It's getting pretty late and I don't really have much time to write this, but I thought it would be important to power through some headlines I read today regarding crypto.
Gary Wang & Caroline Ellison Plead guilty to fraud
The FTX saga continues and it appears as though SBF's underlings are cooperating with law enforcement and ready to throw their former leader under the bus. Like I've said before, SBF needs to be sacrificed at this point to appease the mob and provide justification for regulators to move in with heavy hands.
It's kind of disappointing to see a group like this fold like a house of cards under the slightest amount of pressure, but it is what it is I suppose. Perhaps one day communities and tightly knit groups will stand together against the "authorities" of this world and not allow individuals to get completely steamrolled and strong-armed one by one, but that day doesn't seem to be coming anytime soon.
Let's be honest, this perhaps isn't even an appropriate context to bring this idea up within the current situation. After all it's just a centralized group of nerds who tried to play god and fell flat on their faces. It's not like SBF and friends were ever going to stick it to the man even within the wildest of fantasies.
QuadrigaCX: LOL WTF!
Remember QuadrigaCX? The founder of the company entered a country/city famous for faking people's deaths... and then he 'died' there quite mysteriously. Many people did not believe he actually died and indeed faked his own death, but the evidence to the contrary was pretty strong.
Now, years later, five wallets from QuadrigaCX's cold storage have gone active and transferred 100 BTC to a mixing service to obfuscate where the funds are going. The keys to these wallets were thought to be lost forever. No one is pointing out the fact that either the death of the founder was indeed faked or someone close to him has been holding onto the keys this entire time waiting to drain the accounts. Well, they're getting drained and they are going to be difficult to track. Should be interesting to see how this situation develops.
Ripple lawsuit update
The timing of this lawsuit is nothing but impeccable. Many are hoping it will conclude sometime around the end of next quarter; perhaps in March or April. If Ripple actually wins, that's exactly the time we would expect a pretty epic bull market if 2023 turns out to be anything like 2019 based on the four year cycle theory.
There have been many small victories in the case lately and it's quite obvious that the judge on the case is not putting up with any of the SEC's bullshit. However, it's very hard to imagine Ripple could win just from the fact that we would have to assume there is corruption and collusion between government agencies.
Surely a "tie" would always swing in favor of the SEC... I assume. But what do I know? In any case, the SEC's case is technically pretty weak even though XRP is obviously super premined and centralized. Fortunately that's not how actual law works, and it must be proven that actual law has been broken, which is much more complex than a gut feeling of known centralization and ridiculous premines.
Even if Ripple loses I feel like it's not a big deal. Likely just a fine for Ripple Labs; a slap on the wrist, which is less damage than has already been done just from the speculation of the lawsuit existing in the first place.
The XRP army is a very strong community, even if we assume they are completely toxic and delusional. They aren't going anywhere, and even if Ripple loses, the SEC has pretty much zero power over the actual XRP network and implied token distributions. I feel like they will carry on with or without Ripple in whatever turn of events comes their way. Again, will be very interesting to see how that plays out.
Faketoshi Craig Wright awarded $1.1M in a bullshit lawsuit.
The most disturbing piece of news I came across today is that Peter McCormack was ordered to pay a huge sum of money to Craig Wright over slander. Peter called Craig Wright a fraud and a liar, because Craig Wright is an obvious fraud and a liar. Am I now legally liable for the same 'crime' that McCormack is 'guilty' of? That's complete bullshit.
This shows us how bad things are in civil cases vs criminal law. In a criminal case you're innocent till proven guilty, but in this case Peter could not definitively prove that Craig Wright was not Satoshi, so that makes him guilty of tarnishing Wright's 'reputation'. Meanwhile, we all know for a 100% fact that all Wright has to do to prove he is Satoshi is sign a single message using any number of public/private key-pairs known to be owned by the creator of Bitcoin.
Craig Wright is a laughing stock of crypto. He constantly gets into arguments on social media with people who directly quote Satoshi Nakamoto's words, and Craig Wright will foolishly and publicly disagree with what the person is saying. At this point people are just baiting him whenever they get the chance just to troll him and make him look like the jack ass that he is.
It is so positively absurd that one would have to prove a person was not Satoshi in a Libel/Slander case. The burden of proof is OBVIOUSLY on the person who should carry the private keys in question. I feel like this is just one of those core inconsistencies of WEB2 vs WEB3 and centralization vs decentralization. The new world that crypto is building will eventually become completely incompatible with the legacy world. This is a great example and even case-study to that effect. Such a terrible precedent to set made by people who don't understand crypto in the least bit, instead opting to apply grossly outdated laws onto this emergent sector. Very strange times indeed.
I feel like the most disgusting part of this case is that $900k out of the $1.1M are basically just Craig Wright's legal fees that McCormick is being forced to reimburse. So absurd that one would be legally obligated to pay for an obvious liar's legal fees. So basically if you just hire a good enough legal team and win you pay nothing? Cool story. #capitalism
Everything that Craig Wright stands for is in direct opposition to Satoshi Nakamoto. He's a greedy bootlicker who wants to steal credit for a miraculous invention that was gifted to humanity anonymously in one of the most selfless acts ever. The foul disgust I have for this empty shell of a human has the same number of layers as an onion. I'll leave it at that.