Michael Lewis Thinks SBF's Trial was like a "Lynching"

Also Paradigm Ditches Blast, Taproot Wizards, AI Spam, and more.

Today’s Highlights in Crypto and AI

• Michael Lewis Compares Bankman-Fried Trial to a “lynching”

• Paradigm Disavows Blast L2

• Taproot Wizards Go Big

• Google Image Search Gets Spammed

• Richard Heart: The Hunter Scavenger Becomes the Hunted

• Analysis: Why the $4B Binance Settlement is Good News

But First: Rare Sams Are Live!

Exciting news - the auction for 13 Rare Sam NFTs and accompanying physical sketches is live on OpenSea. For more details on the items and benefits, see this post. Sales will support ongoing development of this newsletter and writing of my SBF book. Two of the original 15 items got sniped by lucky bidders thanks to an error on my part, but congrats to them! The work of setting this up has been extremely educational - especially the mistakes - and I’ll be writing about it soon.

Oh you think you have NFTs on Bitcoin but I just right-click saved it.

Tweet Time

Mark Cuban won (?) Crypto Twitter over the weekend with this mess of buzzwords:

I mean it’s not total nonsense, it’s a concept, but “ZK L2” means little or nothing in this context. I can’t tell if Cuban is trolling? He certainly seems to be dunking on Jason Calacanis’ original, extremely low-IQ All In-ass tweet about building new cities. Cuban is roughly a million times smarter than Calacanis? So I think he was posting bait. Either way, funny stuff.

Michael Lewis Compares Sam Bankman-Fried’s Trial to a “Lynching”

If you thought Michael Lewis had lost a step in his handling of the FTX story, now I think it’s fair to speculate that he has lost his entire fucking mind.

In a new conversation published by Puck, Lewis compares the trial of Sam Bankman-Fried to a “Lynching.”

"It reminded me of accounts I've read of families packing up their picnic baskets and going to see the lynching …” Lewis said. “Their spirits are high, they're enjoying everything, and then the body is dangling from the end of the rope."

First, let’s just highlight how deeply offensive this comparison is. Whatever SBF is, he is certainly not a powerless, post-Reconstruction African American being used as an object of ritual violence by a racial ruling caste. Lynching was an act of terrorism - a trial, regardless of how it’s perceived, and *especially* in this case, is a careful procedure in pursuit of the truth.

Lewis’ comparison of the two is a heinous slight against the historical opression and suffering of Black Americans. It is notable that this comes only a few months after what could be seen as other deeply offensive comments about Michael Oher, the African-American subject of his book “The Blind Side.” Lewis is implicated in enabling and eliding Oher’s apparent exploitation by his not-actually- “adoptive parents,” and instead of copping to any oversight on his part, Lewis decided he should smear Oher as “violent and aggressive.” You may detect a pattern.

Lewis was specifically critiquing the behavior of observers, and the atmosphere in the overflow observation room. Which means he’s also attacking the deeply American and democratic principle of a public trial. The jeering and criticism he seems to find offensive is part of the process of making sure trials are fair and honest. So I guess he has a problem with that too.

Credit to David Yaffe-Bellamy for highlighting the interview.

Blast is Paradone

The controversy around the new Blast L2 continued to metastasize last week, with backer Paradigm frantically trying to put daylight between itself and the still-not-real chain.