Do Kwon Breaks Silence

August 16 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

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Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️

• The Fed released new guidance that could potentially allow crypto banks to be part of the financial system.
• According to financial projections released by law firm Kirkland & Ellis, Celsius will run out of cash by October.
• Aave says censorship on the protocol level will require the consensus of the DAO.
• Galaxy Digital announced the termination of the $1.2 billion acquisition of crypto firm BitGo, which will pursue legal action against Galaxy.
• aUSD, a decentralized stablecoin built on Polkadot, lost 99% of its value after an exploit on the Acala network.
• Monero (XMR) deployed a hard fork to improve privacy and security.
• Coin Center may challenge the US Treasury’s decision to sanction Tornado Cash.
• Zipmex, a South Asian crypto exchange, was granted just over three months to solve its liquidity crisis.
• According to the Wall Street Journal, pension funds are still interested in crypto as an asset class.

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Today in Crypto Adoption…

• European digital bank Revolut received approval to offer crypto services to its 17 million users.
• The European Union is building a new regulation unit to oversee cryptocurrencies.
• XP, the largest Brazilian brokerage, launched a crypto platform and expects to reach 200,00 users by the end of the year.
• Coinify, a crypto exchange platform, acquired regulatory approval to operate in Italy.

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The $$$ Corner…

• Dragonfly acquired Metastable, the oldest crypto hedge fund, for an undisclosed amount.
• Bitfarms, a publicly traded Bitcoin mining company, reported a $142 million loss in Q2.

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What Do You Meme?

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What’s Poppin’?

by Juan Aranovich

Months after the collapse of the Terra ecosystem, Do Kwon broke his long silence in an interview given to Coinage Media.

Kwon Do-hyung, also known as Do Kwon, is the South Korean cryptocurrency developer who co-founded Terraform Labs, the entity behind the construction of layer 1 blockchain Terra.

To recap, Terra was built around a decentralized stablecoin called TerraUSD, or UST, which depegged from the dollar and set out a collapse worth $45 billion, damaging both institutional and retail investors heavily.

During the interview, Terra’s founder made some interesting comments. Here are the highlights:

• Do Kwon did not think the collapse of Terra would happen and openly admitted that he was wrong, but was confident in saying that it was not a fraud. “Terra and LUNA were essentially my life (…) I bet big and I lost.” He also stated: “I alone am responsible.”
• He said that he didn’t sleep for seven nights, and only had half a burrito throughout the entire week.
• When asked about what many people viewed as his arrogant tweets, he responded that he had developed an “entertaining alter ego to match the community.”
• Regarding the investigation that was set in motion by South Korean authorities after the collapse, Do Kwon confirmed that “they were never in touch with investigators and that they were not charged with anything.”

The interview was received with some contempt on crypto Twitter, with many wondering why the interviewer didn’t ask more relevant questions. “I wonder why Do Kwon chose you over all of those media titans. Could it be, perhaps, that TFL is an investor in Coinage?,” said influencer FatManTerra.

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Recommended Reads

1. Jen Wieczner on the crash of Three Arrows Capital
2. Jerry Brito and Peter Van Valkenburgh on the Tornado Cash sanctions
3. The Generalist on the next trends in crypto

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On The Pod…

Surojit Chatterjee, chief product officer at Coinbase, comes to talk about what products Coinbase is building, how it can thrive in such a competitive landscape, how to onboard billions of users into crypto, and much more. Show highlights:

• how Surojit got into crypto and ended up at Coinbase
• what sets Coinbase apart from the competition
• how to bring billions of customers to crypto
• Surojit’s mental model of a bridge between the fiat world and the crypto world
• how Coinbase is integrating its main app with Web3
• whether crypto can become a utility rather than an investment asset
• how Coinbase is building a product in such a way that it attracts even “crypto-native” people
• what happened with Coinbase NFT Marketplace’s failure and whether the company will keep investing in NFTs
• whether Coinbase has lost crypto-embedded people among its employees
• how the partnership with BlackRock indicates how far crypto has come
• the amount of money that institutions could potentially pour into crypto
• how Coinbase will prevent itself from having the largest percentage of staked ETH
• how the company is monetizing the Coinbase wallet and what would happen to revenue if the trading volume were to move from the exchange to Coinbase wallet swaps
• why Coinbase is suffering a decline in trading volume
• whether Coinbase can compete with newer exchanges like FTX and Binance and why Surojit still thinks Coinbase will win
• why it is important to keep investing and building through this crypto winter
• Surojit’s take on the frontrunning of coins about to be listed on the platform
• why the Howey test (which determines whether something is a security) is outdated
• how Coinbase understands securities, and whether the firm thinks the tokens listed on the platform are securities
• how can Coinbase compete with decentralized exchanges like Uniswap
• why Surojit is worried about regulatory clarity and stablecoins
• how hacks and security give the crypto industry a bad reputation
• what Surojit’s dreams are for the industry

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Book Update

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians