Unchained - Laura Shin Reflects on 500 Episodes of ‘Unchained’ - Ep.500

Episode Date: June 2, 2023

If a year in crypto is like a decade in other industries, then Laura Shin has seen a lot. To commemorate the 500th episode of “Unchained” (actually, there’s about 150 more under a different brand name), Laura hops on the other side of the microphone to field questions from Unchained Contributing Editor Zack Seward about standout moments dating back to 2018. From the early rise of Binance to a charged interview with Terra founder Do Kwon, Shin takes you behind the scenes for rare insights into her process, her favorite moments, and how key episodes have aged. Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, Podcast Addict, Pocket Casts, Stitcher, Castbox, Google Podcasts, TuneIn, Amazon Music, or on your favorite podcast platform. Highlighted episodes: Sept. 25, 2018: How Binance Became the Most Popular Crypto Exchange in 5 Months March 26, 2019: Vitalik Buterin on Whether or Not Ethereum Is ‘Blowing It’ April 8, 2022: Here’s Why USDN De-Pegged From the Dollar – And Why UST Might Too Dec. 23, 2022: Martin Shkreli Explains Why Sam Bankman-Fried Got Lucky With His Judge Aug. 3, 2021: Can a DeFi Smart Contract Be Regulated? Two CFTC Commissioners Discuss May 23, 2023: Ex-CFTC Commissioner Berkovitz Says ‘DeFi Should Be Regulated’ – But How? March 18, 2022: Punk6529 on the Significance of Bored Ape Yacht Club and CryptoPunks Oct. 18, 2022: Do Kwon of Terra: ‘It Was Never Really About Money or Fame or Success’ July 31, 2018: Meltem Demirors and Jill Carlson on the Shitcoin Waterfall Aug. 10, 2021: Is ETH on Its Way to Becoming Ultra-Sound Money? Yes, Says Justin Drake Dec. 28, 2021: Why NFT OG Mitchell Chan Has Released Just One Project This Year Oct. 28, 2022: The Mango Markets Attacker on Whether His ‘Trade’ Was Ethical or Not Feb. 7, 2018: Xapo’s Wences Casares on How Bitcoin Makes a Fairer World Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com Copilot Money Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello and welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things Crypto. I am not your host, Laura Shin, author of The Cryptopians. I'm Zach Seward, a longtime editor in the space with CoinDesk and a contributing editor at Unchained. This is a special recording of Unchained to celebrate the 500th episode, and we're taking a special look at some of the show's top moments. Co-Pilot is a best-in-class personal finance app for Mac and iOS, designed to give you a complete view of your financial life. Use code Unchained for a free two-month trial and get started today to see your money in a whole new way. With the Crypto.com app, you can buy, trade, and spend crypto in one place.

Download and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. I'm joined now by Laura Shin, the fearless leader of Unchained. Hey, Laura, how you doing? I'm good. How are you? I am doing it very well. Thanks for having me. So technically speaking, this is indeed the 500th episode, but there are dozens more

in the archive. Talk to me more broadly speaking about reaching this big milestone. Well, yeah, as you mentioned, it's technically probably the, I don't know, 650th or 660th somewhere in that ballpark because there were a bunch of episodes about 160 some that were released on another feed called Unconfirmed. And I kind of discontinued that show and just folded it into Unchained. But I'm sort of amazed that this podcast that I started on the side, actually seven years ago, it'll be seven years exactly in about two weeks. Yeah, has become as big as it is. I did not plan on that. That wasn't the intention. I'm very glad that that all transpired. But yeah, it's amazing to me that it's kind of sprouted

into a little company and has much of people working on it. And that there are, yeah, there are a lot of people who listen to it regularly. And hilariously, everybody, whenever come up to me and tell me that they listen to the show, they're always like, I listen when I'm at the gym or I listen while I'm doing the dishes or I listen while I'm driving. Everybody has their own little anecdote about where it is that they connect with me and the show. And it's always fun to hear about that from people. And then the other thing that I want to say, which has also been see where meaningful is that so many people have told me that listening to the show has change their life. They will say things like, I work in crypto now because of you. I've heard that

so many times and that's not at all what I intended to do. I'm so glad that it had that effect. But for me, it was just, I was so interested in crypto, kind of couldn't stop learning about it and couldn't stop thinking about it and loved podcasts. And so really wanted to do one on crypto. And I'm so glad that just doing something out of love, you know, out of the pure joy for me has led to so many benefits for other people. Yeah. And so those are some of the thoughts. I feel like there was one other thing that was going to add. Oh, yeah.

I talked about this when I wrote a Twitter thread about 10 years of working around myself. And I talked about how I really believe generally that the best way to pursue, you know, what it is that you're going to do. life is just to follow your own joy and to not, you know, think about what it is that other people think you should do or whatever, but just find in your heart what gives you joy. And yeah, I'm really glad that that's what I did here. And then the last thing that I will say is too is that I used to cover other areas as a journalist. And I find it amazing that I've been covering crypto for eight years. And I am not getting bored at all. I feel like I'm still getting started. I am captivated every day by what happens in this space, by the technology, by the implications for society.

There's so many reasons why I love covering this as a journalist. And so, yeah, it feels very momentous to reach this milestone, even though, like I said, the numbers a bit, not exactly the exact number on this episode in your podcast player. So anyway, yeah, thanks for asking. Yeah, no problem. I want to go back to the time question here because, right, this is eight or seven years. You've been doing this for a long time. I've only been at it since 2018. It also feels like an eternity.

Obviously, crypto time is sort of akin to dog years. You know, as you're in this reflective state as you reach this milestone, I just wanted to get your thoughts on your views as to whether things have changed or are the same from when you first started covering crypto. Things definitely have changed quite a bit, at least on the surface, I would say. And in the respect that, for instance, when I started blockchain, not big. Bitcoin was what everybody was kind of talking about. And so my first big feature story in Forbes on blockchain ended up being about how Wall Street was going to use blockchain technology to make

its products and services more efficient. And I just find that hilarious. It was so wrong. But that is what so many people were saying at the time. And I obviously have seen over the years that yeah, I mean, some people do that, but it's not at all, you know, by and large what the majority of people in crypto are doing. And then, you know, there are things that are still the same in the sense that there is this spectrum of activity in the space where you've got the sort of like idealistic and high-minded people who are really in it for, you know, changing the world and like bringing about all these benefits through decentralization and like tackling certain problems that can be tackled when you decentralize things. And then there's, you know, the other end of the spectrum where there's the people that are really into speculation and are in it to make a quick buck. And, you know, there's all these like scams and rug pulls. And so, in that sense, the space hasn't changed. I still see both ends in the spectrum pretty frequently. And yeah, I mean, we're dealing with money and we're dealing with a new technology where things aren't codified. I would imagine as the technology matures that the balance will shift more toward serious activity

and less toward the scammy speculative parts just because, for instance, like things will become more regulated, there will be more standardized way of doing things, and they're not going to be ways of doing things that enable all those kind of unsavory bits to happen. So, yeah, I do actually think that the fact that it hasn't changed that much is probably due to the fact that, yeah,

the technology is still really young, and it has a long way to go before it's mature. Time is a flat circle, et cetera. Definitely a little bit of that at play as well. All right, so this is our behind the scenes, look at your 500-plus episodes. We've selected 14 clips. We're going to go over them. And I just wanted to ask before we dove in, like, what's your selection criteria for this very small slice of the overall archive? Well, we didn't want to make the episode too long. So I really actually

just tried to think of episodes off the top of my head that sort of stuck out for some reason or another because, yeah, like I said, we didn't want to have too many. So I literally did not look at all, you know, whatever 600 episodes or something, I just try to think off the top of my head. And then somebody else actually picked the exact moments. And I did edit them. Like I just, you know, sometimes I was like, oh, actually the reason I selected this episode was for this particular section, not that. But otherwise, I just let them pick whatever they thought was interesting from that particular interview. So yeah, so I don't know everything exactly that's in here. but yeah, I really was just trying to find moments that I thought would be fun to talk about.

All right. Real time is real interesting. So this will be good times. All right, we're going to start. We're going to go into the Wayback Machine back to 2018 and talk about the rise of Binance. Let's see this clip. One thing that I also want to ask you about, though, just to go back to the regulatory question, I've seen other interviews where you've said things like, quote, we're okay to do things very creatively to avoid unnecessary regulation. Or another quote, we don't want to be in one place right now because of regulatory. uncertainty. And obviously you have this history of moving Binance's offices and servers. Partly, I think, because you don't want countries to be able to easily determine if they have jurisdiction over Binance. And, you know, those times when you moved out of China, you also moved out of Japan. I think you also had regulatory issues in Hong Kong. Like those three moves, I think, were due to regulatory issues. So some people that I spoke with said that to them, it seems like you are flouting the law. Do you ever worry that you are putting yourself on this path to

clash with regulators and that you could end up in jail? Again, I think you are making some random people's opinion to be the holy, to be like a legal, to be a legal enforced, I don't know, ruling or something. A lot of people, because I could think about anything. I could think, I don't know, Donald Trump's violating the law, but what I think doesn't really matter. So I actually think the reverse. I fully respect the laws of every country, every jurisdiction. But most people have this mindset that you've got to stay in one place and work with one government. But why is that?

Why can't you go to a place to work with a government that you choose, instead of always being stuck in one place and work with a government that may all. may not support what you want to do. So in a brand new industry, where I'm very third, so there are fundamental laws, laws are different by country, but the fundamental stuff you can't do, like hurting people,

stealing, scamming, stuff like that. And there are other things like, okay, how do you classify a cryptocurrency? How do you, is it as security, is it not?

And this kind of things, different countries do differently. So what's wrong with going to a country and choosing to live in a country where those things are more favorably for you. Why do you have to be stuck in a country that are not good for this kind of stuff? Why? Like this is like saying, look, why don't you stay?

Like, if you don't like hot places, why don't you stuck yourself in Florida and in the sun all the time? And you just don't like it, right? Why don't you go to a different city? Right. So I don't think there's anything, I don't think there's anything wrong or illegal or anything or even unethical about it. I mean, that's just, it is opportunistic, but why don't you choose the good opportunities for you?

We're living a world where we seek and phrase freedom, right? So why don't you use the freedom that you have? All right, so CZ back in September 2018, speaking about his opportunistic approach to moving finance around the world. What was your take on that one? Why did you pick that one to start off our review? Well, I remember that when I did this interview that it got pretty heated between him and me in a really kind of like intellectually fun way. It definitely felt like intellectual sparring.

And I don't remember if I articulated this during the episode, but one thought that I was having was that I had heard that the U.S. government will take jurisdiction over any company that they feel is interfacing. with U.S. customers. I guess this is probably in financial services. I don't know about other arenas. But I remember just feeling like, you know, if you're not really properly blocking people, then you're effectively going to be under U.S. jurisdiction.

And there were other parts of the interview where I think he kind of pushed back on that notion. You know, obviously we did this interview about five years ago. I would say that at this point, it's pretty clear that the direction I was going was probably correct. You know, some of the stuff that he was saying here, unfortunately, he's not the regulator. He's not setting those laws and he's not determining how they'll be applied. And so we have seen that finance has been the target of multiple different regulators around the world, in particular the U.S. as well. So, you know, who knows how all of that will shake out? There's a lot of articles that have come out kind of, you know, insinuating different things might happen. So I think this.

story is not finished here. But last thing I'll say is it's interesting to me how these same issues are still at play today and how so much of the conversation really hasn't moved forward from what we were talking about. But I do think today he would probably give quite a different answer to the question that I posed. Yeah, I was going to say exactly that. Like some aspects of this are prescient, right, like on a road to clash with regulators while others feel like, you know, there are still many unresolved questions as to how do we regulate these assets and under which agencies per view do they fall. So it is funny that there's a mix of sort of things that we have a bit of closure on and things that remain entirely open. I will ask, let's say finance is around in five

years, five years down the road. What do you see from CZ? Wow. I wonder if it will be, you know, unfortunately, kind of something that looks more like the bitmex of today post you know, all the executive changes and the actions by the DOJ and CFTC. So, you know, there's been hints that something like that might come down on Binance. And if anything, Binance was way, it has been way bigger than Bitmex was. So potentially we might see a CZ that gets sidelined at some point. You know, I'm not, I, this is not something that like I'm saying that I want to happen necessarily. I'm just kind of reading the tea leaves of everything that we've seen so far in the space. You know, I actually think that CZ is kind of like a crypto true believer and, you know,

whatever. There's just a lot of things about him that I actually would put him more in the bucket of crypto-native than, for instance, someone like Sam Binkman-Fried. So, you know, I'm not saying this is my opinion that he's, you know, this or that type of person or this or that type of whatever. But it's more that I'm just saying, given the way. way regulations going, I would not be surprised if those things happen to CZ and finance. All right. Always interesting to watch. Sorry to put you on the spot there with the magic ball. All right, let's change gears. Let's go to Vitalik back in 2019. This was Unchained's first live podcast recording. Let's see a clip. Do you agree with what Fred Wilson is saying here, which is,

is Ethereum losing its lead? And we do that a lot for our companies. Ethereum needs that, right? We know that Vitalik is not CEO. Vitalik is an evangelist. He's a brilliant computer scientist. But, like, Ethereum should be more like a company, right? Like, you look at what Eos is doing, and you look what ETHIOM is doing. And it's like, you know, if Ethereum was doing what Eos was doing, they'd be crushing it, but they're not. And they don't have enough money.

They don't have enough developers. They don't, you know, they're not, their go-to-market strategy is non-existent. Like they're not behaving like a company. And if all of us who own Ethereum could go to Vitalik and say, you know, look, this thing you got going in Switzerland, it's not working, fire these fuckers who don't know what the hell they're doing and put somebody great in there who could help you build this thing into a monster. Like, that's what we would do. I don't know how to do that.

Like, you can't, like, there's no mechanism to do that. That's painful. I guess, first of all, like, if Bitcoin was run like a business, would it have succeeded? And I feel like we kind of intuitive we know the answer. So, like, it's definitely a structure that works for some things, but, like, blockchains and cryptocurrency and all those, all of those things that come with that package are just fundamentally kind of so much more and kind of so different from a traditional company or a software product.

So I'm really not at all sure that, like, that kind of, like, that kind of. of model is anywhere close to the right model. So in terms of like what our model is, right? Like we've definitely had these discussions inside of the foundation and there's definitely been people from time to time that just said, yeah, we need to go in with guns, blazed and fire those bastards and then, you know, get the 40 people in and like stick them in the middle of some Nimbutopia in Silicon Valley and get them to pay $10,000 a month to rent, get them to work for 16 hours every day, rah, raw, raw six months. And like, we got Ethereum 3.0, man.

Wow. What a blast in the past. Yeah, that Eos reference from Fred Wilson, maybe not aging so well. I think Vitalik may have gotten the last laugh on that one. All right, what are your thoughts on this clip? Yeah, I have so many thoughts. So first of all, you're right that the clip from Fred, Fred Wilson didn't necessarily age well. And that Vatolic really did have it right that when you have a decentralized project, it needs to be run differently. You know, Ethereum has succeeded beyond all measure. There's so many times when it really could have failed. You know, if you look at things like even just something as simple as the CryptoKitties saga when the blockchain got really clogged for the first time, or that wasn't the first time, sorry, because by then

we'd been in ICO season. So, you know, status and Brave and Bankor and all those ICOs had really tested Ethereum. But despite the fact that Ethereum keeps kind of busting at the seams every so often with all this activity, it's proven that it's got a lot of staying power. But when I said that I have so many feelings about that clip, like another part of me just thinks back to what I learned from reporting my book where, you know, I discovered a lot of kind of discontent and dysfunction at the top levels of the Ethereum Foundation and just generally how that was all run. People talked about this shadow government. There were a lot of people that were involved in things without a specific title. And so there were a lot of complaints

that these people had a lot of influence, but nobody knew how it was that they had the power to do the things they do because they didn't have like specific titles or duties or anything like that. It was just these shadowy figures who sort of weird. wielded this power. So, you know, I do think that, yes, Ethereum has succeeded probably because it followed that decentralized model. And yet, like I said, I know so much of the backstory about how people felt that there still was so much dysfunction. And so I think there's kind of a middle road. Like, hopefully projects in the future will be able to be decentralized while also having certain clarity and not kind of creating this sort of mystery.

and yeah, intrigue and like these power struggles, you know, for when it comes to controlling the protocol. Yeah, interesting to think about like the securities law implications of some of the comments made by Fred Wilson there as well. But we'll leave that for another day. All right, changing gears. Let's zoom ahead a few years. Let's go to April of 2022. This goes ahead to the anchor and U.S.T. extravaganza with Kevin Zhao offering some perhaps insightful and prescient wisdom about. that algorithmic stablecoin project. Let's see the clip.

And algorithmic stable coins have historically had trouble. So in this case, how and why did USDN depeg? Yes, it was for a number of reasons. But the main reason is that people found that on chain, there was a really large address that was doing what we call recycling, right, or leveraging. And the way that that works is that, and many people think that this is the Waves team themselves that was doing this. And the way that works is, you know, you first, you start with USDN, you put it into VIRES. And VIRAS is basically like the AVE of Waves. So it's a borrow lending platform.

You can deposit, you know, USDN over there, get some yield. You can borrow other types of assets like USDC, Tether, VIRES itself, waves, a lot of different assets. So the way that this loop works is that USDN is first put into VIRAS as deposit. and then from that they're able to borrow hard assets like USDC and USDT. They use that then to buy waves and then use the waves to convert it to USDN through the mechanism that we talked about right before and then redeposit that USDM back into the area, completing the cycle and continuously do this until basically all the deposits for USDC or USDT are depleted because then the cycle can't continue anymore.

So basically there was a lot of this recycling going on and that's what's, been causing this huge pump in the price of waves. And then afterwards, at some point, you know, there are a lot of people on Twitter, for example, like Xerox Ham's, for example, a lot of people are pointing this out, which is that, you know, this whole thing is unsustainable because at some point, the whole thing has to come back down once this cycle stops because of the running out of the deposits of USC and USDT. Okay, so that's April 2022, about a month before the famous collapse of the Terra ecosystem, Kevin Zhao, kind of state his reputation at the time. time on some of those predictions, and we all know how that story played out. So let me get your

thoughts on this club, Laura. Yeah, you know, Kevin Joe definitely called it well before anyone else. And I did have, I think it was actually more than one person who reached out to me after Tara collapsed and told me that listening to this episode with Kevin, where he, it's not just in this clip, but multi kind of threw out the episode, he's talking about how he thinks Tara could collapse, how it would work, why it is that it's likely to collapse. I think he even like gave predictions on sort of what would happen to the market cap. And, you know, I had people say things like, after listening to that episode, I pulled my money out of Tara and that saved me, you know, a big chunk of money. It saved me from losing a big chunk of money. So I think what's good is that afterward,

I did a few different interviews where I asked people, why is it that so much, you know, that so many people had these thoughts about Tara but did not speak up. You know, because as you recall, before Terra Luna Collapse, like, Doquan was super arrogant, like more arrogant pretty much than anybody we've ever seen in crypto. His persona on Twitter was like Mr. King of Crypto, and I'm going to use my ego to bruise anybody who tries to just come at me. I mean, it was very, it's kind of entertaining to watch, a little bit cringy. Um, and, um, and, Yeah, like I think because of his persona, because of the different backers he had, whatever the reasons were, a lot of people had these thoughts about Terran just didn't speak up. And so, you know, kudos to Kiff and Joe for saying what he really thought and calling it.

And yeah, hopefully that's a model for next time around when people think that there's something that might collapse and, you know, cause a lot of pain and hurt in the industry. Yeah, that really was the big collapse that set off, you know, subsequent dominoes that were still kind of seeing the ramifications of the. those unfold to this day. So yeah, credit for calling that one. I mean, his fund even got caught up in some of those dominoes later on down the road, which is sort of a funny twist of fate. As we see often in the crypto world, anyway. All right, let's go to the next one. And now we'll shift gears to Martin Strelli, offering some unsolicited advice to SBF should he end up behind bars. But Sam isn't exactly going to be somebody that fits into prison. You know, my advice for him includes shaving his head. My advice for him includes deepening his voice. He speaks in a sort of,

and again, I would normally not judge somebody this way unless the context of prison, which is a very testosterone-filled, masculine place. It's very difficult. There are plenty of prisoners who are trans who get by just fine in prison. I defended one trans prisoner and vouched for them in many ways and helped not protect them, so to speak, but sort of vouch for them as somebody that should be accepted. Sam is going to have a lot of issues. because he's a bit of an infaminate guy, and his sort of demeanor, some people say autistic sort of sense or sensibility,

is not something that goes over while in prison. People sort of expect you to be direct, they expect you to be very assertive. If you're not, it's seen as weak. You know, you have to be quick on the uptake with sort of responses. You know, if, you know, people get the sense that they can pick on you, they will pick on you.

And, you know, it's going to be very hard for him to sort of adjust to that sort of lifestyle. He also doesn't know anything about the streets and sort of criminal culture, which my advice to him is to pick those things up as quickly as he can. He should be listening to as much rap music as possible. He should be trying to learn everything there is to know about gangs, about the tough neighborhoods in every major city. This sounds funny, but this could save your life. You know, my suggestion to him is that he rebrands himself quite a bit.

In fact, he probably should no longer say that he's from Stanford or something like that. He can say that he's from Oakland. All right. So that's some straight talk from a guy who spent some time locked up. That one, like a little wild, pretty spicy clip there. I don't know what you were thinking at the time when you recorded that one. Yeah. I mean, first of all, I was a little uncomfortable with how he was kind of picking apart Sam's personality and his mannerisms.

you know, I think what he was saying was, yes, many of us have been trained to not judge people in those ways, but he's entering a place where he will be judged in those ways. It did make me a little bit uncomfortable, but I think he was giving really practical advice, and I think he was, yeah, in a way trying to, it's like almost like a brotherly thing or something. You know, like, I'm going to try to make this as easy for you as possible. But one thing that was so fascinating to me about this episode was that after we published it, I got so much pushback. Oh, my God, so many people were mad that I'd had him on the show.

I mean, it was like people who've been on the show and, like, love my show, had written me really stern messages about how they have lost all respect for me. And I mean, it was like a little bit shocking. I, you know, always when I'm covering things, I always look for the best source to cover something, to, you know, be either the guest or like in an article, the source for, you know, whatever I'm writing about. And I really felt that actually this was kind of a genius move. I had seen him on YouTube analyzing the case. And he clearly was like this prominent white collar criminal.

a criminal who had gone through the Southern District of New York court system many times. He knew all the judges. I mean, he had strong opinions on who the different judges were that SBF might face and how that would affect the sentencing. I mean, it was like a really detailed analysis that I just knew I wasn't going to get that from a lawyer, you know? And so I actually felt like this is the right person to hear from now. And so it was just very fascinating that people thought that I was endorsing Martin Schrelli, that I, you know, and I'm not. I'm just trying to see, like, who was the best person who can shed light on this new story that we're all fascinated with and intensely interested in and give us insight into what it might look like for Sam Pinkfim Fried if he does go to prison. So

in that respect, I personally felt like this was an amazing show. And, And I actually was really surprised by how personable and gregarious and insightful Martin was. I have a feeling that probably, because, you know, I read a bunch of his whatever tweets and posts and other things that he said before prison, I've been feeling prison changed him, you know, in different ways and maybe made him a better person. That's just my guess, like I said, kind of looking at the before and after. So yeah, I thought it was a hugely insightful episode. Yeah, an interesting second act for Martin for sure.

I bet come October of this year, 2023, when the SBF trial happens, he'll probably be back in the limelight. We'll see. All right. Changing years. Let's go back to the realm of politics and regulation. August 3rd, 2021. We got two CFTC commissioners on the show. Let's see what they had to say.

And at the moment, with the way that many of these. DeFi projects are set up. Who do you think is a natural entity for you to regulate, for the CFTC in general to regulate? Well, that's a great question. And so one has to look at a number of factors and to see whether there is actual the sufficient indicia of control or intermediation, of who's financing it, who's making the decisions. is somebody benefiting by it, by financial? Financially, is there really an organization behind this?

How decentralized or centralized is it? And it can be very factual, specific, and it's an evolving area. So we're looking carefully at a number of these things. It's different facilities and different protocols seem to have different degrees of centralization or decentralization. And I think some of these present very interesting questions for us. Okay, that was Dan Berkowitz, then of the CFDC, later of the SEC, now out of the public sector. He was actually on the show again, I think about a week ago. And there didn't seem to be a much more additional clarity to his thoughts on how to regulate defy in a compliant manner.

So that one is funny to see in the wake of some recent comments from the same guy. Yeah, I mean, the more that we kind of grapple with this question, the more that I just realize, yeah, what we're talking about here is something fundamentally new. This is probably as much of an opinion that you'll get from me anywhere on the show. I tend not to really reveal opinions, but if you look at something like a security and if you look at kind of traditional commodities, this definitely feels like kind of a different beast. And I don't mean to say that literally anything that comes in a blockchain wrapper needs to be classified one way or another, but for the assets that people tend to think of as,

you know, crypto assets, the things that kind of reflect the ideals that the crypto world is trying to bring about, I do feel like, yeah, probably having some set of regulations that tackles those in particular would be good because the way things are shaking out right now, it just feels like people are mainly just disagreeing a lot. And we need kind of either Congress to come up with something pretty definitive or, yeah, maybe actual rulemaking from the SEC, which is what Coinbase has been begging for. Yeah, it's hard to get the square peg in the round hole in this instance when you're dealing with the way Defi works and the way the existing sort of regulatory structures work.

And we see this conversation time and time and time again and seem to go nowhere productive. All right, let's leave that one B. Let's go back to Doe Kwan, back to the Terra episode. This one was a big deal, October 18th, 2022. I think this was a big get for the show talking to Doquan himself. Let's see what he said. Fat Man Tara posted some stories of people who had lost a lot of money in Terra. There was one man who said he had a malignant tumor and he'd received $50,000 from insurance for therapy, but then he lost 90% of it in anchor. Someone else lost a quarter of a million dollars. A lot of

these people had young children. Taiwan News reported that a man in Taiwan who had $2 million in Tara had that value plunged to about $1,000 and committed suicide. Here's your opportunity to say something to the people who lost, what in many cases was their life savings. Here's your opportunity to say something to family who lost members to suicide. What do you want to say to them? So whatever issues existed with CARES design, its weakness to respond to, you know, sort of the cruelty of the markets.

It's my responsibility and my responsibility alone. So for the community that engaged with the Terra ecosystem, used its steps, you know, sent tokens and coins into its many protocols. The downfall of the companies that chose to build on Terra for the people that, you know, chose to work on the ecosystem, and for the hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people that used, you know, the terra-eco system, which was all built on the stability of UST,

I own up to that responsibility fully. And it's not easy. I think the hardest thing about the current situation is having to contend with, you know, so much astronomical loss. it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's easy to live with heavy stuff and a bit of introspection from do kwan co-founder of terraform labs talking about

the collapse of the terror ecosystem and some of the human cost of that tell me what that interview was like that was a big one I remember that one was the talk of the town for quite a while. What stood out to you about that particular interview? I remember that I felt like I was really threading a needle there because there were the people who felt on the one hand that he was just a failed entrepreneur. There were the people who felt that he had committed a fraud. And so I did, in a very compressed period of time, like some amount of kind of investigative work so I could try to catch is not the right word,

but just unearth facts about some of the areas that people thought were frauds. I think the closest I came was when I asked him about some claims he had made about chai, which we later did see made their way into, or not like literally the parts of the episode, but that incident made its way into the SEC complaint. The one thing that I neglected to include or just like I said, I didn't have all the time to make it the number one best interview that I could, but I didn't have the bit about jump in there, which was also in the SEC complaint. But I just remember that I tried really, really, really hard to stick to facts, to get neutral to not prejudge and to not even judge during the interview, but just to let him have his say and to represent both sides, represent the people who thought he was a billionaire and the people who thought that he had committed a fraud. and let people hear what he had to say and then judge for themselves.

So, yeah, it was kind of tough. And I also wanted to, yeah, call him out basically on his arrogant behavior, you know, not by, you know, like I said, judging him, but just to ask him about some of the comments he'd made and stuff like that. So in that regard, you know, we did see him humbled. And that was a moment where he kind of expressed some regret. And I'm glad that, you know, I was able to get him to do that. for people who felt that they needed that. Yeah, definitely a big moment, I think, for the space at large to hear some of that contrition

that, you know, we mentioned it earlier, right? The bombast and sort of the hubris that you saw out of him was in stark contrast to what came through in that interview. All right, we're going to switch it up to a bit more lighter fare. Let's go to Punk 6529 back in March of 2022, talking about the significance of Borde Ape Yacht Clubs and Cryptopunks. Last Friday, Yuga Labs, the creator of the board ape yacht club. announced that it had acquired the Cryptopunks and Mebets collections from their creator, Larva Labs.

Why don't you describe what else it was that they announced with that acquisition and how you think this will change things for Cryptopunks and Mebitts owners? Great. And I'm happy to do that. And I think before we discuss that specifically, I think it's probably useful to take a step back to what the punks represented in the space, what maybe Ugal Labs represented in the space, because I think beyond the technical aspects of the transaction, I think there were quite a few, let's call them, narrative aspects or psychological aspects that are embedded in the various reactions that people had to this. So if that's okay, maybe we do some context setting.

So the punks are not the first NFTs, but let's say they're the first NFTs that reached popular knowledge, popular social construction. They have been in the last year at all points in time the most valuable collection by most metrics of the market capitalization of all the punks cumulatively. And they had this, let's say, countercultural narrative. There's a lot of OG punk holders and particularly the early punk holders are people who saw value in NFTs and saw value specifically in the punks early. Or at least saw narrative, saw art, saw that this was something worth claiming. initially they were free, or collecting. This led to both a certain community feel among the punk holders and a certain aesthetic. I mean, they are, in fact, punks, and they're low-res punks, but they are punks, so they have a

countercultural vibe in what they're representing visually. and this abstract aesthetic, this 24 by 24 pixelated aesthetic, has dramatically influenced the space, as has the structure of the collection, right, whether on purpose or by accident the cryptopunks have set the base model for what a PFP profile picture collection looks like, That it's around 10,000 pieces, that there are dominant hierarchy traits, so in the case of punks, humans, zombies, apes, aliens, and that there is a generative aspect in how those, their various traits are randomly given to each individual punk. And many of the traits in punks you see reflected in many other PFP collections.

So whether it's a direct homage or it turns out that those are traits that people find appealing. For example, hoodies turned out to be a quite appealing trait in punks, even though they're not a particularly rare trait. And so many collections proceeded to then have hoodies as a trait because they've seen the market reaction on which traits people like to use to represent themselves in a profile fixture identity. So the punks were, let's say, nine months ago, the completely unchallenged leaders of the profile picture category. And some of the largest NFT sales that had ever happened were elite punks, the alien punks, that were between 10 and $20 million. And the view being that there's only nine of them. And so those nine might become almost unimaginably valuable over time because of the historical provenance of the collection.

That's, let's say, where we were in May. In May is also when the board apes launched. And the board apes, I think it's fair to say they were three things that distinguish them from a lot of what was happening during that period. that was a period where a lot of collections were trying to mint at relatively high prices or to create escalating prices during the mint, so bonding curves where the price of each success of mint or group of mints goes up. And it ended up, it has turned out, as the field has concluded, this is a bad idea. It actually, it's bad for the collection to have people on day one, having some people having

paid one price and some other people having paid 20 times the price actually leads to unhealthy dynamics in the collection. All right. So that was Punk 6529 on the cultural impact and legacy of the Cryptopunks collection and how they shaped PFE projects going forward. All right, what's your, what's your thoughts on this one? This one was a bit historical in nature, kind of a cultural analysis. What were you thinking at the time? Well, listening to him, I really felt like it was listening to an art historian talk about the development of NFTs. And it was kind of this like big analysis. And I remember that it was technically supposed to be a Friday episode, which is actually the shorter episodes that we have on the show. But this was his first time ever appearing on a podcast. So it was like a big

get for me. And then he just, you know, did, you know, what he does when he does a Twitter thread where It's extremely long, but it's like, you know, gives all the context and everything. And so he ended up talking for an hour and I just let him. I just, you know, kind of sat back and just let him do his thing and just try to come up with good questions that would elicit his ideas. So I kind of threw out my script. I might have like followed a little bit of it, but he really, you know, I barely had to prompt him and he just had so much insight. So yeah, it was great to have him on the show. And yeah, like I said, it felt. significant and almost like historical to hear his perspectives. Laura, no opinions, just reasoned analysis. Are you bullish on NFT sticking around? Are you thinking that they are going to be a fad that was of its time in 2021, 2021, and that mania will never come back? No, no, no.

I definitely think they're going to be a thing. I don't know if they're always going to look the way that they do now, but for sure in a way actually, so obviously they're quite popular and they're drawing in all these newcomers and they're drawing in all these people who don't. don't even know anything about crypto and, you know, Reddit has had success with them, not calling them NFTs. You know, those collectibles or whatever they call them, the avatars, were quite popular, mostly maybe because people didn't think they were NFTs. But I think that, you know, since, so we have this use case that's bringing in all these normies. But on top of that,

the kind of ways in which NFTs can intersect or collide with regulation is like just a much smaller area than in the rest of crypto. So for that reason, I actually feel like it's going to be easier for them to take off. Fair enough. Fair enough. All right, let's go back in time again to 2018. Just a lovely headline on this one, to be honest. Melton Demirs and Jill Carlson on the shit coin waterfall. Let's hear a clip from that one. I'm speaking with Melton Demers and Jill Carlson. So let's talk about this irony of the crypto space sort of recreating the old one. Melsom, you tweeted, new money, just like the old many, but with different rich guys in charge.

Yeah, awesome. Neat-oh. I'm curious to hear your take on what we're seeing play out so far, which is pretty much as you put it. Laura, can you? I wish. I seriously was obsessed as your Twitter feed as I was putting this together. All right, that's a fun one. Nice little historical gem from the, I guess the tail end of the ICO era, but certainly

something that has been persistent in the space ever since. Meltem always good for a fun quote. What are your thoughts on this one? Yeah. So first of all, the reason I selected this episode for my staff to take a look at is I just I remember laughing so much during this episode because Melton was being herself. And I think that having Jill there had like kind of even loosened her up more because she'd been on my show before, but like only by herself. And this time was like when I really got what they really thought about

everything and it was like pretty hilarious. So yes, she kept talking about the shit coin waterfall, as she called it. And, you know, I find this particular tweet that I called out really interesting because it definitely is something that I've noticed a lot. And I'm sure anybody who does anything a crypto knows, you know, it's like 90% men. And it's interesting to me in the sense that just in our world, you know, I feel like everybody uses money, everybody uses technology.

And so, you know, just on kind of like a certain basic level, it doesn't make sense that it would be so lopsided. But then on a totally different level, you know, it's like you see the disparities like in the tech world and the finance world. And so when you combine them, then you get this like hyper version of that. So that's why I actually think that, you know, lopsidedness is even more extreme in crypto. But, you know, the kind of sad fact of the matter is that when I asked her this question back in 2018, things were not that different from how they are now. And, you know, I do think, of course, NFTs have brought in more women, but I still think that the lopsidedness is just a smid and less extreme than it was. And I don't see it even getting close to like kind of the disparity you might see in tech or finance, which I think is maybe more 7030 rather than like 90-10. And I don't know what's going to change that. But probably it's just the maturation of the space. It's just unfortunate that the people involved in building it and making it more mature are not going to be women.

or at least, you know, so far they haven't been. Hopefully that will change. But yeah, it's something that I've asked multiple people about. I feel like nobody ever has a good answer. I don't have a good answer. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. But yeah, it's sort of a perennial question. Yeah, I mean, my thoughts are that the space could certainly use it.

The space is sort of aggressively masculine. And I think there's a huge skill set associated with those that are more feminine that could be highly useful to how crypto advances and kind of reaches again that ultimate goal of mainstream or at least more widespread adoption. It's still a bit distant. I feel like these ideals around decentralization and stuff, I feel like those in particular are ones that, first of all, either draw more women or could use more women to kind of help develop them. And anyway, so yeah, I know that there are certain groups that are working on that. I also know that there was, I'm just blanking on the name of it, but there was a kind of like Dow type product, but it was like mini

financial clubs. Eilitzer, I think is his name and Ian Lee. Syndicate Dow by chance? Yes, syndicate Dow. And they created these like little investment clubs. That's what it was. And when they launched, the launch group that they had was half women led or women only Dow's. And they didn't even like intentionally do that.

So that's saying something. And so they were like, oh, we just kind of realized that actually our mission was aligned with what a lot of women were doing in the space. So who knows, maybe as that kind of stuff develops more, we'll see more women get involved. Yeah, interesting point on like dows and collectivism. I think that's definitely well noted. All right, let's change gears. Let's go to the idea of ultrasound money.

We talked to Justin Drake way back in 2021 about ETH on its way to becoming ultrasound. Let's take a peek. This idea that ETH could be turning into what people in the Ethereum Ecos system are calling ultrasound money. So what were the characteristics of ETH as money before the upgrade? And what would you say they are now? And why would you call that ultrasound money? Right. I mean, one of the things that's kind of useful is to understand what is money, right? So money for me is a money candidate with monetary premium. Okay, so what is a money candidate and what is monetary premium. A money candidate is an asset which has various characteristics,

which means that it could potentially be used at money. It's durable, it's divisible, it's fundable, it's transmissible, blah, blah, blah. So if you look, for example, at a cow, a cow that will never be money, right, because it's not easily divisible, you know, the head is not equivalent to the tail, and, you know, it's not durable and it's not transmissible easily. on the other hand, if you take an asset like salt, for example, that was used in money or gold or Bitcoin, they have all these basic properties. But it's not sufficient to be a money candidate. You can look at all the coins on coin market cap.

Most of them are not money. All right. That was Justin Drake from the Ethereum Foundation. Lord, do you remember when like ETH is money was sort of like, I don't know, a tagline or something that was debated? I feel like, I don't know, I kind of remember that era. And obviously it evolved into ultrospalienable. sound money, and then the shift of proof of stake and sort of deflationary pressures that,

I don't know, gave Heath Maxi's life force. What's your thoughts on this whole evolution of the eth is money narrative? I mean, it's so interesting because this question of, you know, is this crypto asset money just keeps coming up? And I mean, clearly they have value, their financial assets. So then it's like, you know, do they fit those three prongs that people usually used to describe money, which is unit of account. Store value. Store value, but then also transactors. It's like for transactions.

Means of payment or something like that. Yeah, something like that. And, you know, I definitely would say like maybe some tiny percentage of the world uses them as all three. Like I remember back in the day, Olaf Carlson, we told me that there was periods of his life where he only transacted and like Bitcoin and either. or whatever, and so maybe for him. But I don't think, you know, we've got like you, I would be highly, highly shocked, frankly, if like even one percent of the world actually transacted in Eath in this

way. So, you know, which is not to say I don't think it will happen someday. Like I literally have no idea. But just in terms of like, if we're looking at those three prongs, does it fit those? No, it doesn't. You know, does that mean it never will? No, not necessarily. But I almost find the question a little bit silly because I'm just like, you guys at this point, like literally everything, you know, even I remember from my book when I would interview people about, you know, different events in crypto, they'd often be like, oh, the price of Bitcoin at the time was da-da-da, or the price of ETH at the time was blah, blah, blah. And they always would denominate it in dollars. Even if they're European, even if they're Asian, whatever, they would always denominate in dollars. So you guys, to my mind, like, dollars are definitely money. Not sure about Bitcoin and ether. It's the universal unit of account for sure. I mean, it's kind of funny, though, like the whole NFT craze being pretty much widely denominated in ETH, right? Heath was much more widely spent than Bitcoin was.

And Bitcoin, obviously, is pure, pure electronic cash as originally conceived. So it is interesting, I think, at least in the cryptosphere, which is, again, the very small sliver of humanity, ETH became the more spendable asset relative to Bitcoin as money in that instance. But maybe that's a controversial take. I don't know. Yeah, no, but it's totally. It's totally true, except, of course, in the last few months, now the Ordinals inscriptions

have been denominated in Bitcoin. So, yeah, so maybe it's through NFTs that will start to see these assets be used as units of account. Sats are back, baby. All right, we're going to change gears. Let's stay in the world of NFTs for a minute. We are going to hear about Mitchell Chan, who's one of the first NFT pioneers. Let's hear what he told you in late December of 2021.

Okay. So I feel like this is the perfect segue to discussing your first NFT art because, you know, there are a lot of themes around the actual artwork and then the either experience of that artwork or the commodity value of it that you played with in that first artwork. And it's so incredibly fascinating. So yeah, why don't you describe how you came to create that first. FTR and what it was. Sure. So I'm coming, like, I'm coming fresh to crypto from 2017. I have a, like, it's 2017. I have, you know, some awareness of, I know a little bit about Bitcoin, but I'm sort of just discovering Ethereum for the first time. And so I'm sympathetic to a lot of the, you know, criticisms, or shall I say skepticism about crypto. You know, there's nothing there. It's substantial. It's not tethered to anything. It is free-floating. It doesn't represent a certain quantity of gold in a vault somewhere, but I'm a conceptual artist. So that doesn't bother me. In fact, I understand that in fact its untetheredness and its free-floatingness is what could

give it power, right? And of course, I'm an artist, so I'm also most interested in, yeah, what does this mean for art? Not that at this point does it seem like ever, you know, there's going to be a significant amount of art that is created on blockchain or transacted on blockchain. That's a preposterous idea in 2017. But I mean, yeah, what if? What if? This will be a fun little thought exercise. Charismatic speaker, that was a fun one.

What was the highlight for you from this conversation? Oh my God, so many. Mitchell is an amazing storyteller. And he is so just creative and insightful with the way he looks at crypto, probably because he is an artist, so he just kind of will, yeah, I mean, you could hear it in that clip. He just has like really interesting ways of looking at things. The reason why I want to include this clip, though, is I have to tell you, in all the years I've done the podcast, this is the only episode where numerous people felt the need to tweet at me how much they loved Mitchell and how delightful he was

as a person. And it really shines through the episode, like if you go back and listen to the whole thing because he tells this whole story about actually what he considers the very first art NFTs. And they're from an artwork from, I think it was like the late 1950s, if I remember correctly, in France. I'll just like do a really brief description of the artwork, but it's Eve Klein and there's, you know, he's famous. So there was a big gallery exhibit at a gallery and there were like, you know, lines around the block and stuff. And people go in and the artworks are just like blank it's all blank. And he's selling something like 23 of these. And what you get for your, it's called like immaterial zones of pictorial sensibility or something like that. And you get a certificate saying

that you own this artwork, even though it's like not visible. And then the other thing that was funny is that he said in order for you to experience the apotheosis of this artwork, you needed to go with him to the River Sen. Okay, by the way, also you could only pay for your artwork in gold, gold coins. And so if you wanted to experience that apotheosis of this artwork, you had to go with him to the river Sen. And he would throw half the gold that you gave him into the river if you threw your certificate into the river. So people were paying loads of money for this. And basically, Mitchell created an NFT version of that. And the smart contract for it literally has a function where if you burn your NFT or certificate and send it to the burn

address, it automatically takes half the ETH that you paid for it that he earned for selling you the NFT and burns that as well. So anyway, it's just really funny. He made like an NFT version of that first analog NFT. And yeah, the whole story was highly amusing. There's like way more in the episode. You guys should all listen to. It was super fun. Yeah, good stuff. We got a couple more. All these are obviously in the show notes. So check that out online if you want to dig into these episodes in full. All right. From The Magic of Art on the Block chain to some, what was it, advanced game theoretical shenanigans. Let's go here from Mango Markets attacker, Avi Eisenberg on the ethics of defy exploits. You then made a proposal to return

$67 million to investors as long as they agreed to a condition, which we'll talk about later. But just overall, like, when, because it's, you know, this isn't the first time that a hacker has return some of the money. So why do you think that people who are in this type of situation offered to return some amount of it back? I mean, I can't speak for anyone else. In this case, as I stated publicly, I wanted to ensure that other users weren't hurt. And so I helped negotiate the settlement and make sure that everyone, well, the users of the platform would be, able to withdraw, even though the platform was technically insolvenant. All right. That's self-described applied game theorist Avi Eisenberg, who ended up in

U.S. custody late last year, and I think was still in detention earlier this year. What's the latest on Avi's story and also talking to him? What were your impressions? Yeah. So I am not sure of the exact latest on this story, but I do think he is, you know, as you said, still in detention. I mean, I just kind of couldn't. believe that he even wanted to come on my show. And then one, and we, we didn't, I guess, you know, whoever went through and selected these clips didn't select one clip where I asked him about, you know, whether or not what he had done there was market manipulation, which is what a bunch of people had thought. And he said, market manipulation, he's like, you know, how do you

determine what the correct price is at any given moment? You know, and he was kind of disputing the notion that the price had been manipulated. He was saying that he just made it the correct price. So, you know, I thought it was pretty brazen, like pretty much everything. The tweet, telling everybody coming on the show, using these different rationalizations to describe as actions, which, you know, they're not like common interpretations of how you would interpret those actions and definitely not ones that the U.S. government agreed with. So, you know, Maybe there's like a sense of like self-righteousness in him. Like he thinks he's smarter than everybody or, you know,

that's kind of the only way that I can explain all of those different things. And, you know, sadly, what he instead demonstrated is that maybe wasn't the smartest move actually to do all those things. So, yeah, those are some my thoughts on that. Yeah, fair enough. Definitely an odd case. All right. Last one. Let's finish maybe on a more uplifting note.

Let's go to one of Cryptos, OGs, Zappos's, Wences, Casares on how Bitcoin makes a more fair world. This was all the way back in 2018. Let's see how it has aged. So out of all the businesses you could have done with Bitcoin, why did you choose to build Zoppo with, you know, the vaults, the wallet, the debit card? I once I understood bitcoin I became very very optimistic that if bitcoin succeeds it may be the biggest leap forward we've ever seen in the democratization of money and it would make for a much much more equal and fair world in my opinion but the fact that it succeeds is not a given it could still fail so I decided that I want to spend the rest of my career

helping Bitcoin succeed. I don't see this as a job where I am running a company to make the company grow and make money. That's not what motivates me. What motivates me is when I am old and hopefully my grandkids come and ask me, hey, grandpa, what did you do with your career? I want to be able to say, you know what? I was part of a large group of people who helped Bitcoin succeed. And for me, the best way to help it succeed, I see Sappo as a platform.

to help Bitcoin succeed. All right, five years later, what do you think? How's Bitcoin doing? Is it succeeding? Are we yet to get there? Give us some historical perspective based on the entirety of your coverage as to some of those big ideas that Wence is voiced there. Wow.

Is Bitcoin succeeding? It probably depends on what your bar is for success. It certainly has a very passionate following around the world. you know, how big it is is basically really not that big when it comes to the grand scheme of things. However, there are certain people who have really demonstrated what the use case is for Bitcoin. And I've had some of them on my show. In this episode, actually, when Sis tells some stories about his life growing up in Argentina that make clear that, you know, if he'd had Bitcoin available at the time, then it would have helped his family, you know, kind of whether some of

the storms there, depending on where you are in the world, it kind of either primes you to see the potential in Bitcoin and other cryptos or not. So for instance, I feel like every time I talk to American audiences, they either talk about Bitcoin just as an investment, you know, and they even sometimes will ask me if it's like a stock or they won't ask. They'll assume it's a stock. Or, you know, they'll kind of talk about it as a passive investment. Or they'll just say, why is this necessary? They don't get the reason for it. And then if you talk to like Argentines or people, yeah, just like in Afghanistan or whatever, they understand it. And, you know, at least the ones I've had in my show will tell me that they've used it. And here's the dire

circumstances in which it came in handy and was their only option. So I think for all those reasons, that's probably why we've seen adoption kind of take off in small pockets. but not really in the mainstream, especially in the U.S. But in the U.S., what we do see, of course, is that there's a fair amount of speculation and there has been some interest from institutional investors. So as time goes on, and especially if we get a Bitcoin ETF sometime soon, which looks kind of like more than likely or odds than we probably would have thought a year ago for all those reasons.

There could be a moment where there's a catalyst that actually causes it to take off a lot more quickly. Well, interesting thoughts all around. Thanks, Laura Shin, for being on this side of the interview, a rare treat. Congrats on the milestone. Here's to 500 more. The scorebed app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking.

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So what do you think is going to happen? Bitcoin is sort of inevitable at this point. I think it would come down to precious metals. I hope we don't go cashless. I would say land is a safe investment. Technology companies. Solar energy. Robotic pollen.

might be a thing. A wrestler to face a robot, that will have to happen. So whatever you think is going to happen in the future, you can invest in it at WealthSimple. Start now at WealthSimple.com. And we'll do it again soon. Looking for a better way to track your spending and net worth?

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Link in the description. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. Bahamas holds key to unraveling charges against SBF. The spotlight focused again this week on Sam, Bankman-Fried. As U.S. prosecutors seek to proceed with a range of charges against the former CEO of the bankrupt FDX Exchange, they have turned to the Bahamian government for a specialty waiver. In December, Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas, but his legal team now contends that any new charges violate the extradition treaty between the two countries. The U.S. Justice

Department, however, argues that the treaty does not limit the charges that can be brought post-extradition. While they maintain the validity of the charges, they have recognized the Bahamian government's authority to halt certain aspects of the case. As the Justice Department notes, the Bahamas' response will be, quote, dispositive in deciding how to proceed with the additional charges. The three counts involve allegations of conspiracy to commit bank fraud, operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. A hearing on the motion to dismiss the charges is set for June 15th. In response to fraud charges, SBF's defense team is set to argue that he acted based on advice from law firm Fenwick and West. The team seeks documents

relating to the firm's advice on crucial matters concerning FTX and Alameda Research, SBF's proprietary trading shop. The documents include advice on the creation of North Dimension, allegedly to circumvent Silvergate Bank's account conditions, and the recommendation to use transient messaging apps for business communication. Scrutiny intensifies over FTCs amid push for independent examiner. The battle to appoint an independent examiner for FTX has escalated to the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals, thanks to a ruling by District Judge Holm Connolly. The request, championed by the U.S. trustee, Andrew Vera, representing the Department of Justice, had been rejected by a bankruptcy judge citing significant costs estimated to be near or exceeding $100 million.

Four U.S. senators, including Elizabeth Warren and Cynthia Lemmiss, voiced support for the independent examination. They argued that the law firm representing FTCS had a conflict of interest given its past association with the exchange. The senators stated, quote, the firm is simply not in a position to uncover the information needed to ensure confidence in any investigation or findings. Binance reportedly reduces 20% of workforce. Rumors of massive workforce cuts at Binance started with a tweet from journalist Colin Wu, who cited multiple sources claiming that Binance had commenced layoffs. Wu said the layoffs would represent approximately 20% of Binance's 8,000 employees, or 1,600 people. Finance was quick to respond, characterizing the move as a strategic

initiative to optimize talent within the organization. The company stated, quote, we periodically review how we can best allocate our talent to the right teams with the right resources, underlining that this process may entail letting go of employees who may not be performing well or who might not be the right cultural fit. CEO Chang Peng Xiao, or CZ echoed these sentiments in his commentary on Binance's bottom-out program, which regularly reassesses staff. Despite the layoffs, Binance is still looking to fill hundreds of roles. The changes come as the company grapples with a shrinking market share and enhanced regulatory scrutiny. Moreover, Binance is reportedly considering a plan to allow certain institutional

traders to hold their collateral in a bank, potentially using Bank Frick and Flow Bank, as alternatives to keeping it on its platform. In related news, blockchain data analytics firm, Nansen, announced a 30% reduction in its workforce to curtail costs amid the ongoing market conditions. CEO of Bridging Protocol MultiChain goes absent. Following technical problems, multi-chain, one of the most extensive bridging protocols in the crypto ecosystem, reported that its CEO Zhao Zhen was missing in action. Quote, in the past two days, the multi-chain protocol has experienced multiple issues,

the team said on its official Twitter account, adding that they were unable to contact Zhao Jun for essential server access for maintenance. These access issues have also affected chains such as Keck Chain, Public Mint, Dino Chain, among others. Rumors have been circulating about the multi-chain team's whereabouts, particularly in light of the recent alleged arrests in China. Gemini and Genesis seek dismissal of SEC lawsuit. Gemini and Genesis Global Capital, under bankruptcy protection, are asking a U.S. court to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC accused the companies of selling unregistered securities through Gemini's Earn Program, which provided yield on crypto assets. The companies have countered,

stating that the lawsuit lacks legal or factual basis. They argued that the Earned Program was not a case of selling unregistered securities, stating that, quote, the SEC seeks to turn the earn program into something it was not. In the wake of the lawsuit, Genesis had to file for bankruptcy and has since been in mediated negotiations with its parent company, the digital currency group, for a restructuring and settlement agreement. Crypto mining breathes a sigh of relief. President Joe Biden's proposal of a 30% excise tax on crypto mining companies in his 2023 budget proposition was recently swept away in a debt ceiling deal. The excise tax aimed at energy consumption for crypto mining had been planned to be phased in over three years, with a 10% increase each year.

However, in an effort to circumvent a U.S. government debt default, this controversial tax has been dropped, as revealed by Ohio Representative Warren Davidson. According to Davidson, the draft bill will block the proposed tax on crypto miners' electricity usage. This draft legislation, which is currently awaiting congressional approval, would suspend the debt ceiling for two years, allowing the U.S. government to continue borrowing money and meeting its financial commitments, something that was seen as positive by many crypto traders. Meanwhile, Bitcoin miners witnessed a surge in transaction fee revenue this May, reaching a two-year high, primarily due to the rise in Bitcoin NFTs,

as the mining difficulty surpassed the $50 trillion line, according to data from BTC.com. Additionally, stable coin provider, Tether, is investing in a sustainable Bitcoin mining and energy production facility in Uruguay, with operations projected to begin by the third quarter of this year. Die savings rate to experience a surge. Make or doubt, the decentralized platform behind the Dye Stablecoin took center stage as it considered a substantial increase in the Dye savings rate, or DSR. Earlier this week, Block Analytica, a defy risk management firm, proposed an increase in the

DSR from its current rate of 1% to 3.3%. This proposed change deemed a potential, quote, huge tailwind for the entire defy ecosystem by Primos Cordes, founder of Block Analytica, could potentially boost the circulation of dye and the stability of its price. On Thursday, Maker Dow confirmed that the DSR will actually be raised to 3.49% and that the proposal will be implemented through an upcoming executive vote within the Maker Governance System. This increase is poised to change the landscape of defy, potentially drawing more yield for, to the platform and spurring growth across the entire defy ecosystem. However, some analysts noted that as more capital flows into the DSR, there might be fewer stable coins available for borrowing, leading to an overall increase in stable coin rates.

Furthermore, Megardow made significant changes to its reserves. The community unanimously voted to remove $500 million worth of Paxos dollar, or USDP, from its holdings, which impacts approximately half of USDP's supply. This is a setback for Paxos already under pressure from regulatory challenges. Simultaneously, MakerDAO's community voted to invest an additional $1.28 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds via crypto asset manager Block Tower Capital. These moves are part of MakerDAS strategy to diversify reserve assets. Power is restored in Tornado Cash Dow.

The Tornado Cash Decentralized Autonomous Organization, or Dow, experienced a dramatic turnaround as the attackers who had gained control over the Dow in the previous week reversed their actions. The anonymous group put forth a proposal to restore the usual governance state, which passed with 517,000 torn votes, remarkably including votes from the attackers themselves. While the protocol is slated to return to the hands of the original governance token holders, the motive behind this apparent surrender of control is unclear. There is speculation that the attackers could either have lost interest after swapping 4,000, 383,000 Torne tokens for Ethereum or ETH, or they could be attempting to increase Torne's price

before selling off the remaining tokens. Time for fun bits. Everybody's been saying that the U.S. government is trying to kill crypto. Listen to Jenny from Unchained, who has some thoughts on whether it's actually a secret. Recently, I've seen what feels like hundreds of tweets and articles about the U.S. government's secret war on crypto, which definitely makes me question the definition of the word, secret. And it's Democrats' fault, apparently. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has warned that the Biden administration has it out for crypto, and he is going to get the troops to go fight it, just as soon

as he has conquered Mickey Mouse. At least that's what people say he says. I couldn't hear. I only heard static. Elon Musk also thinks that crypto could crash if Democrats keep power, and I trust him because he is the world expert on platforms that crash. They're not the only ones who think that crypto will die if Biden is re-elected, which I think is kind of optimistic. You really think crypto's going to make it to 2025. I also think that people with this concern are maybe giving the government too much credit. You really think they know how to kill crypto? Just the other day Diane Feinstein asked if Bitcoin was a very small coin. Also not to state the obvious, but if crypto is capable of getting killed by the government, then it totally failed at its purpose. Unchained is produced by

Laurenne Fuchs, Matt Pilchard, me, Zach Seward, Wanneranovich, Sam Shri-Rob, Ginny Hogan, Jeff Benson, Leandro Camino, Pam, Majundar, Shashank, and Margaret Korea. Thanks so much for listening.