Ibiza Boss Takes World By Storm & Tornado Cash In Everyone's Mind
Who’s watching the watchers? Several questions about ethics, media, VCs and more as we 'follow the money' in today's episode.
Eyoo - Welcome back. I’m back. This is Kyle. This is Daily Crypto News for August 7. Thursday. One more day til Friday, folks.
If you missed it, we had a thrilling newsletter swap yesterday with Katherine Ross, Editor at Blockworks. Many thanks to the team over there, especially Molly Jane, for the work on this. It’s been cool to coordinate with them. Stay tuned for our drop with them expected on Friday. The article with Katherine features an interview with Audrey Strobel, a crypto Pr specialist and influencer.
Today, we have some major news to get through.
Top Headline in Crypto is the Roman Storm trial verdict. Seems like everyone had an opinion. We’ll heed the call from others we find reputable sources and bring you some good dope. And everyone seems to be talking about moats now on crypto Twitter. How do your project protect itself with a ‘moat’? Well we can see Tornado Cash and Roman did not build a solid moat.
Shoutout to the Ibiza boss taking the world by storm this week too. This normal bloke from Newcastle seems to have a heart of gold and a chode for a head. Bonkers man—or the locals might say in Ibiza: guiri gillipollas.
Let's get to a few user comments and questions:
Savagemailman has said he never thought about the KYC behind Pi Network. I’ll say, as someone who reported on Pi from the beginning during my time at BSC News. And you can check BSCN is still consistently one of the top sites reporting on Pi. My dude Hope over there is probably the best beat reporter in English. So anyways, my view on Pi is that it's a data harvesting app. They want your app on all the time, “mining.” Well, what they are mining from you is very likely more valuable to them than what you are taking from them. That’s the basic business model. And then, if you have a downstream… they can link you to your social groups. Now, question the next time your internet ads are so specific.
Finjarvis asked if we think altcoins will copy the pattern of Bitcoin. No. I don’t think there will be copies. If you look, many altcoins actually outperformed Bitcoin in July. That’s not pattern following, that’s outperformance. So what I will say is that alts likely have a higher upside - but again, this is not financial advice. Finding the next Fartcoin is not easy and should be seen as difficult. In a lot of ways, there are still cabals and whales of money that control these markets. It can be tough to be a Nemo in that big ass ocean, swimming against the currents and influences of bigger fish. But like Dory says, just keep swimming, and maybe find your school of fish that can help you succeed in the scary world of DeFi. There are lots of DAOs and communities out there that are very supportive, where you can become a part of a group.
Top Headlines for August 7
Roman Storm Trial Verdict
Birdnals Law’s X Post has some lengthy information about what happened.
Chainyoda with some fire tweets around these rulings well. My favorite is here: “The Tornado ruling is inconsistent with the Uniswap ruling by the exact same judge. I am a bit annoyed that when burger bros write software ie "Uniswap" it is software and "Coinbase wallet" is software but when a russian guy ie Roman Storm writes software its a money transmitter”
We had a shakeup in the MegaETH world with GTE apparently leaving it as well as the MegaMafia. Big moves there that send some ripples across the DeFi World.
ifoundFiago on Twitter says: It’s a clear signal that intent-centric infra is finally getting real adoption from the capital side. It’s not just a win for MegaETH, it validates the broader thesis that performant, parallel EVMs with real builder traction are the next meta.
MissFlow_N thinks “GTE departing from MegaETH is a double-edged sword. Firstly, It could be an opportunity for them to grow independently and gain flexibility in terms of technical growth and governance especially because they have decent funding. On the other hand, it's a bit risky and could signal some problems even for MegaETH.”
Lots of talk about Moats around CryptoTwitter
What direction are we seeing chains? →
Chains with killer consumer dapps to run themselves, plus super easy UX/UI to deploy. Monad could be one to watch here.
This is a bit of a tussle in crypto media going on. Blockworks has announced a sort of airdrop program with Succinct that gives 4,500 PROVE tokens to folks on Twitter with an approved Blockworks B token.
Blockworks writer Byron Gilliam jokinging replied “buying by last 144 followers.” And this I think is where the objection lies that were seeing across Crypto Twitter amongst some popular media folks.
Tim Copeland, former EIC of The Block and current Head of Growth, has taken some aim at the new policy and its ramifications around crypto journalism. He believes there should be disclaimers.
Josh Adams, former DeFi reporter at BeInCrypto and PR rep at Serotonin, says “Crypto journalism should definitely not have different rules about gifting, non disclosed assets or shilling than other parts of journalism. This is very basic stuff.”
Solana Reporter Jack Kubinec has in turn announced he will be giving away his airdrop this morning.
This is a huge problem with all media though. Where do you draw the line with, say, the Washington Post - owned by Bezos. WaPo actually won a pulitzer prize for their edward snowden reporting, and then turned around and argued he was traitor, and supported his prosecution. Talk about selling out your sources.
And this brings me full circle to the Roman Storm case. Dave Craig - a VC and DeFi builder who has carved a prominent voice out against Tornado Cash’s role in money laundering - Craige tweeted:
“Remember. If the VC’s had a proper due diligence department none of this would have happened and Roman wouldn’t be facing 5 years sitting in a jail. Do better.”
“omg, this whole thing is so fucking stupid. Just don’t make money laundering mixers folks. And VC’s you should know this. This is basic basic stuff.”
A key part of Storms trial is that the VCs who backed Tornado Cash, notably, DragonFly, where GP Haseeb Qureshi has been at the center. Qureshi put out a tweet about week ago stating:
“In 2023 we received a DOJ subpoena and have fully cooperated with the government’s investigation of Tornado Cash, confident that we have always complied with the law. The DOJ has made clear that we are not ourselves a target of their investigation. As with every investment, we provided PepperSec the same advice and support we offer all portfolio companies.”
But to others, Dragonfly is the VC that was the seed investor in the Tornado Cash team and in 2020 got a legal opinion on Tornado Cash before they invested. Under that impression, Tornado Cash devs worked on the protocol convinced they were staying on the right side of the law. Should Dragonfly be at fault?
Many believe Qureshi is falsifying his claims, or at least, trying to cover the tracks of himself and his VC. But it seems as though, they have lost the respect of many in the industry. Craige tweeted further:
“Imagine sitting in fucking jail for 5 years, not seeing your daughter b/c you, your lawyer, & your idiot VC '@hosseeb’ & his idiot lawyers didn't take 30 seconds to read this fucking section on pg 19 of the FINCEN doc. It literally says MIXERS and TUMBLERS.”
Little Bitz
Tom Lee, the leader of BitMine the world’s largest Ethereum holder, tells the Bankless podcast that “Wall Street has already decided Ethereum is the chain they’re going to build Wall Street onto. Ethereum’s had zero downtime. That’s what matters to Wall Street. Zero downtime in 10 years.”
So if you didn’t know, from what I understand, in Sweden, crypto and your address go on your taxes. That makes it very precarious for a crypto whale or casual user to use it in their country. We have this crazy headline here…. Four men in Sweden tortured a 30-year-old seeking his crypto. They forced him into the woods, kicked and punched him, poured gasoline over him, threatened to set him on fire, placed pliers to his hand, and threatened to cut off his fingers.
Coinbase is becoming a bank? They’re starting to charge fees on USDC to USD conversions. RSA calls it banking fees. DeFi Dad calls outs CB for giving up its USDC power. But as we saw, Circle is going for their own money transmitter licenses. Circle USDC’s parent, wants to become its own bank. They’ll be able to massively save on time and fees.
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The C3 team has more than 20 years of experience in journalism, including leading the editorial and content side of a major Web3 news publication. They are also experienced AI and Web3 PR professionals, regularly placing content in leading web3 and AI publications. C3's members previously co-founded the PR department at SCRIB3, and have experience with clients such as EigenLayer, VanEck, Monad, SKALE Network, LEVR Bet, Symmio, Camp Network, Evmos, Avail, Moonbeam, and others.
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***NOT FINANCIAL, LEGAL, OR TAX ADVICE! JUST OPINION! I AM NOT AN EXPERT! I DO NOT GUARANTEE A PARTICULAR OUTCOME I HAVE NO INSIDE KNOWLEDGE! YOU NEED TO DO YOUR OWN RESEARCH AND MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS! THIS IS JUST EDUCATION & ENTERTAINMENT!
Thanks for the episode and DeFi updates as well.
Would you mind giving us some of your thoughts on Monad? I've now seen this mentioned a few times here and there, I understand that this is an L1 with a live testnet with improvement to speeds/ security, etc... How is this different to all of theses other chains?