with mainly losers and BTC outperforming their "beta".
Let me tell you a story that tells you why you got screwed. It starts with the end of FTX.
When the bankruptcy folk came in to liquidate FTX assets their mandate was to sell everything. This included vast quantities of locked SOL.
They inadvertently invented something new, selling an asset that was locked up on-chain through the magic of a legal sale agreement (pay me now, I deliver later).
The deal got passed around the ecosystem, fund managers bought up the locked SOL at more than 60% discount to compensate for being locked up and exposed to the token price.
Many hedge funds bought the deal. They knew they could hedge the token price on futures markets by shorting SOL pocketing 70-80% yield at near zero risk (staking + basis yield + token discount).
They liked it and asked where can we get more of this?
Herein lies your PROBLEM as a crypto investor in 2023-2025.
Every crypto project has backers (and a foundation) who has great wads locked tokens that have been sold to hedge funds and dumped on you immediately through futures markets.
All your alpha went to market neutral hedge funds pocketing risk free yield.
THAT IS WHY CRYPTO IN 2023-2025 UNDER PERFORMED
You got dumped on prematurely.
On the bright side many of these projects, even though they have "locked up tokens ready to dump" on paper, in reality they have been sold already, so they will logically perform without the expected sell pressure in the next bull market given they have effectively been sold.
Not that I recommend buying crypto, you need to be an insider to get an edge, it works like a casino, the house will take your money. The house in 2023-2025 were the people who understood this trade. Just buy BTC and get on with your life.
Russia has opened a criminal case against me for “aiding terrorism.” Each day, the authorities fabricate new pretexts to restrict Russians’ access to Telegram as they seek to suppress the right to privacy and free speech. A sad spectacle of a state afraid of its own people.
Announcing the MON public sale: the first ever token sale on Coinbase
The sale starts on November 17th and will be accessible in over 80 countries, including the U.S. 🇺🇸
More details below
On illicit funds in crypto...
Background
The entire purpose of crypto is to build neutral, objective, transparent protocols. "Permissionless" is the phrase.
It's a belief that regardless of the ethics of the *users* of a protocol, the protocol itself should simply act under the protocol rules. That honesty, that integrity, provides immense societal value. And upon such a foundation, further layers of coordination/rulemaking can be built. Coinbase as a central exchange can make its own rules about its property and systems, *built on top* of permissionless, neutral Bitcoin and Ethereum protocols.
Questions
When crypto funds are illicit, what should happen?
Should Bitcoin nodes block illicit txs?
Should Ethereum nodes block illicit txs?
Should Uniswap contracts block illicit txs?
Should Thorchain nodes block illicit txs?
Should miners and validators be policing content?
If the answer to any of those is "yes!", then we are not designing an ecosystem of permissionless, objective, protocols, are we? We're designing something else.
If the answer to any of those is "yes!", then we're building permissioned financial services, but on a blockchain. Of what value is this to society?
And to do so, suddenly the definition of "illicit" must be defined, and it cannot be. Illicit to whom? Illicit under what standard of suspicion, or proof?
These are social and legal questions about which people will disagree. If crypto protocols are built to incorporate this social/legal layer, then they are truly useless, for they lose their entire reason for existence... objective, transparent operation.
An objective protocol must permit bad actors operating on it.
Mathematics doesn't "turn off" when a bad man solves an equation.
Language doesn't fail to execute when a bad man speaks it.
These are permissionless protocols and so too must be crypto.
To those advocating that illicit funds be blocked by protocols, please explain the standards by which such things shall be determined, and please explain why you're involved in crypto in the first place?
If a hack is $100, nobody will advocate for censorship.
If a hack is $1.5 billion, suddenly, many do.
At what dollar value shall a blockchain halt?
It's easy to vilify North Korea. What about when Western governments violate law, and confiscate without due process, digital assets from a rightful owner? This is illegal, this is illicit.
When our own government commits crimes, shall we permit their action across our protocols, yet when "bad" governments do the same, we put a stop to it?
Should a German node operator enforce Saudi law?
Should a Chinese operator enforce American law?
Should chains be halted and addresses blocked before trials and legal guilt even been established? Just the *accusation* of illicit funds is enough to violate that which we claim to build as inviolate?
I am vehemently opposed to crime; to actual crime: to fraud, to theft, to violence. I see open, transparent protocols as an antidote to crime, and as a tremendous boon to good civilization.
Laws, which are a human *social layer,* are in place to prevent and punish such crimes and the best governments should vigorously pursue actual criminals. Dear law enforcement: please pursue the criminals that stole those funds! Law enforcement is your job, and you've taxed us upon the promise of fulfilling it.
But that social, subjective layer of laws and legal enforcement, must exist above and separate from more foundational underlying strata that operate *objectively* and equally to all parties.
When the human world of right and wrong, which must always be subjective, is transposed into an otherwise objective, permissionless system, the latter will fail to be so, and there is no purpose to it. In such case, let us admit we are merely building a more complicated apparatus for subjective social policy.
Being decentralized is a gradient
Being permissioness is not
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🇬🇧 UK mass arrests citizens for memes
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Free speech is under attack all across the globe. Now is the time to fight.
If they win, there's no going back.