The Rise of the DAOs [42]
With the lines between political activism, global geopolitics and the world of crypto blurring, the pace at which important events for this sector seems to only accelerate.
Hello my friend! GM!
It feels weird to say this in literally every email I send you, but “Holy crap! Things never slow down in the world of crypto.”
The last two weeks have been absolutely bonkers, and every single day there’s a massive story to try to make sense of and decide whether or not it’s more or less important than the other twenty stories.
I made the decision when I started this publication that I wasn’t going to get too far into the weeds of political and legal news for a variety of reasons. The last two weeks have contained a couple of stories in that regard that bear talking about, despite the fact that it’s slightly out of those bounds.
One, which we’ll talk about in the Bulletin this week, is the Wormhole hack, which is the largest defi hack in history thus far, and thus bears mentioning.
The other main story worth talking about is the arrest of Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein, two individuals being charged with the laundering of funds from the infamous Bitfinex hack in 2016 that I, Kyt Dotson and Duncan Riley reported on at SiliconANGLE (here and here).
There are two things that make this news particularly insane
The amount of capital seized from the couple is the largest seized in human history: over $3.6 billion worth in bitcoin.
The absolute bonkers details about the couple themselves. The husband was a network security specialist who was got from storing his private keys in a cloud account, and his wife was a “surrealist rapper.”
That these two are somehow responsible for hacking and hiding what is now the largest seizure of funds in a criminal investigation in all of human history is something that beggars belief.
As more and more details emerge about them, the case that these two are responsible for one of crypto’s largest heists gets harder to believe.
This morning, in newly released details:
The couple held their privet keys in a spreadsheet stored in a cloud account.
There was a file in the cloud called “passport_ideas.”
They wrote “burner phones” on a hidden ziploc bag.
… and somehow, that’s not even the biggest crypto story of the last two weeks.
Stuff that I want to talk about, but couldn’t jam into this issue:
President Biden is threatening an executive order on crypto in response to Russia hinting they’ll be using it to evade international sanctions.
Julian Assange raising $51 million using a DAO structure based loosely on the work we’ve done at FreeRossDAO.
The founder of ENS, brantly.eth, was cancelled and fired from his position over tweets from six years ago expressing homophobia and intolerance.
Bitcoiners, responding to Canadian banking sanctions, raised about 21 BTC to send to the families of truckers while they protest.
The lines of political activism and crypto are getting very blurry, and over the next couple weeks, rumors are still swirling that both Ukraine and Russia will be using cryptocurrency to evade sanctions on both sides of the fence in the upcoming conflict that may or may not be happening between those two countries.
I’ve been heads down with some friends at a research firm working to fully explore all these trends mentioned above, and we should be releasing our research publicly within the next week or so, so keep your ear to the ground here for that announcement, when it comes.
Thank you for your support!
This is the part of the newsletter where I help pay for the work I do here.
💛 - Send this email to a friend! Even if you’re on the paid version. It’ll get someone else interested, and possibly subscribed!
🦢 - Have you started investing in Bitcoin yet? You’ve read about Dollar Cost Averaging, but don’t know where to start? I endorse Swan Bitcoin as a great tool for setting up a disciplined investment regimen, and many of you do, too! If you sign up with this link, I get $10 to help support my efforts with this newsletter.
📧 - Did you get this emailed to you? Click here to try a premium subscription out free for 14-days (generally, two issues).
₿ - Want to pay with crypto? I’ve got a variety of payment methods to choose from.
📚 - If you sign up right now, it’s not too late to get the next version of my book as a subscription benefit! If you’d just rather buy the previous edition, they’re available via OpenSea as a Polygon NFT.
Blockchain Bulletin
Wormhole blockchain bridge loses $321M Ether in second-largest DeFi hack ever.
Attackers hacked the Wormhole, a blockchain bridge between Ethereum and Solana and stole 120,000 wrapped Ether, worth approximately $321 million, reported CoinTelegraph.
DeepDAO launches search engine to discoverability for DAOs.
Decentralized autonomous organization data and analytics platform DeepDAO has made it much easier for people to discover information on DAOs with a new search engine, reported Decrypt.
GameStop joins Immutable X to launch its own NFT marketplace.
At long last, GameStop has unveiled its plans to build an NFT marketplace by partnering with the Immutable X platform, reported The Verge, the two companies will also form a $100 million fund for creators and developers.
Syndicate announces a tool to launch DAOs with legal docs.
The decentralized investment platform for web3 has launched a new product that makes it easy to spin up DAOs with templates and tools for legal documentation, reported CoinDesk.
BitDAO launches $200M zkDAO for Ethereum zkSync scaling.
A proposal to fund zkDAO passed the treasury BitDAO that would bring $200 million for zkSync scaling, as well as funding for other Ethereum-based projects, reported CoinTelegraph.
Google Cloud doubles down on blockchain with dedicated Digital Assets Team.
Google is looking to build its own blockchain cloud team with the Digital Assets Team under Google Cloud that will continue short- and long-term projects and node hosting in the cloud, Google said in a blog post.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Diem is done: Assets will be sold to Silvergate Bank for $200M.
Meta’s experiment with stablecoins that started with the Libra project, and rebranded into Diem, will be sold to Silvergate Bank to $200 million according to a report.
Ubisoft expands its blockchain vision in partnership with Hedera network.
Gaming giant Ubisoft is reaching even further into blockchain technology with a partnership with Hedera network and joining the HBAR Foundation.
FriesDAO launches to purchase a crypto-crowdfunded fast-food franchise.
A new delicious DAO has launched with the intention of crowdfunding the purchase of a fast-food franchise that will proffer $FRIES tokens for participants.
Congress probes into cryptomining companies’ energy consumption.
Democratic members of Congress have written letters to major cryptomining outfits in the US seeking information about their energy usage.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Ask Doctor Bitcoin to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.