I missed the vote window, but put me down for crypto fraud. Though really any financial fraud is interesting to me. "Crypto fraud" is a bit of a misnomer. Crypto-adjacent fraud, though, is everywhere. Crypto's roots are in transparency, any fraud is Trad Fi. It's complicated because cryptography is secrecy. But it's just to make the ledger censorship resistant, and the ledger is transparency. But to get on and off the ledger takes Trad Fi, which is again, back to secrecy. This confusion simply abets the fraud. But as long as fiat is king, and a transparent crypto is not (non-transparent crypto exists, but that's a later invention, and neither are kings), then fraud will be ripe.
–
“to interview Recluse”
Trying to reconcile this with the title “Men explain…” As “Recluse” seems like a single person. The title alone suggested that someone thought DZM was a woman and tried to mansplain a topic to him. I imagined he went on some forum for Zizian stuff, had a non-gendered alias, and started a conversation in some way that seemed pro-feminist. Then, some sexist members of the forum started to talk down to him, thinking that anyone identifying as feminist activates their permanent system prompt to ELIF (Explain Like I'm Female).
Perhaps the meaning behind the title is in the interview, but no link to transcript, so I'll never know.
–
"
How Memecoins Enable Money Laundering
"
You have to wonder if NFTs ever really died, or were simply never alive for anything but money laundering. Memecoins became easier to mint with pump.fun clones. Further, their inherent fungibility allows for more wallets/obfuscation. It would explain how NFTs have gone from the spotlight and memecoins remain, though neither have shown much overt utility.
–
"
I’m not going to call this “good news,” because it’s a very thorny subject and changing the rules for crypto alone wouldn’t make total sense - and there can be no healthy fruit of a poison Trumpy tree.
"
I'm a proponent of in-kind repayments, and I agree it makes sense to let people choose the original asset type, and not just for crypto (stocks too, etc.), if they want. It smacks too much of "we decide what your poor plebes will get, because you are poor because you are stupid, not all because of some birth lottery." Which is my objection to accredited-only investing. However, lawyers will take their cut regardless, so this might not tangibly make that much difference. If FTX users could get in kind payback, would they get full reimbursement? No. Also, who exactly will get to decide, and how exactly? Do I suspect something simple and non-monkey-paw? No. Do I suspect something like a case of fraud against a Trump-backed memecoin leads to a decision that is against the wishes of at least some of the affected? Yes.
For example, let's say that 30% of the coins are with Trump cronies, 30% are with foreign nationals who just needed a vehicle to bribe slightly discretely, 30% are with once-deluded fans of Trump, and 10% are lost in a cardboard box at Mar-a-Lago. After a bit of jurisdiction shopping by the defense, the case lands with a judge appointed by Trump himself. The prosecution asks the judge to recuse himself. The judge says “do you expect Supreme Court judges appointed by Trump to recuse themselves when deciding on matters that benefit specifically, and very likely more than anyone else, Trump?” The prosecution considers the fact that the Supreme Court justices get many perks, to put it mildly, beyond their standard pay and then falls into an extreme depression over the word “expect.” The judge then decides the affected parties are/were all the aforementioned bag holders, and thus can decide, 1 coin per vote, according to most votes, how to reimburse (after copious lawyer fees, of course). Surprisingly, the vote is 2 to 1 to give now worthless memecoins. Yay!
I personally would like DZM to expand more on his reservations, and see if they are similar to mine.
–
“
It’s an interesting find, but those early rugpulls have nothing on the damage caused by Pump.fun itself, an unmitigated cancer that should be burned with fire.
“
Strong take. I think it is just a tool that does what it says on the label. If Pump.fun is doing something behind the scenes that I don't know about, then I want to know about it. When I went looking years ago, there were basically no no-code options for token creation prior to this. And the one I found later proved to be problematic. The resulting code doesn't pass all token checkers, and I still don't know why. I think better token creators should exist than pump.fun, yes. Ones that very simply create tokens that pass all token checkers (which I am not sure is true with pump.fun) and perhaps lets you list the token on their site. The liquidity thing being maybe a nice to have, unless it's necessary just to keep down spam. But unless they are doing something fraudulent, and the problem more than just making it easier for gamblers to gamble, I'm not sure I agree. Again, tools like these do make it easier for money laundering, but they do also have legitimate cases too. I think DZM realizes there is nuance to the tech behind Tornado, and this seems similar.
–
“
but the new Trumpy version of the agency declined to do so.
“
Saying the obvious here, but just in case it isn't. If the SEC is investigating/litigating anything, then it will need employees to do so. If they are not investigating/litigating, there is more excuse to get rid of them. If they are gone, it will be harder to investigate/litigate Trump or his cronies.
–
“
Molly White at Citation Needed
“
Molly White is awesome. Granted, her everything-crypto-is-scam tone is hard to reconcile. But I do enjoy what I've read from her. It's not like I need, or even like, both-sides-ism. And a ton of crypto /adjacent/ behavior is indeed scammy. She's a bit like the Ed Zitron of crypto. You're not going to get nuance, but it can be fun and informative to read.
Yeah this is a good point re: Crypto fraud. But one thing the SafeMoon case has illustrated to me is that you can code these systems with BIG holes that vulnerable people might not be able to see or understand (in that case, centralized control that's disguised as "automatic" processes.
So, I've only passingly been following the Safemoon case, but I remember when it first came out (in many ways one of the first BSC memecoins, back when Ethereum was for the rich and BSC gas was very cheap comparatively). And I remember checking out it's website. And I remember seeing the very claims it would later be in trouble for. I don't remember exact wording, but I do remember very much of it trying to get across a sense of it being a community lead project and processes being in place to help the little hodler. Specifically, there being automatic processes (I mostly remember the burn mechanism). Back then I (nor most) knew about infinite minting, admin/upgradable contracts, off-chain and obscured code, etc. which could make any claim useless--when/if it is used. The wording was definitely meant to suggest it was all automatic and outside of anyone's control.
We now know what was the fraud: The way it was presented on the website and, presumably, social media. But that's not crypto is it? That's just marketing of a product (or whatever you want to call it) that happens to be crypto. It could just as easily have been some pink sheet OTC stock couldn't it? With a similarly misleading website?
The code itself was never a lie. Just like math can't be a lie. It could have been hidden, yes, but it wouldn't have been a completely published function on bscscan with no external calls that then did the opposite. And it could have been that, back then, more people should have argued to see what was going on. But the code, the actual crypto part, wasn't the problem. I guess, my point is, it still feels very much like Trad Fi BS. And we're getting better at demanding to see all the working parts, and something like Safemoon, nowadays, would hopefully be reported on as being not nearly as transparent as its claims.
Code/crypto is never the problem, it's fleshy meat bags that run it and hide parts of it and say it does things it never was programmed to do. It's still Trad Fi.
Yep, this is one of my overriding points. Crypto is just the latest vehicle for financial fraud. Leland Stanford did substantial financial fraud with railroad stocks!
I missed the vote window, but put me down for crypto fraud. Though really any financial fraud is interesting to me. "Crypto fraud" is a bit of a misnomer. Crypto-adjacent fraud, though, is everywhere. Crypto's roots are in transparency, any fraud is Trad Fi. It's complicated because cryptography is secrecy. But it's just to make the ledger censorship resistant, and the ledger is transparency. But to get on and off the ledger takes Trad Fi, which is again, back to secrecy. This confusion simply abets the fraud. But as long as fiat is king, and a transparent crypto is not (non-transparent crypto exists, but that's a later invention, and neither are kings), then fraud will be ripe.
–
“to interview Recluse”
Trying to reconcile this with the title “Men explain…” As “Recluse” seems like a single person. The title alone suggested that someone thought DZM was a woman and tried to mansplain a topic to him. I imagined he went on some forum for Zizian stuff, had a non-gendered alias, and started a conversation in some way that seemed pro-feminist. Then, some sexist members of the forum started to talk down to him, thinking that anyone identifying as feminist activates their permanent system prompt to ELIF (Explain Like I'm Female).
Perhaps the meaning behind the title is in the interview, but no link to transcript, so I'll never know.
–
"
How Memecoins Enable Money Laundering
"
You have to wonder if NFTs ever really died, or were simply never alive for anything but money laundering. Memecoins became easier to mint with pump.fun clones. Further, their inherent fungibility allows for more wallets/obfuscation. It would explain how NFTs have gone from the spotlight and memecoins remain, though neither have shown much overt utility.
–
"
I’m not going to call this “good news,” because it’s a very thorny subject and changing the rules for crypto alone wouldn’t make total sense - and there can be no healthy fruit of a poison Trumpy tree.
"
I'm a proponent of in-kind repayments, and I agree it makes sense to let people choose the original asset type, and not just for crypto (stocks too, etc.), if they want. It smacks too much of "we decide what your poor plebes will get, because you are poor because you are stupid, not all because of some birth lottery." Which is my objection to accredited-only investing. However, lawyers will take their cut regardless, so this might not tangibly make that much difference. If FTX users could get in kind payback, would they get full reimbursement? No. Also, who exactly will get to decide, and how exactly? Do I suspect something simple and non-monkey-paw? No. Do I suspect something like a case of fraud against a Trump-backed memecoin leads to a decision that is against the wishes of at least some of the affected? Yes.
For example, let's say that 30% of the coins are with Trump cronies, 30% are with foreign nationals who just needed a vehicle to bribe slightly discretely, 30% are with once-deluded fans of Trump, and 10% are lost in a cardboard box at Mar-a-Lago. After a bit of jurisdiction shopping by the defense, the case lands with a judge appointed by Trump himself. The prosecution asks the judge to recuse himself. The judge says “do you expect Supreme Court judges appointed by Trump to recuse themselves when deciding on matters that benefit specifically, and very likely more than anyone else, Trump?” The prosecution considers the fact that the Supreme Court justices get many perks, to put it mildly, beyond their standard pay and then falls into an extreme depression over the word “expect.” The judge then decides the affected parties are/were all the aforementioned bag holders, and thus can decide, 1 coin per vote, according to most votes, how to reimburse (after copious lawyer fees, of course). Surprisingly, the vote is 2 to 1 to give now worthless memecoins. Yay!
I personally would like DZM to expand more on his reservations, and see if they are similar to mine.
–
“
It’s an interesting find, but those early rugpulls have nothing on the damage caused by Pump.fun itself, an unmitigated cancer that should be burned with fire.
“
Strong take. I think it is just a tool that does what it says on the label. If Pump.fun is doing something behind the scenes that I don't know about, then I want to know about it. When I went looking years ago, there were basically no no-code options for token creation prior to this. And the one I found later proved to be problematic. The resulting code doesn't pass all token checkers, and I still don't know why. I think better token creators should exist than pump.fun, yes. Ones that very simply create tokens that pass all token checkers (which I am not sure is true with pump.fun) and perhaps lets you list the token on their site. The liquidity thing being maybe a nice to have, unless it's necessary just to keep down spam. But unless they are doing something fraudulent, and the problem more than just making it easier for gamblers to gamble, I'm not sure I agree. Again, tools like these do make it easier for money laundering, but they do also have legitimate cases too. I think DZM realizes there is nuance to the tech behind Tornado, and this seems similar.
–
“
but the new Trumpy version of the agency declined to do so.
“
Saying the obvious here, but just in case it isn't. If the SEC is investigating/litigating anything, then it will need employees to do so. If they are not investigating/litigating, there is more excuse to get rid of them. If they are gone, it will be harder to investigate/litigate Trump or his cronies.
–
“
Molly White at Citation Needed
“
Molly White is awesome. Granted, her everything-crypto-is-scam tone is hard to reconcile. But I do enjoy what I've read from her. It's not like I need, or even like, both-sides-ism. And a ton of crypto /adjacent/ behavior is indeed scammy. She's a bit like the Ed Zitron of crypto. You're not going to get nuance, but it can be fun and informative to read.
Yeah this is a good point re: Crypto fraud. But one thing the SafeMoon case has illustrated to me is that you can code these systems with BIG holes that vulnerable people might not be able to see or understand (in that case, centralized control that's disguised as "automatic" processes.
So, I've only passingly been following the Safemoon case, but I remember when it first came out (in many ways one of the first BSC memecoins, back when Ethereum was for the rich and BSC gas was very cheap comparatively). And I remember checking out it's website. And I remember seeing the very claims it would later be in trouble for. I don't remember exact wording, but I do remember very much of it trying to get across a sense of it being a community lead project and processes being in place to help the little hodler. Specifically, there being automatic processes (I mostly remember the burn mechanism). Back then I (nor most) knew about infinite minting, admin/upgradable contracts, off-chain and obscured code, etc. which could make any claim useless--when/if it is used. The wording was definitely meant to suggest it was all automatic and outside of anyone's control.
We now know what was the fraud: The way it was presented on the website and, presumably, social media. But that's not crypto is it? That's just marketing of a product (or whatever you want to call it) that happens to be crypto. It could just as easily have been some pink sheet OTC stock couldn't it? With a similarly misleading website?
The code itself was never a lie. Just like math can't be a lie. It could have been hidden, yes, but it wouldn't have been a completely published function on bscscan with no external calls that then did the opposite. And it could have been that, back then, more people should have argued to see what was going on. But the code, the actual crypto part, wasn't the problem. I guess, my point is, it still feels very much like Trad Fi BS. And we're getting better at demanding to see all the working parts, and something like Safemoon, nowadays, would hopefully be reported on as being not nearly as transparent as its claims.
Code/crypto is never the problem, it's fleshy meat bags that run it and hide parts of it and say it does things it never was programmed to do. It's still Trad Fi.
Yep, this is one of my overriding points. Crypto is just the latest vehicle for financial fraud. Leland Stanford did substantial financial fraud with railroad stocks!