Unchained - Unconfirmed: Is Coinbase Stock a Good Buy? This Analyst Says Yes - Ep.217

Episode Date: March 5, 2021

Gil Luria, director of research at D.A. Davidson, talks about the upcoming Coinbase direct listing and his recent research note, “Introducing Crypto’s Amazon Moment.” In this episode, Gil discus...ses: his crypto background, including his experience as the first Wall Street analyst to cover Bitcoin back in 2013 (1:27) why the Coinbase IPO is going to be an inflection point for the crypto industry (3:02) why he gave Coinbase's upcoming stock a “buy” rating (4:14) who Coinbase's biggest competitors are (5:13) why Gil believes Coinbase is the “gold standard” in crypto (6:29) how investing in Coinbase stock compares to investing in actual crypto assets (8:13) how he came to $195 price target for COIN (10:39) why a $2 billion revenue estimate for Coinbase in 2021 might be conservative (12:01) how Coinbase is generating money outside of transaction fees (14:19) whether he expects the institutional adoption trend to grow (15:49) what his expectations are for the price of COIN on the day it opens (17:20) why GBTC is no longer trading at a premium to the spot price of bitcoin (18:20) whether Gil will continue to cover crypto (20:05) crypto News Recap (20:53)    Thank you to our sponsor! Crypto.com: https://bit.ly/3jzkTAD  Download the Crypto.com app here: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/laurashinpodcasttesla   Episode links: Gil Luria’s Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/gilluria    Crypto’s Amazon Moment: https://markets.businessinsider.com/currencies/news/coinbase-direct-listing-public-coverage-stock-price-amazon-cryptocurrency-dadavidson-2021-3-1030150896    Introducing Crypto’s Amazon Moment: https://unchainedpodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/DA-Davidson-Coinbase-Initiation-20210302.pdf   Coinbase S-1 Filing: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/000162828021003168/coinbaseglobalincs-1.htm    2013 Quote from Gil on Bitcoin: https://www.streetinsider.com/Analyst+Comments/Bitcoin+Could+Be+Worth+10-100x+Current+Price+-+Analyst/8936836.html    Link to the Crypto News Recap: https://unchainedpodcast.com/the-irs-clarifies-its-position-on-crypto-purchases/   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:04 Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how the marking names in crypto are reacting to the week's top headlines and gets the insight scoop on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto five years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. Unchained and Unconfirmed are now published as videos. If you're not yet subscribed to the Unchained YouTube channel, head to YouTube.com slash C slash Unchained Podcast and subscribe today. Crypto.com is giving away four Teslas.
Starting point is 00:00:39 To enter the lucky draw, download the Crypto.com app and buy at least $100 worth of Bitcoin. Download the crypto.com app now. Today's guest is Gil Loria, Director of Research at D.A. Welcome, Gil. It's nice to see you back in Crypto. It's great to see you, Laura. We've been talking for many years,
Starting point is 00:01:00 and you've done such an amazing job covering the crypto space, and I'm really glad to be back and talking to you about it again. So for those unfamiliar with Gil, he was the first Wall Street analyst to cover Bitcoin in December 2013. And today's topic is going to be the Coinbase upcoming stock listing. However, I think people probably would be interested in a bit of your background. So can you tell us about your previous coverage of Bitcoin? Sure.
Starting point is 00:01:27 So I was a Wall Street analyst covering payments companies, PayPal Square Visa, those kinds of companies. In 2013, when I encountered Bitcoin, I just lit up. I read the white paper. I talked to people, and I realized that this has a lot to do with where we're headed in the future. Such an interesting topic. So cross-disciplinary, economics and finance and culture and mathematics, computer science. So I really got engaged, published that very first Wall Street report about Bitcoin in 2013. Later on, opened the very first institutional account on Coinbase. At the time, I was at the first firm that accepted Bitcoin for research. Then I picked up GBTC so I could have a price target on Bitcoin, so it could have a fundamental analysis-based price target on Bitcoin.
Starting point is 00:02:23 I had a blast doing all that. Fortunately, unfortunately, was promoted to head up the research department, at which point I stopped publishing research exactly four years ago and I've been mostly focused internally on helping other analysts with their research. But when the Coinbase IPO got closer, I just decided I had to participate in this moment. It's such an important moment for crypto. for financial services, for this community that I dove back in and initiated coverage of
Starting point is 00:02:59 Coinbase ahead of its direct listing. And so your research note on Coinbase is titled Introducing Crypto's Amazon Moment. What do you mean by that? In May of 1997, Amazon went public. Up until then, the Internet was an interesting thing that people poied with, used, were trying figure out once Amazon went public, everybody realized this is going to be a huge business. And it's going to impact every other business. That was the real and milestone inflection point. And it feels like the Coinbase listing is going to have the same effect.
Starting point is 00:03:40 Obviously, crypto is already huge. It's a trillion dollar asset class. So much interest in it. But it's almost gone on a parallel path to traditional finance. When Coinbase becomes, public and trades at $50 billion or more, those worlds will come together. And the traditional world of finance and crypto will be going forward will be intertwined as a huge business in crypto becomes a publicly traded security. And you gave Coinbase, which will be listed under the ticker coin on NASDAQ a buy rating. What factors led you to that rating? Well, we have partial information. This was the first iteration of the S-1. The company isn't listed. They haven't disclosed all the financials. They haven't provided forward guidance. So we took what we had, which is to say they're at least on track to generating $2 billion of revenue this year, likely higher, but we don't know that yet. And given multiples that other high growth standard bear type technology companies are getting, it's pretty easy to justify $20. times revenue. So that's where we started off. Private market transactions may be at lower or higher
Starting point is 00:04:57 prices. Those will matter a lot less until we actually get the listing, at which point we'll also have better information about current period results, forecasts, guidance from the management team, and we'll be able to use that to reevaluate that price target. And so at this moment, you were able to look at, you know, partial numbers from Coinbase, but I'm sure you also have a sense of where Coinbase kind of sits amongst its competitors, who would you consider Coinbase's main competitors and what factors would you say separate it from the competition? Well, I'd say gray scale, Michael Zonenshine business within Barry Silberts, DCG,
Starting point is 00:05:36 is probably the most important competitor and comparable because they are also now gaining from the institutional move to crypto. They're also a very well-managed firm that was there at the beginning, has grown gradually and wisely and thoughtfully. So I'd call them the closest competitor. Then you have the pure play cryptos that are regulated, like Cracken and Gemini, that are also very interesting, relevant competitors. And on the traditional side, you have the digital wallets that are really competing for crypto usage.
Starting point is 00:06:14 And first and foremost, Square, they were early than PayPal, now Robin Hood. Those are to me the real key competitors to Coinbase from the more traditional digital wallet side as opposed to, and on the other side, the pure play crypto side. And so when you look at Coinbase in comparison of those, what would you say distinguishes it from its competitors? Well, Coinbase, when I say gold standard, I mean the following. From day one, from when I opened the wallet in 2013, the user experience was terrific. I felt secure and I was very well aware of how much they had spent on compliance
Starting point is 00:06:54 because again I was coming at it as an analyst testing a technology and I was so impressed their app worked better than PayPal's app I think it still does and they hire one of their very first hires was a very high profile compliance person. They understood
Starting point is 00:07:13 that was key they invested a lot in security and safety. They understood that was important. It was a well-funded, well-thought-out, well-led startup at the time, and they've continued to develop from there. And it's not a coincidence that today they're well respected by the traditional financial community as well as within the crypto community. Not everybody in the crypto community loves them because of what they represent
Starting point is 00:07:41 and how intertwined they are in the traditional world of finance. But everybody respects them. And that's their lead. That's their lead to lose. And especially as you get institutional money in, institutions already see this as a very risky endeavor. They want to go to the gold standard. They're going to feel comfortable with the company that's been around, that's done a good job with security, that has good user experience.
Starting point is 00:08:08 And again, to me, between Coinbase and Grayscale, that's a lot of where this is headed. And so as I'm sure you're well aware in the crypto community, there's a lot made of this so-called fat protocols thesis, which hypothesized that an investment in the crypto assets themselves would be more productive than an investment in the applications on top. But I was curious, how would you say an investment in Coinbase stock would compare to an investment in crypto assets themselves? Well, if you're investing in crypto assets, you have to decide who the winners are, which is really, really hard. I think we know how well Bitcoin is doing. We think we're all very excited about the developments on Ethereum.
Starting point is 00:08:53 There's so many other tools. Now there's defy tokens. You have to do a lot of work to figure out who's going to win. Again, I come from the additional world of finance where we do an unbelievable amount of work to figure out of stocks. are going to go up or down. It's even harder for crypto assets and tokens. And so if you're going to invest in crypto assets token, you have to do a lot of work to get that right. If you invest in Coinbase, what you're getting is you're letting them figure it out. And not in a not in a portfolio way of, oh, I'll just buy a little bit of everything. Coinbase will be trading tokens regardless
Starting point is 00:09:33 of who wins. It could be a different token or crypto asset that does, better, they're going to be trading them anyway, and they're going to be taking the commission into the fees anyway. And that's what makes it interesting as a public company investment is, they're going to win regardless of which crypto asset is the best one or does the best, where if you're investing directly in the crypto assets, you actually have to figure out who's going to win. So in a moment, we're going to discuss the Coinbase stock price, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. crypto.com is giving away four Teslas. To enter the lucky draw, download the crypto.com app and buy at least $100 of Bitcoin before March 8th.
Starting point is 00:10:16 New crypto.com app users also enjoy 0% credit and debit card fees in their first month. Increase your chances of winning by applying for the crypto.com visa card, which gives you up to 8% back, along with rebates for your Spotify, Netflix, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. More details can be found in the show notes. Back to my conversation with Gil Loria. You gave coin a price target of $195. How does you reach that number? To me, there's a category of stocks. It's thin air, but there's a category of stocks that are gold standard market leading in an open-ended growth category. So it's companies like Zoom, Snowflake, Tesla, CrowdStrike, Octa. These are companies that Teledoc that have a huge category that's growing very rapidly and could grow for a long time,
Starting point is 00:11:14 and are the market leaders in that category by being the gold standard, the standard bear in that category. That's where these guys belong. Now, valuation-wise, that can take you anywhere from 10 times the revenue to 70 times revenue. Because the information on Coinbase is still partial, we're still piecing it together. I used 20 times revenue as a starting point. But again, as we get more information, we get a better sense for the revenue, we could revisit that and see if they could justify a higher or lower type of multiple. And again, on what revenue base?
Starting point is 00:11:51 I've extrapolated from 2020 results into 2021, but it's just my extrapolation. The company is in quiet period. They're not giving guidance yet. And yeah, well, I was going to ask next about that extrapolation. Can you give us some insight into how you made this projection that by years end, at least they would bring in $2 billion in revenue? Yeah, I used what I would consider conservative assumptions. I assume this quarter, the March quarter that we're in, is going to be even better than the December quarter, just based on what crypto assets have done, the level of activity, et cetera.
Starting point is 00:12:29 But then I assumed for my calculations, because there's no guidance and we're still here in March, then it actually goes back down to the lower levels of activity for the rest of the year. And even based on that, I get them growing from a little over, from a little over 1.2 billion of revenue in 2000. to $2 billion of revenue in 2021. If this level of crypto asset prices continues through the rest of the year, if this level of activity and volatility continues to the rest of the year, they could achieve a much higher level of revenue than that. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely want to emphasize that it does seem that you want the conservative route
Starting point is 00:13:09 because I'm sure you're well aware that Coinbase shares have recently been reported to be trading at $373 on NASDAQ private market. So I wondered what you thought of that. You know, what we've learned in similar situations ahead of IPOs, of Squares IPO, Facebook IPO, these private company transactions are interesting. They're indicative of where some of the price discovery is, but you really have to get the stock listed before you know where people are willing to pay. You really have to put it in the marketplace with all the supply and demand
Starting point is 00:13:41 to get a better sense for what the price is. So it's an indication of where the price could go. on that first day. But realistically speaking, the last real price we have is from the raise they did in 2018, which actually puts them at only $39 a share. There's no doubt that they will list at a much higher price than that. But until they list, we have to go with that in order to anchor the current market price, but we won't have to wait for long.
Starting point is 00:14:13 I would expect within the next one to five weeks for the list of you. Techro. TA. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too. That's the powerful
Starting point is 00:14:59 backing of Amex. Conditions apply. Local news is in decline across Canada, and this is bad news for all of us. With less local news, noise, rumors, and misinformation fill the void, and it gets harder to separate truth
Starting point is 00:15:15 from fiction. That's why CBC News is putting more journalists in more places across Canada, reporting on the ground from where you live, telling the stories that matter to all of us, because local news is big news. Choose news, not noise. CBC News. And what did you make of the fact that 96% of Coinbase's revenue comes from transaction fees? Yeah, I mean, that's the business. That's the business they've always had.
Starting point is 00:15:44 I think what's interesting is that the subscription type businesses they're getting into are growing even faster. And that's really going to be very important for Coinbase. For their revenue to be more recurring, for their stock to get valued based on a recurring level of revenue as opposed to the ups and downs of crypto asset prices and crypto volatility, they're going to have to grow that line much faster. So, you know, those things in there like custody for institutional accounts, I would expect that line to grow very quickly because, again, the level of institutional activity on Coinbase is now far out stripping the level of consumer activity. And those institutions are not going to be bothered with private keys.
Starting point is 00:16:30 They're going to pay somebody to custody their assets. The other interesting one that I found is staking. If we do move more to proof of stake from proof of work, again, institutions are not going to want to manage their own staking. Enthusiasts, well, true crypto believers and participants will, institutions will not. They're going to want to pay somebody to manage their staking. And Coinbase is particularly well positioned to do that for those institutions. And so talk a little bit more about this trend that we've seen,
Starting point is 00:17:09 where we're seeing more institutional trading volume on Coinbase and less retail, how much bigger do you think it could get? Oh, much big. It could. Operative word could get much bigger. We're hearing very large asset managers talking about what percent allocation they need to put into crypto assets. If they all just put a percent of their allocation into crypto assets, obviously we're talking about an unbelievable, influx of capital.
Starting point is 00:17:41 We don't know that that's going to happen. Crypto assets can roll over again and we can get into another quiet period like we had between 2014 and 16 like we had last year. Those things could happen. But if institutions see this as an asset class that they need to have exposure, right now they think most institutional capital thinks of the world as real estate, stocks, and bonds, maybe some commodity. increasingly, they all realize they've missed the boat on that run from $0 to a trillion
Starting point is 00:18:15 of asset class over the last 10 years. And they don't want to miss the move from a trillion dollars and up. And so they understand they need a certain allocation. To the extent this happens broadly, that's a tremendous influx in capital. And that could be the next wave of growth for crypto assets. All right. So then what would be your expectation of what would happen to the price? price of coin on the day of their direct listing?
Starting point is 00:18:42 It's so hard to tell. It's so hard to tell. What I can tell you is that it's going to be interesting, volatile, exciting. I think the last comparable event is Facebook's IPA. If you remember how that transpired with very high expectations and then some letdowns. And then Facebook has obviously done tremendously well since that we may get all that wrapped up in one day. There's going to be a lot of activity. There's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
Starting point is 00:19:12 Again, everybody loves Coinbase. Everybody respects Coinbase. Not everybody loves Coinbase. Everybody respects Coinbase thinks very highly of them. We're going to see that come to the market when they list. And so I would expect there to be a lot of activity. And again, I expect the stock to do well in its first day or days when it becomes listed. And so while I have your attention,
Starting point is 00:19:38 I couldn't help but want to ask you a little bit about GBT to harken back to your previous days. Did you notice that as of last week, GBT no longer is trading at a premium and instead the prices actually has fallen below the price of Bitcoin? Do you have any theories as to why? It is very interesting. I always assume that when ETFs come to market, that that premium would be reduced. It may be an indication that people believe that ETFs are close. I can tell you, ETFs have been close to the market since 2013. I remember reading diligently the Gemini S one in 2013,
Starting point is 00:20:20 where they were trying to generate to get an ETF into market. And here we are. It's 2021. We do not have an ETF yet. So whenever the premium and GBTC goes down, I imagine that has a lot to do with. the expectation for an ETF, which obviously trades at the value of the assets and there wouldn't be a premium there. It could also be related to the Coinbase idea. If people are
Starting point is 00:20:45 trying to free up funds in order to buy Coinbase and think that that's a different use of that capital that influences GPTC. But again, GPTC is just one aspect and one particular security that was very well-timed and had served us very well in the market for the duration of its existence, how it'll, what form it'll take going forward if there's ETFs, we'll find out. It doesn't really take away from what gray scale is doing on a bigger scale, which is gathering assets in the trust. And so what about you going forward? Can we expect to see more from you on crypto, whether it's Bitcoin or Coinbase or whatever
Starting point is 00:21:28 it might be? I'd like to stay involved to the extent that the community wants to talk to me, that folks on Wall Street want to get my opinion, I'm happy to stay involved. It was hard staying away for the last four years. I'm glad to be back. And I hope to stay involved going forward. Great. Well, it's been so great talking to you again. I really was shocked. I remember when you wrote me and you said you were not going to be covering it anymore. I was like, what? So welcome back, and I look forward to talking to you more in the future. Great to see you, great talking to you. Thanks for having me on. Don't forget. Next up is the weekly news recap. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. First headline, NFTs take off with mainstream artists.
Starting point is 00:22:19 The NFT craze is reaching multiple corners of mainstream culture. Kings of Leon release their new album when you see yourself in non-fungible token or NFT form. Friday, March 5th, the day this show drops at noon Eastern time. In doing so, Kings of Leon will become the first rock band to issue an NFT album, according to Rolling Stone. The NFTs are available through Yellowheart, a company focused on NFTs for concert tickets and musical artists, and will be priced at $50 for the two-week sale. Yellowheart will also mint 18 unique golden tickets, six of which the band will put to auction, guaranteeing the owner four front row seats to Kings of Leon concerts during each tour for life.
Starting point is 00:23:02 Marking the first time, concert tickets will be officially sold as NFTs. Another big name in music cashing in on the NFT craze is Grimes, the Canadian singer and partner to Elon Musk, who made $5.8 million in under 20 minutes on Sunday through her sale of digital artwork. Her collection, War Nymph, was sold via NFT platform Nifty Gateway, and a percentage of the proceeds from the War Nymph NFT sales will be donated to Carbon 180, a company dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. Street artist Banksy saw a piece of his artwork titled Morons,
Starting point is 00:23:38 physically burned on a Twitter live stream before being resurrected digitally as an NFT. Morons, purchased by injective protocol for $95,000 and then promptly destroyed, ridicules art collectors for purchasing expensive pieces of art. On the purpose of the burning, representative of the company explained, quote, The main intention here is to be the first ever event where a physical piece of art is turned into a digital piece. The digital version of Morons is currently on OpenC in an auction that ends on Sunday, March 7th. Chris Dixon, General Partner at A16C crypto, published a well-timed blog post about NFTs and how they have the potential to, quote, accelerate the trend of creators monetizing directly with their fans.
Starting point is 00:24:24 by fundamentally altering the economics for artists. He lists three main ways NFTs can change creator economics. One, the removal of middlemen. Two, the transformation of customers to owners. And three, the allowance for what he calls granular price tiering, which is like how Kickstarter enable creators to make more money from especially enthusiastic supporters than they can from the everyday fan. If you're interested in more of the A16C crypto investment thesis,
Starting point is 00:24:54 around NFTs, you can hear A16Z general partner Katie Hahn discussing NFTs eloquently on a recent Tim Ferriss podcast. James Beck, Director of Communications and Content at Consensus, penned a long blog post this week, lauding NFTs for providing a challenge to what internet ownership is and might be. He believes that NFTs will transform the music industry through the tracking of metadata, like the audio file, the rights, etc., across multiple platforms. allowing artists to receive royalties for every listen and or sale. To round out a crazy week in NFTs, yield guild games,
Starting point is 00:25:33 a Dow or decentralized autonomous organization, is going to be investing NFTs, and Yield Guild Games received funding from Scalar Capital, Delphi Digital, Block Tower Capital, and others. YGG will use the $1.3 million to invest in virtual land and other in-game assets. Next headline. A roundup of how traditional,
Starting point is 00:25:54 finance is coming to crypto. Amazon Web Services announced that its new product, Amazon-managed blockchain, now supports Ethereum, enabling customers to focus on building Ethereum-based applications without going through the complicated process of operating their own Ethereum infrastructure. PayPal is in the process of purchasing curve, a crypto custody firm for a rumored $200 million to $500 million. In an exclusive interview with DeCript, PayPal CEO Dan Shulman confirmed the launch of a crypto-dedicated business unit that will, amongst other plants, expand crypto offerings beyond buy, sell, and hold. Users of crypto derivatives platform FTX can also now use the payments giant to deposit
Starting point is 00:26:38 fiat onto the exchange. Goldman Sachs is relaunching its cryptocurrency trading desk after a three-year respite. It plans to support Bitcoin futures by mid-March after being put into hiatus in 2018 due to regulatory concerns. State Street has been appointed the fund administrator and transfer agent of the Van Eck Bitcoin Trust, a proposed Bitcoin ETF. Van Eck submitted its most recent Bitcoin ETF filing in December 2020. Not to be outdone by Visa MasterCard, Discover Financial, the third largest US credit card company, posted a job listing for a product manager to develop and deliver upon the company's blockchain roadmap. Charles Schwab, which oversees $6.8 trillion in
Starting point is 00:27:22 client assets is exploring different white-label solutions for crypto brokerage. Citibank authored a report titled Bitcoin at the tipping point, which proposed that, quote, Bitcoin could become an international trade currency as a decentralized and secure firm of payment. Cities researchers, however, cited scalability, environmental considerations, and capital efficiencies as potential barriers to widespread adoption. Jury and Timmer, Fidelity's director of global macro-mackro global asset allegations, application compared Bitcoin directly to gold in a recent research piece. While admitting that Bitcoin faces risk from volatility, competitors, etc., he ended his note by writing, quote,
Starting point is 00:28:04 For investors, the question of Bitcoin may no longer be whether, but how much. Next headline, the IRS clarifies the 1040 question. Crypto investors who simply purchased crypto with Fiat money in 2020 received clarification from the Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday. On the current iteration of the 1040, the IRS asks, quote, at any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency? According to the IRS crypto FAQ, taxpayers who solely purchased crypto in 2020 are effectively exempted from answering yes. If the above section stressed you out, perhaps it is fortuitous that TaxBit, a Utah-based
Starting point is 00:28:48 startup, announced a $100 million Series A investment round. The company offers crypto-specific tax software for both individuals and businesses. And in case you missed it, be sure to check out the Unchained Guide on everything you need to know about crypto taxes for your 2020 returns. Next headline. Wall Street Betts is becoming a Dow. A group of moderators from Wall Street Betts launched a new website outlining a plan to decentralize the forum. The group calling themselves Wall Street Betts 2.0 plans to use the native tools of to utilize smart contracts and pool investments targeting short orders from hedge funds. The anonymous moderator gives an impassioned argument for decentralization, writing,
Starting point is 00:29:32 quote, It's time to stop betting against the house and become the new house. It's time to stop using centralized platforms that can shut us down without warning. It's time to stop using a broken financial system that is archaic and inefficient. It's time to decentralize. Speaking of centralized Robin Hood, the trading platform that fuel the Wall Street bats and GameStop mania is planning to confidentially file an initial public offering as soon as March reports Bloomberg.
Starting point is 00:30:02 Next headline, Bitmex CEO may surrender to U.S. government next month. Arthur Hayes, co-founder and CEO of Bitmex, may surrender to U.S. authorities next month, according to Jessica Greenwood and assistant U.S. attorney. Hayes, along with fellow co-founder Bend Delo and Bitmex's first employee, Gregory Dwyer, were charged by the Department of Justice last October for violating the Bank Secrecy Act by evading U.S. anti-money laundering requirements. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission also filed charges, accusing Hayes, Dello, and Dwyer of operating an unregistered trading platform.
Starting point is 00:30:37 Hayes currently resides in Singapore and would travel to Hawaii for the initial stages of virtual hearings if he goes forward with a proposed voluntary surrender. Meanwhile, Bitmex is carrying on trying to remake its image with regulators. According to a profile in Bloomberg of the new CEO, Alexander Hopner, the former CEO of Worse Stuttgart, his goal is to, quote, amend relationships with global regulators while also expanding businesses ranging from spot trading to brokerage and custody services. He told Bloomberg, quote, I was coming from the regulated and classical world. I have a lot of touchpoints with the regulators already.
Starting point is 00:31:12 Now I'm working on the crypto side and bringing the crypto side to the regulated world. Next headline, DeFi Roundup. Mirrkat Finance claims to have lost $31 million in crypto assets just one day after launching on the Binance smart chain. The block reports that the hacker drained funds utilizing the smart contract's original deployer account, suggesting that either the private key of the deployer was compromised or that this was an orchestrated rugpole. Additionally, Mirkat has taken down both its website and Twitter account. Uniswap finished off February with four consecutive. of new weekly volume records totaling $32 billion in monthly volume. To put that in perspective,
Starting point is 00:31:56 February of 2019 and February of 2020 saw Uniswap do $12 million and $144 million in volume, respectively. Fruw Accombo, a tool built for optimizing DFI strategies was hacked on Saturday. The exploiters stole roughly $15 million by targeting Frouacombo's transaction batching protocol. The team set in a blog post, it is, quote, committed to compensating all users who were affected. The vulnerability has since been patched. Time for fun bits. Reminiscence of Cypherbunk suggests Satoshi Nakamoto committed suicide. I realize this headline doesn't sound like such a fun bit,
Starting point is 00:32:35 but this essay seems to be another worthy contribution towards solving the enduring mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto's identity. It starts by saying that each node on the Bitcoin network contains the memorial to cypherpunk Len Sassaman embedded into the transaction data. The pseudonymous author, Leung, then attempts to connect the dots to suggest that Len may have been Satoshi, while also celebrating Len himself, who tragically took his own life in 2011, two months after Satoshi's last known communication, which said, quote, I've moved on to other things and probably won't be around in the future. All right, thanks for tuning in.
Starting point is 00:33:13 To learn more about Gil, D.A. Davidson, and to read his research note on coin, be sure to check out the links in the show notes. Don't forget, we are now on YouTube. Subscribe to the Unchained Podcasts YouTube channel today. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, with help from Anthony Youne, Mark Murdoch, Daniel Ness, and Dan Edelbeck. Thanks for listening.

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