In our recent article Staking and Liquid Staking: a Primer we covered the fact that staking is rapidly becoming a substantial ecosystem of its own, including via increasing uptake from institutional investors. We explained the differences between simply staking tokens and liquid staking, which enables investors to pledge their tokens but also achieve liquidity by receiving a new token known as a liquid staking token (LST) or liquid staking derivative (LSD), which is typically deployed in decentralized finance (DeFi) to earn yield or other benefits. Sounds great, so what’s the catch? Well, in addition to the potential catches inherent in any young and relatively untested technology – crypto generally but…
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:( , of, oof – don’t think I have anything particular?
The banality of Bankman-Fried and his FTX/Alameda cozeners
Political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil became a classic in part by introducing the concept in noted its subtitle. She argued that the full context of Eichmann’s actions in helping organize and carry out the Holocaust weren’t fully elucidated by his trial, which thus obscured, “the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us—the lesson of the fearsome, word-and-thought-defying banality of evil”. Not to say that what FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is currently on trial for rises to the level of evil, but I’ve been struck over and over by the banality and seemingly utter disregard for…
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On Eve of SBF Trial, Stolen FTX Funds On the Move
FTX hacker transfers funds for first time since weeks after the November 2022 exploit
As Sam Bankman-Fried, disgraced founder of crypto exchange FTX, sits in a jail cell in Brooklyn’s notorious Metropolitan Detention Center awaiting the start of his trial on Tuesday for seven counts of fraud and conspiracy, funds that were stolen from FTX in a hack hours after the firm filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last November have moved for the first time in more than 9 months. Not only was the FTX collapse already one of the most stunning debacles in the long history of financial disasters, the siphoning of $600 million in funds from the company’s crypto wallets added insult to injury and led to speculation that company insiders were absconding…
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Two of Worldcoin's iris scanning orbs flank a promotional poster at the ETHGlobal conference in New YorkControversial Worldcoin Scans Retinas at ETH NYC, Skips Over its Messy History
Is Big Brother attempting to recruit all the young devs?
In our ongoing series exploring the increasing intersections of blockchain and AI, we’ve highlighted both novel approaches to combining the two exponential technologies in sectors like healthcare that impact everyone, as well as how blockchain can ensure both privacy and transparency. The latter is particularly important given the risks posed by AI — its potential to eliminate millions of jobs, including those previously deemed more immune to technology, the acceleration of deep fakes that threaten our increasingly slippery hold on what is true, the reduction in the ability of humans to control weapons of mass destruction and more. (And as evidence that these are collective concerns, when you type “biggest…
