Billionaires Beware • CEO Letter #60

Salutations, it's Taylor! I'm the CEO of Hedgehog, AKA mission control for your entire crypto portfolio. Sync your exchange accounts and wallet addresses, then track and trade whatever and whenever you like, to keep your investments sane and balanced. (Or insane and imbalanced, if you prefer; I'm not the boss of you.)

Speaking of sanity, following up on the Do Your Own Research checklist, Hedgeblog writer Lipsa explained how to evaluate a cryptocurrency to see whether it's worth buying. "Utility/mission — what is it good for, absolutely nothing?!" Hopefully the opposite of that 😉

This newsletter is definitely good for something, because there's a weekly giveaway — answer my question at the end of the email for your chance to win a Ledger Nano S hardware wallet. We are hardware wallet advocates here at Hedgehog, mainly because I don't want you to get ripped off, and it's more difficult to steal from a hardware wallet than, like, MetaMask.

Excellent news: "Following years of hard work, Ethereum's proof-of-stake upgrade is finally here! The successful upgrade of all public testnets is now complete, and The Merge has been scheduled for the Ethereum mainnet."

I almost can't believe it, but we have a specific date window now: September 6 the process begins, and the Merge is expected to go through by September 20.

I'm honestly kind of shocked that the merge is actually, finally happening. I expected to keep making "When ETH 2.0?" jokes for the next decade. Okay, that's an exaggeration, since Ethereum isn't even a decade old yet (which also blows my mind). ETH launched in July 2015, so the 10-year birthday will be in July 2025, three years from now.

Tldr: What a huge impact this project has had in less than the time it takes to grow a whole 3rd-grader!

Perhaps you've heard about the drama surrounding crypto investment firm Three Arrows Capital, which got taken down (obliterated? cosmically destroyed?) by the recent market crash.

Allow me to stress that I cannot vouch for this info, but here is the kind of rumor going around about 3AC:

Soooo the takeaway from the 3AC nymag piece is that Kyle and Su may very well be on the run because at the end of their vicious borrowing cycle they borrowed from the literal mob and there is a non-zero chance that they are literally about to get murdered/have fingers chopped… ?

I hope not, out of sheer human compassion! Here's the NYMag story in question.

On the Hedgeblog, Ryan dug into the backstory: "The rise and fall of Su Zhu — How he lost a $10B hedge fund." Yeah, billions. Imagine having that much money to lose in the first place!

Su Zhu was extremely bullish on crypto, possibly too bullish. He believed that Bitcoin would become king and alt-coins would become respected stores of value.

That might still happen… but not for Su Zhu.

Tldr: A cautionary tale for all you billionaires indeed.

Cryptography professor Matthew Green and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are protesting the confusing sanctions against Tornado.cash (which we discussed in a recent newsletter).

In short, the US Department of the Treasury considers the mixer Tornado.cash to be a money-laundering tool and thus off-limits to run or use. At least that's the interpretation so far, but it's a little unclear because Tornado is a protocol, not a company. Running a frontend is clearly "Not Allowed", but how can the protocol itself be sanctioned, versus specific human operators?

The EFF is relying on the concept that code is free speech:

In keeping with our longstanding defense of the right to publish code, we are representing Professor Matthew Green, who teaches computer science at the Johns Hopkins Information Security Institute, including applied cryptography and anonymous cryptocurrencies. Part of his work involves studying and improving privacy-enhancing technologies, and teaching his students about mixers like Tornado Cash.

The disappearance of Tornado Cash's repository from GitHub created a gap in the available information on mixer technology, so Professor Green made a fork of the code, and posted the replica so it would be available for study. The First Amendment protects both GitHub's right to host that code, and Professor Green's right to publish (here republish) it on GitHub so he and others can use it for teaching, for further study, and for development of the technology.

Tldr: Who rules the world? Badass professors, that's who.

Two quick hits that are kinda related to all of the above:

"Crypto is Networked Nonviolent Protest"
Tldr: Does that mean fiat is Disassociated Violent Subjugation?

"Who will control crypto?"
Tldr: Hopefully no one? Err… everyone? Isn’t that the point?

What a week. What an industry. The type of industry where I can say "what a week!" every week.

And now it's time for the giveaway question! Let's keep it simple: How was your week? What's going on with you? Reply to this email to tell me what you're stressing about — or what you're grinning about — and you'll be entered in the drawing to win a Ledger Nano S hardware wallet.

XOXO,
Gossip CEO

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