Unchained - FTX Wants to Compete With CME -- Here's Why It's a Big Deal - Ep.346

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things Crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I started covering crypto six years ago, and as a senior editor at Forbes, was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the April 29th, 2022 episode of Unchained. Point Change is the easiest way to earn passive income using crypto. You can safely deposit cash or cryptocurrency to earn up to 20% annual yield. There is no lending or market risk, just simple, high return yield farming. Create an account today at tri-defi.c-c-unc and receive 40 USDC. That's tri-defi.cc slash unc. If you're frustrated that your bank account isn't crypto-friendly, it's time to make a change. On Juneau is a powerful new challenge. On Juno is a powerful new

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Starting point is 00:01:25 that allow any creator to engage with, reward, and monetize their following. Today's guest is Christopher Perkins, president at Coin Fund, a Web3 investment fund. Welcome, Chris. Hey, Laura, thank you so much for having me. You're at Crypto Bahamas this week. What has the vibe been like and what are people talking about? It's a great vibe here. There's so much energy.

Starting point is 00:01:51 I feel like there's a couple of really big trends that are facing industry right now. now, and those are positive trends. One is that we're starting to see governments, policymakers, regulators, starting to see that, you know, they're starting to support this and go on the offense. It really started with the Biden executive order. So that threat, that thread of just, you know, governments trying to see this as an opportunity, not a threat, is big. And then, you know, institutional adoption. There are a ton of institutions here trying to learn, get educated, and really embrace what we're seeing in crypto. So super exciting vibe here.

Starting point is 00:02:28 Some amazing speakers as well. And it's just great. So FTCS is one of the organizers in the conference, and that's led by Sam Pinkfinfried. And its U.S. arm recently rattled some financial industry bigwigs. You know a little, or really a lot, about that world. Why don't you give us a little bit on your background and then tell us what it is that Sam and FTX-E-West proposed.

Starting point is 00:02:56 Yeah, thanks, Laura. So I started my career as a U.S. Marine, and I served in Battle of Ramadi. And then I transitioned into a company called Lehman Brothers, which many people have heard about. And I got myself into the derivatives industry. And by the time we went bankrupt, I was running our derivatives prime brokerage. And I saw what happens when crisis hits derivatives. I was at the epicenter of the global financial crisis. I moved across to city the following day.

Starting point is 00:03:21 They asked me if I wanted a job. I asked them what kind of package they had, and they said it was a really great package. It's called the job. And so I started the next day, and the first thing that I had to do is clean up my own mess at Lehman because all of my trades were defaulted. And then something happened was called Dodd-Frank, and governments around the world decided that they really wanted to regulate the derivatives industry. And so I was put in charge of that business where we had to take the $700 trillion derivatives industry from unregulated to regulated. and a guy named Gary Gensler was my head regulator at the time. And by the time I left, I was running our futures business, our foreign exchange prime

Starting point is 00:04:01 brokerage business, and then this clear derivatives business. So I was at the heart of that. Now, when you step back and you look at how regulators and policymakers approached this financial crisis, it was caused by centralization. And the regulatory response was even more centralization and concentration. And I don't blame them because there were no technology alternatives at the time. And if you look back over the last hundred years, regulators really needed central nodes that they could monitor and collateralize and regulate

Starting point is 00:04:34 because the idea of decentralizing derivatives just wasn't, there were no capabilities around that. And so we ended up in a world where today in the United States, you're seeing incredible innovation overseas. 90% of crypto derivatives are happening are being transacted and overseas. And it's incredibly difficult for our innovators to adapt this centralized policy to offer crypto derivatives. And so if you step back even further, you know, what is this futures market?

Starting point is 00:05:08 It can be very confusing to folks. But really what it does is it requires central clearing. So all derivatives have to face one central counter. You've probably heard of it before. The CME is an example, whether the buyer to the seller and the seller to the buyer. So you create this big central counterparty. And then members form around that central counterparty and really what those are of the banks. And what the banks have to do is guarantee the performance of that ecosystem.

Starting point is 00:05:41 And so what it results in is a big centralization and socialization of risk because if one of those members goes bankrupt and there's not enough money in the system, then all those other members have to pay for it. And so the system that we have today is very centralized. The intermediaries, to get into the system, you have to go through a member, and that member guarantees the risk of the whole system. And so it's a very socialized approach. What the FTX folks have proposed is something that's going to change this, turn it on its entire head.

Starting point is 00:06:22 And they're saying, look, we don't need to have intermediaries anymore because we have the technology where we can open up access across markets and we can allow individuals to face the clearinghouse directly. This is a major, major change because it departs from that social. utilization ecosystem, and it is causing a humongous stir amongst the banks, amongst the clearing houses, and I'm happy to unpack it further. Yeah. Well, so talk a little bit more about, like, who would be affected and kind of how they're reacting to this proposal.

Starting point is 00:07:06 So it's been really interesting because I said earlier, the law required this intermediation. And what we call those intermediaries, we call them futures commission merchants. Those are the banks, right? And you would think that if your business is the law, that business would be great. But actually, it's not. If you look back from 2004, there were 188 intermediaries or FCMs. Today, they're only 61. And at the same time, what happened was the amount of collateral that they've had to hold

Starting point is 00:07:43 has gone through the roof. It's gone from like 60 billion in 2002 to 470 billion today. So what you're seeing is you're seeing the number of intermediaries come down, the amount of risk going up. And so we're left with a very concentrated system. Now, the other problem that we've been watching is that the central counterparties themselves, they control all the collateral in the system and they calibrate it. And they're supposed to calibrate it such that if somebody goes into default, then their own assets stand behind their default. That's even though it's a big socialization of risk, you really need to have this concept of default or pays. But what we've seen is we've seen a lot of under collateralization, and we see that in margin breaches, which means that the movement in the markets isn't enough to exceeds the collateral that's been set. So we're seeing that as a trend. And we also saw with like Nasdaq OMX that there have been instances as latest as recently as 2018 where the other members have had to pay.

Starting point is 00:08:47 So there's some issues in the system. And, you know, one thing that's really plaguing these intermediaries is their legacy technology where it's very batch driven today. And the problem here is that they really can't keep up with the crypto markets. And this is what's happening. when people trade, the risk immediately hits the system. But collateral isn't called by the clearinghouse. It could be called from the intermediary right away. But then the bank has to wait until the end of the next day to collect the collateral back.

Starting point is 00:09:20 And so for crypto markets, these markets trade 24-7. They can be volatile. We know that and we like it. It's a new asset class being born. But it's very hard to reconcile the dynamic. risk management of crypto markets with these very slow, arduous, batch-driven processes. And so, frankly, the banks are really, really struggling to keep up with crypto derivatives. And so who stands to win here and who stands to lose?

Starting point is 00:09:52 I think the people that stand to win are the U.S. people, the U.S. market participants themselves, right? Because what are derivatives? Derivatives have been around for centuries. They originally started by helping farmers hedge their risk for their crops, right? And so we're left in a situation in America where market participants, you know, are transacting in cryptocurrencies, but they don't have a viable dynamic derivatives market that allows them to hedge their risk.

Starting point is 00:10:24 And so to the extent that FTX can come in, you know, address those operational shortfalls, they can potentially offer, you know, the U.S. persons the ability to better hedge their risk, which is awesome for crypto markets. So for that reason, you know, I think it's such a no-brainer to really think through. Now, the regulators are concerned about a couple of things. This model is different in that we do have this concept of auto liquidation in futures markets. But frankly, you have the same concept in traditional markets, because if you miss a margin call, you can get liquidated.

Starting point is 00:11:02 But here it's more automated. And so what I think regulators are going to look at is a couple of things. Number one, are there appropriate disclaimers? Do people know what they're doing? And I think that's very easy to solve for. And the second thing is, remember, you're departing from this old system where the banks are guaranteeing it's the performance of the system. And in this case, FTCS is saying, you know, we don't need those guarantees because we're

Starting point is 00:11:30 going to manage risk and collateralize risk in real time. And to the extent there is a shortfall, we're going to meet that shortfall through our own obligations, which is something that kind of aligns interest, if you ask me. So, you know, it's a big departure. It's something that I think if we're able to move forward with it, it'll be very good for markets. It'll be good for U.S. persons. The other thing that I love about it is it introduces competition, right? When you have a new model that may be more inclusive. You know, when I was running our futures business, you know, there's times when you just couldn't, you couldn't extend your services to, to hedgers that only traded a few times a year to hedge the risk where you'd have to say,

Starting point is 00:12:14 listen, I have to give you a big minimum because my costs are so high. So I think it'll lead to a more inclusive marketplace. I think it'll lead to a marketplace that's probably more cost effective because there are fewer toll takers around. Finally, you know, I think the banks are having debates amongst themselves on the future. I think at the end of the day, it's my guess that the banks will actually support this model because it will give them the opportunity to get involved maybe in new and exciting ways. And I think it will also incentivize the legacy providers maybe to kick their technology up a gear. And again, I think this type of competition and a move to a real-time risk management is going to be really good for markets.

Starting point is 00:12:59 Yeah, it's incredibly fascinating. So in a moment, we're going to talk a little bit more about next steps. But first, a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. It's becoming clear that utility is the future of NFT technology. And no launch platform does utility better than Galaxis. Anyone with a community can now engage with, reward, and monetize their following by issuing an NFT collection with dynamic utility traits. These traits can be customized to the needs of a particular community and change over time, allowing the creator to sustain a prolonged relationship with their most valuable followers.

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Starting point is 00:15:57 Back to my conversation with Chris. So one thing I just wanted to point out for listeners is that FTCS recently made an acquisition, or I should say FTCS, made an acquisition of Ledger X, which is kind of what enabled them to make this proposal. So can you talk a little bit about that maneuver and then just generally, like what this could mean for FTXUS? Yeah, we talk about it amongst a number of market participants to operate. to operate in the United States, you need certain licenses. And spot markets in crypto, some of the regulation, I would say, is a bit gray at best.

Starting point is 00:16:36 We're trying to figure out the right principles-based regulatory framework. But the thing about derivatives is that they're fully regulated, and the law that was passed with Dodd-Frank, articulated exactly how the law works. So there's no ambiguity around the regulation of derivatives themselves. And when you unpack the law and regulations around derivatives, to operate, you need certain licenses. And the license that LedgerX had was something called the DCO, Derivis Clearing Organization, which is a license that allows you to be the buyer to the seller and the seller to the buyer. Effectively, the entity that controls the entire ecosystem and calibrates risk management.

Starting point is 00:17:18 And so to operate, you need to have that DCO. You've seen that other folks like Coinbase purchase farex, which is a DCM. A DCM is a designated contract market. It's an exchange essentially for futures. And so in order to operate in the U.S. derivatives market, you need to put together, like I call them like these regulatory Legos, these licenses, in order to function from front to back. The last license that you need to operate in today's derivatives market is something called the FCM, the Futures Commission.

Starting point is 00:17:51 merchant, that's the intermediary. And so exchange need a license, intermediary need a license, clearinghouse, you need a license. And what the LedgerX acquisition did, it gave FTX the license to operate as a clearinghouse in the United States. So it's a necessary ingredient. And now they're saying, okay, I've got the DCO. I don't need the FCM because I can risk manage the system without it. And again, I think it's very exciting. And I think it's going to, it's an innovation that could revitalize derivatives markets, which have largely migrated overseas. Yeah. And I do know, so the Bloomberg article that broke this news said the industry seemed concerned that the proposal could give FTX a toe hole to expand into markets for everything from

Starting point is 00:18:39 oil to gold to currencies. So what do you think of that concern? And why don't we actually just tie it in with the fact that already CME has come out against this. So, you know, my thesis is that these markets are coming together. You know, what's a better marketplace, one that settles, you know, on an arduous 12-hour batch cycle or one that leverages tokens to settle in real time, right? And so I believe that traditional finance and crypto, at the end of the day, they're going to come together. and I think in many cases, crypto technology is going to eat the legacy technology.

Starting point is 00:19:19 But why wouldn't we want to ultimately extend it to other asset classes? Now, you can't just race into it, and I think there needs to be a lot of thought that goes into it. At the end of the day, derivatives are incredibly important from a risk management perspective. And so when you move to 24-hour markets seven days a week, which is happening and has happened, And I think unique risks could emerge, like what happens if a commodities contract with a low liquidity at two in the morning, a trade gets done and it triggers, you know, it triggers an off-market valuation that leads to liquidations. These are the types of things that need to be thought through. But I think it's inevitable that the entire world is going to move to 24-hour, seven-day-a-week markets. And I think the U.S. derivatives market is going to be part of that.

Starting point is 00:20:08 I mean, it just doesn't make sense otherwise. You know, derivatives help you risk manage. Dynamic risk management is what we owe to U.S. persons. So there's going to be a comment, or there is a comment period that will end on May 11th. And this Wednesday, the CFTC announced that there would be a public discussion on this proposal on May 25th. So what do you think this signals? Is this kind of standard operating procedure or does it give some indication of how likely the proposal is to pass? So in my discussions with the CFTC, they're very thoughtful regulator and they're asking all the right questions and they're trying to get educated to reach the right principles-based conclusion.

Starting point is 00:20:50 I think when you look at that in the context of President Biden's executive order and Secretary Yellen's discussion around, hey, let's go from the defense to the offense and let's focus on responsible innovation. This fits right in the wheelhouse. and derivatives are a cornerstone of the U.S. economy, frankly, it's a cornerstone of our national security. And so I'm very excited about these public hearings, about the desire to be educated, to understand the opportunity and the risk. My personal belief is that I'm very hopeful and encouraged that we are able to move forward, perhaps starting with crypto derivatives, because right now the ability in the United States is very limited to cash settled a couple of of cash level products. But I would love to come away from these hearings with an opportunity for U.S. persons to hedge the risk. And at the time of this public discussion, what will you be watching for in terms of tea leaves? You know, I'm really interested to hear reasons why we shouldn't move

Starting point is 00:21:56 forward. You know, in my mind, I saw a comment today by one of the CEOs saying, you know, principles-based innovation, right? And as I look at that, the principles that were able to deliver through the FTX proposal would be perhaps more inclusivity. It would be better risk management. And so I would love to hear the counter arguments around why, you know, we shouldn't revitalize our futures markets because I need to understand them better. To me, it's kind of a no-brainer that we should embrace technology and unlock its promise while understanding the risk. come up with regulatory guard rails to make sure that those risks are mitigated. So like that's really what I want to see.

Starting point is 00:22:38 And then, of course, I'm interested to see how the commissioners react. The other thing to watch, right, is the partisan nature of the dialogue. And in my experience in talking to regulators and policymakers, I actually don't see too much of it, right? And if you look at historical decisions made by the CFTC, they're typically along party lines, not always, but a lot of times. I'm guessing that in this case, that may not be the case. And so if there's any partisanism that's introduced, that would be very curious to me

Starting point is 00:23:13 because from my experience, you know, even if you look at like recent congressional races, it's very much a bipartisan phenomena where, you know, Eric Adams and Ted Cruz are agreeing that, you know, we need to embrace this technology. So that would be something that I would watch, but I don't expect it to be partisan. All right. Well, we will have to see what happens at that time. This has been an incredibly fascinating discussion. Thanks so much for coming on Unchained. Laura, it's an honor.

Starting point is 00:23:40 Thank you for, I'm an avid listener. So thank you for the content you produce and awesome job on Cryptopians. Thank you. Don't forget, next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. It's time to bring Wall Street to Main Street. coin change is democratizing access to wealth management with low risk, high return, passive income through defy. It's simple, just deposit your crypto into a coin change high yield account to earn more over time.

Starting point is 00:24:14 Your yield is paid out daily and can be withdrawn any time. Coin change is yield farming doesn't utilize lending or other risky strategies. No minimums, no obligations, just high yield. It's time for a change. change, create an account today at trydefi.cc slash unc to receive 40 USDC. That's trydefi.c slash unc. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. Bitcoin is now legal tender in Central African Republic. The Central African Republic

Starting point is 00:24:59 CER, a country home to 4.9 million people, has adopted Bitcoin as legal tender within its borders. According to the AFP News Agency, CERC-P president Faustine Archange to Adera, signed a law legalizing all cryptocurrencies and recognizing Bitcoin as legal tender this week. Finance Minister Ervay Nboda was proud of the country's move. He explained to Bloomberg, there's a common narrative that sub-Saharan African countries are often one step behind when it comes to adopting new technology. This time, we can actually say that our country is one step ahead. CER is the first country to legalize Bitcoin as legal tender in Africa,

Starting point is 00:25:39 and the second in the world, joining El Salvador. Notably, the CER news came during the same week that former Bitmec CEO, and noted analyst Arthur Hayes, made the case for the Doom Loop in his most recent article, arguing that Bitcoin adoption at the country level would lead to a $1 million, price per coin. He wrote, flags, meaning nations, will pursue a savings policy mix that includes storing commodities and purchasing gold slash Bitcoin. The fact that USD and EUR assets are not part of this mix, combined with entrenched real goods and energy inflation, puts the doom loop into motion. The doom loop will usher in $1 million Bitcoin and $10,000 to $20,000 gold by the end of the decade.

Starting point is 00:26:25 Elon Musk is buying Twitter. Here's why that's important for crypto. Twitter is set to go private after formally accepting a $44 billion bid from Tesla CEO Elon Musk. The news was announced in a press release Tuesday, with the Twitter board unanimously approving the deal that will see every share share of $54.20 per share. While there are still some details to be worked out before the Elon deal officially goes through, the news had some instant implications for the crypto-Mptuble. market, and could have far-reaching effects as well. Just as I did in a bulletin newsletter this week, let's break down three ways Musk's bid for Twitter is noteworthy for crypto. First, as usual, Musk's action pumped the price of Doge, with the Monday news release pushing the meme coin up by about 20%

Starting point is 00:27:14 before coming back down rather quickly. Dogecoin fanatics are most likely excited about the news as Musk recently showed interest in Doge tipping, a Twitter-native feature. Furthermore, Tesla accepts Doge for certain merchandise, setting a precedent for Musk to utilize the currency at his companies. Speaking of Tesla, the electric car manufacturer and the Musk-led Space X hold BTC on their balance sheets. Adding Twitter to that list does not seem crazy, especially considering the app has already integrated lightning payments. Musk made it clear that eliminating bots will be a priority for Twitter under his leadership.

Starting point is 00:27:53 This will be a major user experience upgrade for crypto Twitter. As imposter bot accounts frequently scam new or unlucky users via fishing links and private key ploys. On that note, I'm personally interested in how crypto tools like zero knowledge technology could be used to help authenticate users. Fidelity Bitcoin 401Ks are on the way. Fidelity investments will allow clients to add Bitcoin to their 401k retirement plans later this year, the firm announced on Tuesday. Employers will be able to cap Bitcoin savings at 20% of an employee's account. There is growing interest from plan sponsors for vehicles that enable them to provide their employees

Starting point is 00:28:34 access to digital assets in defined contribution plans and, in turn, from individuals with an appetite, to incorporate cryptocurrencies into their long-term investment strategies, said Dave Gray, head of workplace retirement offerings and platforms at Fidelity Investments in a press release. Crazy stat. According to CoinDesk's research, Seruli Associates estimates the Fidelity held around $2.4 trillion in 401k assets in 2020. That's nearly triple Bitcoin's market capitalization. The Michael Siler-led software firm Microstrategy is at the front of the line for Fidelity's offering and announced on Tuesday that it plans to offer employees' access to Bitcoin via Fidelity 401Ks.

Starting point is 00:29:19 MicroStrategy looks forward to working with Fidelity Digital Assets to become the first public company to offer their employees the option to invest in Bitcoin as part of our 401K program, tweeted Sailor. In related traditional finance meets crypto news, Stripe announced a new pilot product with Twitter for ticketed spaces and superfollows to support pay. layouts in USTC over Polygon. Goldman Sachs says it is exploring the tokenization of real assets via NFTs. CoinDesk reports that Matthew McDermott, global head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs, said,

Starting point is 00:29:54 we are actually exploring NFTs in the context of financial instruments, and actually there, the power is actually quite powerful. So we work on a number of things. He said at the Financial Times Crypto and Digital Assets Summit on Wednesday. PayPal CEO Dan Shulman said that the firm needs to be a number of things. needs to double down on digital wallets because that is where the future of the industry and the future of PayPal is going. Vitalik seems optimistic about optimism.

Starting point is 00:30:22 Optimism, the third largest Ethereum layer two by total value locked, fourth, if you count polygon, announced plans for governance this week. Called the Optimism Collective, Optimism will now be operated by two distinct groups, the token house and the citizens' house. As its name implies, token house will be run by the soon-to-be air-dropped OP token, which will govern the optimism protocol via on-chain voting. This is more or less industry standard. With Citizens House, optimism is trying something new.

Starting point is 00:30:54 The L2 plans to use sole-bound NFTs, or NFTs that are non-transferable, to allow non-token OP holders to decide how future revenue collected by optimism is used. The plan has Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Boutarin excited. Possibly the biggest attempt at non-token holder-centric Dow governance so far. Excited to see where this goes, he tweeted. As for the token, 20% of O.P. is set aside for public goods funding. 25% for an ecosystem fund. Core contributors will receive 19%, investors 17%, and 19% of the O.P. supply is allocated for

Starting point is 00:31:32 airdrops, with 5% being airdropped soon in the first season. Over 250,000 addresses met optimism's round-one air drop criteria. A $34 million smart contract error. Akutars, a much-anticipated NFT project headed by digital artist and former Major League Baseball player, Micah Johnson, underwent its initial drop with a faulty smart contract, leading to $34 million worth of ether being locked away from both creators and purchasers. Two smart contract errors were found shortly after the drop started, though Aaku developed developers denied anything was wrong. The first was rectified after a hacker froze and unfroze

Starting point is 00:32:12 the refund capability of the Akatar mint. However, the second error, which miscounted the number of NFTs necessary to unlock funds, proved fatal and led to $11,539, or $34 million, being locked into a smart contract. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry to the Aku family. I care so deeply about the Aku family. I let you all down, and I'm so sorry, wrote Johnson on Twitter. Since then, the ACCO team has refunded affected users and successfully finalized an irdrop of the NFTs. Despite the shaky drop, the 15,000 piece collection holds a floor price of 1.9th on OpenC. A tale of two cities. New York passed a law looking to pause new non-renewable energy-based proof of work mining. The New York State Assembly passed a law that would

Starting point is 00:33:01 place a two-year moratorium on the approval for new mining operations, utilizing the proof of over a consensus algorithm and powered by non-renewable energy. Furthermore, the bill would prevent existing operations from renewing their permits. This could stymie new Bitcoin and Ethereum mining in New York if the law passes in the state senate and if many of these miners don't use renewable energy. Of the total hash rate in the U.S., 19.9% is housed in New York. Fort Worth, the first mining city. On the opposite end of the spectrum lies Fort Worth, Texas, which is set to become the first city in the United States to start mining Bitcoin in a pilot project. Through a partnership with Texas Blockchain Council, the city will be maintaining three mining rigs in a climate-controlled

Starting point is 00:33:46 location in City Hall. Seventy-Hre million dollars in BTC will be donated to Ukraine in Fiat. Earlier this week, it was reported that Finland was considering ways to donate up to 77 million worth of seized Bitcoin to Ukraine. Notably, there was disagreement about whether the Bitcoin should be sent over the Bitcoin network, or whether customs should cash out the Bitcoin and donate the resulting fiat. On Thursday, it was confirmed that Finland would be doing the latter and will give coin motion and Tesseract to crypto firms the 1,890 BTC by early summer, for them to sell for euros, which will then be donated to Ukraine. Deuce Dow, down $13.4 million due to a hack.

Starting point is 00:34:31 Deuce Finance, a defy application, was exploited, with the hacker getting away with $13.4 million. According to Coin Desk, the hacker utilized with a specialized $143 million flashloon attack to artificially inflate the value of assets, borrow funds, and make a profit after selling. This is the second exploit in 2022 for Deuce. Time for FunBits! Whoa! Edward Snowden played a role in the birth of Z-Cash. The founding of Zcash, a much-covered. story that involved six participants, breaking of a private key controlling the ability to mint tokens

Starting point is 00:35:08 in a plan called the ceremony, just got a little bit crazier. The publicly known Zcash founders have so far included Zucco and Nathan Wilcox, Coin Center's Peter Van Valkenberg, security engineer Derek Hinch, and Bitcoin developer Peter Todd, who each went to great lengths via overseas flights, burned equipment, tinfoil, and air-gapped computers to make sure the ceremony was completed without a nefarious hacker gaining access to the key controlling the supply of Zcash. However, until this week, it was not known that rounding out the group of six was the famous whistleblower and former U.S. defense contractor Edward Snowden. Stone's involvement in the 2016 event occurred three years after the U.S. charged him with espionage

Starting point is 00:35:53 and was done under the pseudonym John Darborton. However, according to Snowden, it was not the opportunity to invest, but his interest in Zcash technology, which is privacy focused and helps users obfuscate blockchain transactions through darkpools, which led to his involvement. As long as it is clear that I was never paid and had no stake, it was just a public interest thing, I think you can tell people, wrote Snowden. Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more about Chris and Coin Fund, check of the show notes for this episode. If you've read my book, The Cryptopians, and want to chat about whether or not Ethereum would have hardforced without the involvement of Andrei Ternovsky of Chatulet,

Starting point is 00:36:33 how Ming Chan was able to stay as executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, despite so many people wanting her out for so long, whether or not it matters that Charles Hoskinson appears to have told many tall tales, and the shocking market manipulation proposal, and much more. Then, join one of my book clubs. You will get a free year-long subscription to my premium offering in which I release interviews not available elsewhere. Head over to Bitsky.com to get an NFT ticket for dates and times.

Starting point is 00:37:02 That's B-I-T-S-D-K-I-FORA-S-Lawrash-Lora Shin. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, without from Anthony Yoon, Daniel Ness, Mark Murdoch, Shashonk, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.

Unchained - FTX Wants to Compete With CME -- Here's Why It's a Big Deal - Ep.346

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