Cryptonite June 2022
wen prison?
Its time for Cryptonite - our monthly roundup of all things crypto - with Tejaswi Nadahalli.
You can follow Tejaswi on twitter @nadahalli and he blogs at tejaswin.com
Ponzis blowing up all over the place, stablecoins losing their pegs and crypto-pumpers getting rid of their lazer eyes. June was an eventful month in the metaverse. Bitcoin got its start during the GFC, now that the whole crypto-economy is having its GFC moment, who will go to jail and who will retire in the Bahamas?
At least some projects have been outright lying about the safety of their products.
Its not criminal to be stupid but what if somebody tried to point out your stupidity and you tried to muzzle them?
Tougher if you publicly committed to BTFD and HODL…
But we’ll always have lazer eyes, right?
Markets this Week
Lot of intraday churn but flat by the end of the day - both bulls and bears lose money.
Links
Bitcoin Miner Bitfarms Sells Coins After Ending ‘Hodling’. Sells nearly half of its mined coins. (bloomberg)
Crypto Traders Turn Against Each Other in a Collapsing Market. (yahoo)
Obviously, the slump in crypto prices has the naysayers jumping for joy, extolling how smart they were to avoid another “tulip mania” and predicting the demise of the entire sector. This is ludicrously pessimistic. What is happening instead is the crypto market equivalent of natural selection. Absent a central bank, the onus is on firms operating in the space to be responsible and those that aren’t (ie, excessive leverage, poor risk management, poor security etc) will not succeed. This process is without doubt painful, but ultimately the lack of a centralized backstop is a good thing as it means moral hazard is avoided because there are no bailouts in crypto unlike in the fiat system.
SEC launches insider trading inquiry into crypto exchanges. (foxbusiness)
There's No Good Reason to Trust Blockchain Technology. Cryptocurrencies are useless. Blockchain solutions are frequently much worse than the systems they replace. (wired)
Crypto is essentially an economic cult that taps into very base human instincts of fear, greed and tribalism, combined with economic illiteracy as a means to recruit more greater fools to pile money into what looks like a weird, novel digital variant of a pyramid scheme.
Stephen Diehl (ft)
Memes of the Week
