The little newsletter we started 2 years ago just hit 100,000 subscribers.
I'm here to tell you: doing a thing you truly believe in with consistency produces results.
Thank you subscribers.
Humbled to be on the
@BanklessHQ
journey with you.
See you at 1 million.
🏴
They arrested the developer of tornado cash. 🚨
I repeat: a man was arrested for writing code that served as a public good for people to maintain their privacy online.
They put a man in jail because bad people used his open source code.
This cannot stand in any free society.
11 days ago
Eleven days ago we hosted a debate on crypto values w/ a billionaire who was secretly gambling away billions of dollars of depositor funds
He was lecturing us on crypto regulation.
While committing the biggest fraud in crypto history.
How is this real life?
When crypto goes on its next bull run…when ETH hits $10k and BTC crosses $150k…
They’ll say you got lucky.
No.
The summer of 2022.
That is when you earned it.
The internet is just for gambling and porn. (1995)
People will never trust a website with their credit card. (1997)
Bitcoin is just a tool for criminals and tax evaders. (2015)
Ethereum is only good for scam coins and ponzi schemes. (2018)
All wrong in the same way.
Someone has to say it.
ETH price at $2.2k is hilarious.
Everyone out here trading "what ifs" this cycle when Ethereum has fundamentals.
Let my tell you why $2.2k ETH is stooopid.
Ethereum now makes $2.7 billion in annualized profits - the only profitable chain - a P/E ratio…
This isn’t 2018.
In 2018 we didn’t have product market fit. DeFi was nothing. NFTs a blip. Ethereum had no path to scalability or staking.
In 2022 we have all this. We’ve just been punched down by macro and self-inflicted leverage wounds.
I was fearful then.
I’m not now.
The tower of Babel is a story about mankind getting too full of themselves and trying to build a tower to reach up to heaven and become gods.
So God foiled them by confusing their language and scattering them over all the earth.
Where's this written?
Genesis Chapter 11.
Coinbase is launching a Layer 2.
Coinbase has 110 million users.
They're going to onboard them all to Ethereum.
This is a massive day for Ethereum.
This is how the world goes bankless.
Today the US sanctioned Ethereum addresses associated w/ a privacy service called Tornado cash.
Circle immediately froze the USDC in those accounts. GitHub suspended contributors to Tornado.
If you were waiting for the opening shot of big brother’s assault on crypto this was it
Notice DeFi loans are the only ones insolvent CeFi companies are paying back right now.
The code is forcing them to pay back their loans.
Not laws. Not attornies. Not courts.
Code.
It's almost like DeFi works better.
The arrested developer is
@alex_pertsev
.
A 29-year-old dev who wrote code to help ppl keep their crypto transactions private.
"My husband didn't do anything illegal". His wife is in shock.
They're jailing coders now.
There's a line.
They crossed it.
They arrested the developer of tornado cash. 🚨
I repeat: a man was arrested for writing code that served as a public good for people to maintain their privacy online.
They put a man in jail because bad people used his open source code.
This cannot stand in any free society.
It was Tornado today.
Do you think they’ll stop there?
Tomorrow it’ll be Uniswap.
Then Ethereum.
If software isn’t safe then speech isn’t.
Where will you run?
Forget the money, this was always a revolution.
The money is just how we fund it.
Visa integrating USDC!
HUGE.
It means 60m merchants get the ability to accept and pay cryptodollars settled on Ethereum.
It means Visa is starting to swap-out traditional bank ledgers for the global Ethereum ledger.
Visa is using Ethereum to bypass banks.
SEND IT.
🚀🚀🚀
Visa just announced they're using Ethereum as a settlement layer.
Ethereum.
ETHEREUM.
Visa will be paying ETH holders to use the network.
Lol this is so bullish for ETH and this market is still too dumb to understand it.
ETH under $2000 is hilarious.
Robinhood just banned Gamestop and AMC!
The wrong people are winning so they delisted the assets.
Here's what they don't know...
They just recruited another 1m people into DeFi.
UNISWAP NOT ROBINHOOD
PROTOCOLS NOT BANKS
This is why we go bankless.
Forget binance for a min.
How does the SEC just get to decide that SOL, ADA, MATIC, FIL, ATOM, SAND, MANA, ALGO, AXS, and COTI are securities?
Like wtf.
Gensler isn't god-king. He doesn't get to decide.
SEC investigating Uniswap.
One of the most innovative and empowering tech projects to come out of an American team in the last decade.
The U.S. should be given Hayden a medal. Instead he's getting an investigation.
We live in a financial prison.
ok, it's time for us to take action against the SEC.
file the lawsuits. call the senators. send the money.
let's coordinate.
what's the best way for US citizens to push back?
@SenWarren
DeFi is the future of consumer protection. It’s open finance.
No banks required.
Hurting DeFi hurts Americans.
Why don’t you come on a
@BanklessHQ
podcast and engage with the crypto community instead of calling us shady all the time?
Invitation is open.
DeFi is “one of the shadiest parts of the crypto world”
@SenWarren
said this today.
Not banks.
Not Wall Street.
Not our 7% inflation.
It’s DeFi that’s the problem.
This is sad.
Where have we gone wrong?
@SBF_FTX
Sam.
With respect.
This absolutely sucks.
You're saying DeFi should be OFACed.
You're saying onchain freeze's should be normal.
You're saying DeFi front-ends to register as a broker-dealer.
No, this is not reasonable.
This would eliminate the U.S. from the crypto race.
Some of you will miss the greatest wealth creation event of our generation because instead of taking an evening to figure out Metamask you watched Netflix instead
There’s always a coin somewhere that’s pumping harder than the one you own.
There’s always someone who bought earlier or made more.
Don’t get greedy.
Stay focused, stay disciplined, play the long game.
Be happy.
If you’re here you’ve already won.
If they can arrest Alexey, they can arrest Hayden.
If they can arrest Hayden, they can arrest Vitalik.
If they can arrest Vitalik...no one is safe.
We can't let them arrest our open source devs.
Wake up Democrats
@SenWarren
's anti-crypto army could literally cost you the 2024 presidential election.
11m registered US voters own more than $1k in crypto.
Crypto voters choose Biden over Trump 43% to 39% last time.
This time they support Trump over Biden 48% to 39%.
You…
XRP just did us a huge favor.
I think XRP is a overvalued project riding on vapor and a fanatic community of shillers but...and I never thought i'd be saying this...
Thank you XRP.
You stopped Gensler's onslaught against crypto.
If XRP ain't a security...(almost) nothing is.
Coinbase launching a way to earn stablecoin interest using Compound.
Up to 5% interest rates.
Available in 70 countries.
Guess where it's not available?
The UNITED STATES.
The Land of the Free.
The land of .025% savings accounts and 6.8% inflation.
FREE OUR BANKING SYSTEM
say what you will about CZ, he onboarded millions of people to crypto and he never stole our money
i trust him more than i trust the US regulators so idk what that says
4
PayPal doing a stablecoin as a token on Ethereum.
PayPal has 430 million active accounts.
Sleep on this if you want.
Ethereum is becoming the money layer of the internet.
Bitcoin is no longer the flagship asset of crypto.
Ethereum is.
Maybe you think I'm calling this too early.
"Wait for the flippening"
Nah. The writing's on the wall. Soon this will be the consensus view.
It looks like Kevin Rose just had millions of dollars in assets stolen because he clicked the wrong transaction.
Imagine if swiping your credit card at the coffee shop put you at risk for getting your entire bank account drained.
Bad, bad UX.
Crypto has to fix this.
The 6th largest bank in the world is now blocking customers from buying crypto.
HSBC won't even let you buy stock in companies that hold crypto.
The bankers think they own us...they're in for a surprise.
We don't need the banks.
They need us.
We're going bankless.
We need a bill of digital rights.
Right to privacy.
Right to cryptography.
Right to own your private keys.
Right to run your own software.
Recognition that code is speech.
For all citizens.
I have no idea if Binance is 100% clean here.
Time will tell.
But I do know that the SEC declaring that SOL, ADA, MATIC, ATOM, and AXS are securities is a direct attack on crypto.
I trust Binance more than i trust the SEC.
I trust CZ more than Gensler.
What a sad state.
Things that solve the GameStop problem:
❌ Bitcoin
❌ Dogecoin
❌ Binance
✅ Ethereum
✅ DeFi
✅ Uniswap
If you understand this you're early.
Invest accordingly.
People say crypto is dead but the collapse of FTX proves the value of Ethereum and DeFi more than ever.
We can't build the future of crypto on centralized exchanges.
We never could.
DeFi.
The death of Luna marks the end of the alt1 trade.
Where will the rotators rotate?
Ethereum & L2s.
Why?
- the merge
- security
- L2 tokens
- ETH fundamentals
- staking returns
It’s either ETH or BTC and they’ll pick ETH because it has DeFi, NFTs, and killer economics.
The most bullish thing about this downturn is how well DeFi held up.
Uniswap continued to trade.
Aave and Compound liquidated gracefully.
DAI kept its peg.
Trust is earned during the stress tests.
Many CeFi companies failed the test.
But DeFi performed.
Wells Fargo market cap = $146 billion.
Ethereum market cap = $146 billion.
You can buy Wells Fargo or Ethereum at the SAME PRICE right now.
lol you pick.
This bear market is a gift.
Hey
@GaryGensler
why don’t you come on
@BanklessHQ
and actually talk to the crypto community for a change.
Explain your position.
Answer questions.
I think you owe us this.
Looks like Spotify is doing things.
Music NFTs.
Podcast NFTs.
Token gated access.
Every web2 company is working on a crypto strategy right now.
You thought this crypto was ded?
Nah…we just getting started. 🚀
@GaryGensler
@SECGov
You could have:
- Mandated proof-of-reserves
- Required staking transparency
- Supported decentralized staking
Instead, we just got another gary g. ban hammer to the head. And we have no confidence you won't come for decentralized staking next.
You're driving it all offshore.
Let me be blunt: this market is literally too dumb to understand the massive supply shock that's hitting ETH over the next 12 months.
- Staking locks up 10-20% ETH supply
- EIP 1559 burns $10-20b ETH per year
- Merge drops issuance by 4.5%
Just math lol.
ETH IS UNDERVALUED AF.
An open source developer was arrested this morning.
Smart contracts were made illegal this week.
This is a war on code.
So what do we do about it?
Please publish a list of organizations to support, initiatives to take on, and things we can do.
Let's mobilize.
👇
It’s true.
People don’t care about decentralization.
People don’t care about decentralization until they get mt goxed, or su zhu’ed, or do kwoned, or mashinskied. They don’t care because they’re new & haven’t been screwed yet.
Eventually people care about decentralization.
Imagine if we had 70 year olds running as anti-internet politicians in the 90s.
That’s what this is like.
What is going on in America. How is this even viable.