{"id":22656,"date":"2022-04-26T22:32:33","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T22:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/?p=22656"},"modified":"2022-04-27T07:36:24","modified_gmt":"2022-04-27T07:36:24","slug":"news-sam-bankman-fried-on-defi-ponzinomics-grayscale-etf-comments-binance-and-russia-el-salvador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/26\/news-sam-bankman-fried-on-defi-ponzinomics-grayscale-etf-comments-binance-and-russia-el-salvador\/","title":{"rendered":"News: Sam Bankman-Fried on DeFi ponzinomics, Grayscale ETF comments, Binance and Russia, El Salvador"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>I&#8217;m doing a debate at Durham Union on Friday 29 April: \u201cThis House would ban cryptocurrencies.\u201d There will apparently be video. Jemima Kelly from the Financial Times is also arguing this side. I promised to get together a list of our talking points for Friday, so I wrote this post instead. It&#8217;ll be all right on the night! [<a href=\"https:\/\/dus.org.uk\/about-the-union\/\"><em>DUS<\/em><\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>Support my work by signing up for the Patreon \u2014 $5 or $20 a month really does help a lot. Patrons also get a couple of \u201cBitcoin: It Can\u2019t Be That Stupid\u201d stickers \u2014 just send me your postal address. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/posts\/for-patrons-free-63317340\"><em>Patreon<\/em><\/a>]<\/li>\n<li>If you\u2019d like to have both the books, signed by the author (with stickers, even), <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2020\/11\/26\/get-signed-copies-of-libra-shrugged-and-attack-of-the-50-foot-blockchain\/\">go to this post.<\/a> \u00a325 the pair, plus postage \u00a36 UK, \u00a310 Europe or \u00a312 rest of the world.<\/li>\n<li>You and everyone you know can get this newsletter sent to you by email! [<a href=\"#byemail\"><i>scroll down, or click here<\/i><\/a>]<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Rebellious jukebox<\/h3>\n<p>The cry of the cryptocurrency evangelist is: \u201cyou just don\u2019t understand the technology!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>When you ask them a technical question, you discover that 100% of crypto bros who say you just don\u2019t understand the technology, don\u2019t understand any technology.<\/p>\n<p>But there is a technology to understand here. Not software engineering \u2014 but financial engineering.<\/p>\n<p>DeFi is constructed from ridiculous chains of leverage. Boxes are leveraged to other boxes, which are leveraged to other boxes, with linkages built from paperclips and sticky tape and bird poop.<\/p>\n<p>Sam Bankman-Fried from the FTX crypto exchange went on Bloomberg\u2019s Odd Lots podcast to do his best <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Gerald_Ratner#The_speech\">Gerald Ratner<\/a> impression. He managed to flummox Matt Levine by explaining where the money comes from in DeFi yield farming. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-04-25\/sam-bankman-fried-described-yield-farming-and-left-matt-levine-stunned\"><i>Bloomberg<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>It works a bit like this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>You put cryptos into a box.<\/li>\n<li>You create a voting token for that box.<\/li>\n<li>If people put cryptos into the box, they get voting tokens that let them decide what to do with the profits on that box, which may or may not ever exist.<\/li>\n<li>More voting tokens are airdropped on the people with cryptos in the box.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Why are the voting tokens worth something? They just are, okay. So the airdropped voting tokens are your yield!<\/p>\n<p>Bankman-Fried admits:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So you&#8217;ve got these boxes and it\u2019s kind of dumb, but like what&#8217;s the end game, right? This box is worth zero obviously.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Levine\u2019s flabbergasted response:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I think of myself as like a fairly cynical person. And that was so much more cynical than how I would&#8217;ve described farming. You&#8217;re just like, well, I&#8217;m in the Ponzi business and it&#8217;s pretty good.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>To be super-generous, what Bankman-Fried outlines is a bit more bubblenomics than ponzinomics:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">We cook up some magic beans.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">The market is so overheated and optimistic that someone will give these magic beans an alleged value.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">WE&#8217;RE RICH!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>What\u2019s in the bottom box that all the elaborate leverage mechanisms rest on? Hot air. What happens when the 2021 crypto bubble deflates? LOL.<\/p>\n<p>Bankman-Fried later clarified his statements: [<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/SBF_FTX\/status\/1518676208657092609\"><em>Twitter<\/em><\/a>]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0\">to be clear this is <em>not<\/em> how I describe yield farming \u2014 in context it was a toy model of what yield farming is <em>if you remove all useful parts of the protocol<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The trouble there is, the &#8220;toy model&#8221; he described is literally how a huge number of yield-producing DeFi DAOs work. <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/18\/beanstalk-dao-falls-to-a-corporate-raid-funded-by-flash-loan-junk-bonds\/\">The late lamented Beanstalk<\/a> is an excellent recent example.<\/p>\n<h3>Container drivers<\/h3>\n<p>The SEC is considering Grayscale\u2019s application to convert the GBTC Fund into an exchange-traded fund (ETF), so that retail investors can trade shares in Bitcoin in the US without ever touching a Bitcoin.<\/p>\n<p>All previous Bitcoin ETFs have been rejected \u2014 because <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/03\/16\/news-no-crypto-in-401k-retirement-plans-more-bitcoin-etf-rejections-nfts-on-instagram-jamaican-cbdc\/\">the Bitcoin market is manipulated trash<\/a> \u2014 and Grayscale fears theirs will be rejected too. Grayscale has even threatened to sue the SEC if the ETF isn\u2019t approved. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-03-28\/-all-options-on-the-table-in-grayscale-s-fight-for-bitcoin-etf\"><i>Bloomberg<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The SEC takes public comments on new applications \u2014 and there have been hundreds of comments supporting the Grayscale ETF! This is mostly because Grayscale put up a form letter for people to fill in. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/comments\/sr-nysearca-2021-90\/srnysearca202190.htm\"><i>SEC<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/grayscale.com\/comment\/\"><i>Grayscale<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>A lot of the pro-Grayscale letters were so overcome with enthusiasm that they didn&#8217;t even bother to replace the bit of the form letter text that said: &#8220;***[PLEASE WRITE YOUR THOUGHTS IN HERE, INCLUDING WHICH STATE YOU RESIDE IN \u2014 THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT]***&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The SEC notes the form letters, which they\u2019ve called \u201cLetter Type A.\u201d [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/comments\/sr-nysearca-2021-90\/srnysearca202190-lettertypea.htm\"><i>SEC<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>There have been some much better comments on the ETF, such as the one from David S. H. Rosenthal, he of the EE 380 talk <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/03\/16\/news-no-crypto-in-401k-retirement-plans-more-bitcoin-etf-rejections-nfts-on-instagram-jamaican-cbdc\/\">&#8220;Can We Mitigate the Externalities of Cryptocurrencies?&#8221;<\/a> He\u2019s not a fan of the ETF proposal. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sec.gov\/comments\/sr-nysearca-2021-90\/srnysearca202190-284043.htm\"><i>SEC<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>GBTC is the Roach Motel of Bitcoin \u2014 the fund can only <i>take in<\/i> bitcoins. The bitcoins in GBTC can never be cashed out. (Converting to an ETF would fix that.) 3% of all bitcoins are trapped in Grayscale \u2014 it used to trade above the equivalent Bitcoin price, so whales would deposit BTC to get GBTC which they could sell six months later, thus cashing out in large amounts without affecting Bitcoin\u2019s exchange price. But GBTC has been underwater since late 2020, and investors are getting tetchy. Grayscale <i>could<\/i> just sit on the stash and take 2% fees on it forever &#8230; [<a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2022\/04\/19\/welcome-to-grayscales-hotel-california\/\"><i>Amy Castor<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<h3>Everybody still hates Binance<\/h3>\n<p>Bitcoin protects you from governments! Unless you use Binance \u2014 then Binance shops you to the Russian FSB. A Reuters special investigation says that Binance leaked data on crypto donations to Russian opposition leader Alex Navalny to the FSB, because Binance wanted to get further into Russia. Binance denies everything, and claims the Reuters investigation is just clickbait. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/technology\/how-crypto-giant-binance-built-ties-russian-fsb-linked-agency-2022-04-22\/\"><i>Reuters<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.binance.com\/en\/blog\/leadership\/binance--russia-openness-transparency-and-honesty-421499824684903741\"><i>Binance<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>In a hilarious comedy of errors, Binance paid Twitter for a custom hashtag that just happened to be a swastika. A Hindu swastika \u2014 but it was released on Hitler\u2019s birthday: [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/technology-61166276\"><i>BBC<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Well that was obviously really embarrassing. We\u2019re not sure how that emoji got through several layers of review without anyone noticing, but we immediately flagged the issue, pulled it down, and the new emoji design is being rolled out as we speak.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>If Binance want to solve this inexplicable mystery, they might look to their past track record. Here\u2019s an earlier Nazi joke from Binance \u2014 a Star of David to advertise their \u201cgas\u201d promotion in 2017. [<i>Twitter, <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20210501224527\/https:\/\/twitter.com\/binance\/status\/945916570349461504\"><i>archive<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<h3>Don\u2019t take me down to Bitcoin City<\/h3>\n<p>I&#8217;m getting multiple reports that public employees in El Salvador &#8230; haven&#8217;t been paid this month. The military have been paid. Some police have been paid, though not all. The judicial branch hasn\u2019t been paid. Government contractors&#8217; pay has been consistently late since 2021.<\/p>\n<p>The obvious thing would be to pay people in totally backed Chivo App \u201cdollars,\u201d but the backlash from public employees last year at the idea makes this a non-starter \u2014 for some reason, nobody trusts Chivo.<\/p>\n<p>The State of Emergency has been extended another month. Everything&#8217;s going <i>fine<\/i> for Bukele, I&#8217;m sure.<\/p>\n<p>NBER has published a paper on Bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador. A February 2022 survey of 1,800 households shows: [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w29968\"><i>NBER<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nber.org\/system\/files\/working_papers\/w29968\/w29968.pdf\"><i>paper<\/i><\/a><i>, PDF; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bloomberg.com\/news\/articles\/2022-04-26\/bitcoin-struggles-to-take-root-in-el-salvador-survey-finds\"><i>Bloomberg<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">20% of Chivo users kept using the wallet past cashing in the $30 signup bonus.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">\u201cThe most important reason not to download the app, conditional on knowing about it, is that users prefer to use cash, which was followed by trust issues \u2014 respondents did not trust the system or Bitcoin itself.\u201d<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">There&#8217;s no evidence of any significant use of Chivo to send remittances or pay taxes.<\/li>\n<li aria-level=\"1\">\u201cVirtually no one\u201d has installed Chivo on their phone in 2022.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Fiscalia (Attorney General) of El Salvador has collected computer crime statistics for many years. Tracoda (Transparencia, Contralor\u00eda Social y Datos Abiertos) has sent a Freedom of Information request for the numbers from 1 March to 4 April. The Fiscalia\u2019s office says this data &#8230; doesn\u2019t exist. Carlos Palomo of Tracoda suspects that this month&#8217;s data looks incredibly bad because of many, many Chivo Wallet hacks. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.laprensagrafica.com\/elsalvador\/Fiscalia-niega-datos-estadisticos-sobre-delitos-informaticos-20220421-0088.html\"><i>La Prensa Gr\u00e1fica<\/i><\/a><i>, in Spanish<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>Autor brit\u00e1nico cuestiona el Bitcoin y el autoritarismo del gobierno de Bukele: En un art\u00edculo publicado en su blog, el autor David Gerard llama &#8220;dictador&#8221; al presidente Nayib Bukele y cuestiona acciones entorno al impulso del Bitcoin. That&#8217;s a news story on a <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/20\/el-salvador-bukele-goes-full-dictator-chivo-theft-bitcoin-towers\/\">blog post<\/a> I wrote, that doesn\u2019t link to the blog post in question. But I\u2019m delighted to help fill space! [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.elsalvador.com\/noticias\/negocios\/britanico-cuestiona-bitcoin-autoritarismo-bukele\/949057\/2022\/\"><i>Elsalvador.com<\/i><\/a><i>, in Spanish<\/i>]<\/p>\n<p>(Did I mention I&#8217;ve started doing Duolingo, in the hope of being able to read useful amounts of Spanish-language text in time for the planned book? I am firmly and repeatedly assured that Juan come manzanas. My accent sounds like an Australian pisstake of Spanish. I&#8217;m also told about any number of other courses that are better than Duolingo \u2014 but this one has the important advantage that I&#8217;m actually doing it. Though I&#8217;ll be looking at those courses too.)<\/p>\n<h3>Things happen<\/h3>\n<p>Operational security tip: when you&#8217;re running a scam, don&#8217;t call your victim from your own personal phone. A lawsuit alleges that the utterly ponzinomic OlympusDAO\u2019s operators cheated the plaintiff out of millions of OHM tokens by disabling a particular smart contract. The suit publishes a claimed real name for OlympicDAO founder \u201cZeus\u201d based on the plaintiff looking up the number that \u201cZeus\u201d &#8230; phoned him from. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.coindesk.com\/business\/2022\/04\/14\/olympusdao-co-founder-doxxed-lawsuit-claims-to-unmask-apollo\/\"><i>CoinDesk<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The redoubtable ZachXBT leaked a \u201cmarketing firm\u201d price list for shilling crypto on Twitter. It\u2019s not just Crypto Twitter accounts \u2014 the list includes athletes, actors and other verified influencers, for prices ranging from a few hundred dollars to $25,000. You\u2019ll find these accounts routinely pumping NFTs, DeFi and <i>minor altcoins<\/i>.\u00a0 [<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/zachxbt\/status\/1516129830873583617\"><i>Twitter<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.vice.com\/en\/article\/pkp9wg\/leaked-shill-price-list-shows-wild-world-of-crypto-promos\"><i>Vice<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Reggie Fowler, US money mule for the Bitfinex crypto exchange and the Tether stablecoin up to 2018, has decided to forgo trial and plead guilty \u2014 not a plea deal, just a straight-up plea of guilty. Nobody knows why he\u2019s doing this now. [<a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2022\/04\/22\/reggie-fowler-decides-to-forgo-trial-plead-guilty\/\"><i>Amy Castor<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/amycastor.com\/2022\/04\/25\/after-a-guilty-plea-reggie-fowler-faces-up-to-90-years-in-prison\/\"><i>Amy Castor<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Ukraine bans cryptocurrency purchases in hryvnia, to stop &#8220;unproductive capital outflows.&#8221; If you want to buy cryptos in foreign currency, you\u2019re limited to 100,000 UAH equivalent \u2014 about $3,450. Sending actual money across borders up to 100,000 UAH is fine too. Remember, Ukraine is the use case for crypto! [<a href=\"https:\/\/bank.gov.ua\/en\/news\/all\/natsionalniy-bank-zaprovadjuye-dodatkovi-zahodi-dlya-zapobigannya-neproduktivnomu-vidtoku-kapitalu\"><i>National Bank of Ukraine<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Ethereum is decentralised! You can tell by how an Infura outage on Friday 22 April took out a pile of services: &#8220;We are aware of an outage of some of our ETH1, Palm, Optimism, Polygon, Filecoin and Arbitrum API endpoints.&#8221; It also took out the Metamask Ethereum wallet. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theblockcrypto.com\/post\/143047\/metamask-stops-working-as-infura-suffers-another-service-outage\"><i>The Block<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>How Bitcoin mining devastated this New York town \u2014 what Plattsburgh, New York went through in 2018 when the crypto miners swooped in for the cheap St. Lawrence River hydroelectric power: high electricity prices and ton of noise. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.technologyreview.com\/2022\/04\/18\/1049331\/bitcoin-cryptocurrency-cryptomining-new-york\/\"><i>MIT Technology Review<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Russian Bitcoin mining company Bitriver has been sanctioned by the US Office of Foreign Assets Control. Bitriver has multiple links to sanctioned Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, who owns old aluminium smelting plants, and sells electricity from those to Bitriver. [<a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/news\/press-releases\/jy0731\"><i>Treasury<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/home.treasury.gov\/policy-issues\/financial-sanctions\/recent-actions\/20220420\"><i>OFAC<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theblockcrypto.com\/post\/143112\/here-are-russian-oligarch-oleg-deripaskas-ties-to-the-newly-sanctioned-bitcoin-mining-company\"><i>The Block<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Daily Beast: How Crypto Is Failing Spectacularly to Greenwash Itself. Crypto greenwashing has mostly been attempts to do complicated DeFi-style financial engineering with carbon credits \u2014 rather than doing a damn thing about proof-of-work mining. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/how-cryptocurrencies-are-failing-spectacularly-to-greenwash-themselves\"><i>Daily Beast<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>The US thinks a North Korean hacker group stole the ETH from <a href=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/2022\/04\/02\/blockchain-bridges-how-the-smart-contract-pinata-works-and-why-bridges-keep-getting-hacked\/\">Axie Infinity\u2019s Ronin blockchain.<\/a> Various Ethereum addresses have been sanctioned. North Korea has done this enough that the CISA, FBI and Treasury sent out a warning about the \u201cLazarus\u201d group, who have been at this since at least 2020. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/4\/14\/23025739\/north-korean-hacker-lazarus-axie-infinity-cryptocurrency-hack-theft-us-blames\"><i>The Verge<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theblockcrypto.com\/linked\/143132\/ofac-sanctions-three-more-ethereum-addresses-tied-to-600-million-ronin-attack\"><i>The Block<\/i><\/a><i>; <\/i><a href=\"https:\/\/www.cisa.gov\/uscert\/ncas\/alerts\/aa22-108a\"><i>CISA<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Russia is pushing its CBDC \u201cdigital ruble\u201d forward, and promoting its Mir credit card network. Does anyone know of any technical details on this CBDC and what it will in fact be? [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/business\/finance\/russia-makes-digital-rouble-home-grown-credit-card-push-2022-04-21\/\"><i>Reuters<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>Toronto Star: The Saturday Debate: Should we fear the crypto bubble bursting? With a quote from me. [<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thestar.com\/opinion\/contributors\/the-saturday-debate\/2022\/04\/23\/the-saturday-debate-should-we-fear-the-crypto-bubble-bursting.html\"><i>Toronto Star<\/i><\/a>]<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">a lot of VC world&#39;s anger about established firms is fundamentally about the fact that virtually every VC has most of their portfolio plowed into investments which are more or less criminal scams, and they are no longer sure whether they are the scammer or the mark<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; alcibiades nuts (@Theophite) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Theophite\/status\/1515522467669811200?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 17, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\u201cWeb Trois and blughckchains will be good for workers and unions\u201d said the VCs who funded Uber, Doordash,<br \/>Deliveroo, Taskrabbit and lots of other services that have been great for workers.<\/p>\n<p>And some people actually earnestly believe them. There\u2019s your reality distortion field.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Tom Morris  \ud83c\udff3\ufe0f\u200d\ud83c\udf08 (@tommorris) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/tommorris\/status\/1515642157138333702?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 17, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Cleric: Good sir, we heard that your village has befallen a terrible lycantropic curse.<\/p>\n<p>Villager: The werewolves did it. They say they can remove it but they&#39;re asking for 100 bitecoins.<\/p>\n<p>Cleric: Oh, no. Tell me it&#39;s not what I think it is.<\/p>\n<p>Villager: Yep. Ransomwere.<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/dnd?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#dnd<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Dandy Beyond (@DandyBeyond) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DandyBeyond\/status\/1469790166319566851?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">December 11, 2021<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The thing that still strikes me as the fatal horror of cryptocurrency, even if you scrape away the environmental horrors and the scams and the tech problems, is that it&#39;s money, and money was a horrible mistake from which our species may never recover.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Elizabeth Sandifer (@ElSandifer) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/ElSandifer\/status\/1518218383170416640?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 24, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/davidgerard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@davidgerard<\/a> this amused me this morning &#8211; someone has secured this hodler&#39;s car using their own blockchain! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/2CklBlIt77\">pic.twitter.com\/2CklBlIt77<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Jonathan Burnhams (@jburnhams) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/jburnhams\/status\/1518867044908871686?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 26, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<br><br><div align=\"center\"><p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\"><img src=\"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/become_a_patron_button.svg\" alt=\"Become a Patron!\" title=\"Become a Patron!\" width=217 height=51><\/a><br><p style=\"align:center;\" class=\"patreon-badge\"><i>Your subscriptions keep this site going. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.patreon.com\/bePatron?u=8420236\">Sign up today!<\/a><\/i><\/p><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You wouldn&#8217;t funge a car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22663,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2835,568,2580,1474,2366,1552,2305,1047,82,1798,1799,1114,6,128,1717,2938,594,858,2692,1269,137,2491,33,2939,1713,2690],"class_list":["post-22656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-axie-infinity","tag-binance","tag-bitriver","tag-cbdc","tag-chivo","tag-defi","tag-el-salvador","tag-etf","tag-ethereum","tag-ftx","tag-grayscale","tag-infura","tag-links","tag-matt-levine","tag-mining","tag-nber","tag-new-york","tag-north-korea","tag-olympus","tag-reggie-fowler","tag-russia","tag-sam-bankman-fried","tag-sec","tag-tracoda","tag-ukraine","tag-zachxbt"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/hodlmobile-blockchained-by-jonathan-burnhams.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22656"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22677,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22656\/revisions\/22677"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidgerard.co.uk\/blockchain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}