Dear Bankless Nation,
Crypto embarrassed itself again this week.
But at least this time it was entertaining.
You know it’s always the silly crypto news that makes the headlines. Not the important things. The bizarre. The sensational. I think this gives the rest of the world a distorted view of what’s really going on in this movement.
To be fair the big crypto story this week was impossible not to talk about.
When it turns out that one of the largest cryptos heists of all time was committed by a struggling influencer and wanna-be-rapper, it’s hard to stay crypto seriously.
I mean, what am I looking at?!
Let me back up. Earlier this week, husband and wife duo Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested for stealing $3,600,000,000 worth of Bitcoins from a 2016 Bitfinex hack.
After the DoJ announced the news, internet sleuths went down the rabbithole and surfaced an ungodly amount of cringe. What happened next? MSM ate it up.
To outsiders looking in, crypto is a bizarre and scammy industry full of bad actors. The massive social potential keeps getting overshadowed by incredible levels of cringe. Remember this?
Do you know what should have been bigger news this week?
- The deployment of Solidly Swap, Andre Cronje’s experimental ve(3,3) DEX governance application.
- Whitehat hacker Jay Freeman discovery and disclosure of a massive Optimism bug that would allow attackers to mint an arbitrary number of tokens.
- Chainlink continuing to pave the way with its Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, to create a safer and more security multi-chain ecosystem.
You have to sift through the stupidity on the surface to see the hidden genius.
The brightest minds are working in this space. Academics and PhDs, dot-com era builders, FAANG executives, economic researchers, ambitious college dropouts, and talented engineers are all flocking here because they are excited to play in the sandbox of opportunity that Web 3 presents.
On the surface level crypto is synonymous with hacks, criminals, million-dollar JPEGs, and an environmental crisis. But when you peel back the layers, you see the signal. The brilliant minds working together. The novel experiments that create equitable outcomes. The values that keep us aligned.
Most people don’t put in the work to see past the shenanigans.
That’s our alpha.
We dig past the absurdity to see the true potential for technology.
As long as the world thinks crypto is a joke I’ll know we’re early.
Here’s what’s lined up for next week:
- We talk to Rep. Tom Remmer on Crypto in D.C.
- Our guide on how to get started in DeFi - 2022 Edition
- A deep dive into the veTOKEN model and why everyone’s adopting it
Have a 🪓 weekend,
- RSA