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Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Jan 5

NEW: Terra Founder Do Kwon is now facing a maximum penalty of 130 years in prison after being extradited to the US

He appeared in US court for the first time to face extensive fraud charges that could impact all of crypto

Here's what happens next 🧵⬇️

The criminal charges detailed in the DOJ's 79-page indictment include new allegations that were not part of the SEC's civil trial

The criminal case goes into further detail as the DOJ must show Do Kwon acted with criminal intent

Prosecutors even cited my old interviews with Do:

The reason why this case is more interesting than the SBF/FTX case is because it more directly applies to crypto projects and founders experimenting in DeFi

We covered the difference between failure & fraud in our @coinage_media mini-doc with Do Kwon:

Read 6 tweets

Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Mar 25, 2024

It was surreal to be back in court for Do Kwon's trial, just a few floors from where SBF was convicted

I was the first to interview Do after Terra's collapse, and went to SBF's home right before his trial. Here's why these cases are both extremely different and eerily similar 🧵

For starters, this is a civil fraud case against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs. There is no jail time associated with this ruling (though the DOJ was lingering around the courtroom today)

At the heart of the case is exactly what we explored in our interview — Failure vs. Fraud

The SEC has built their case around the climax of our piece on Terra's collapse. As we presented it more than a year ago, this was always going to come down to:

Who knew what?
and when did they know it?

coinage.media/s1/inside-cryp…

Read 6 tweets

Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Mar 25, 2024

NEW: Do Kwon / Terra vs. SEC off to a hot start in Manhattan court today

We already got a jury selected along with opening statements from both the SEC and defense teams (plus’s some pretty hilarious material from Judge Rakoff)

Here’s everything from Day 1 🧵

It’s my first time back at the courthouse since SBF’s trial, and this one is way less crowded

Showed up late cause I was coming straight from Newark, but still got a seat.

Most obvious difference: all suits in the courtroom. Terra and the SEC came to play for the civil trial!

Judge Rakoff laid out ground rules from the jump:

Trial expected to take 2 weeks
Only 4-word objections allowed

“The only way you can get me mad is a speedy objection. You say 3 words: ‘Objection, lack of foundation.’ Ok, maybe I’ll extend to 4 words.”

Read 11 tweets

Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Aug 10, 2023

People always ask me why I get so excited about Web3.

The answer is that it enables more intimate and better user experiences that have been destroyed by terrible Web2 models that misalign incentives

Let me use a simple example in this thread: Dating Apps 🧵🩷

First off, start by liking and bookmarking this thread so you have something to come back to whenever someone else asks you why Web3 is better 😄

Alright, let's get into why the old Web2 model for tech has been resulting in terrible user experiences — starting with Hinge

Hinge launched in 2012. (I am not ashamed to say that I... was an early user.) But it looked very different than Hinge today

Back then, it was built on the idea of leveraging shared social networks to meet quality "friends of friends" hence the name "Hinge"

Read 13 tweets

Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Nov 16, 2022

The Winklevoss Twins' crypto platform Gemini is the latest player to get hit in the crypto collapse

But they were seen as one of *the good* crypto platforms — above board, regulated, and backed 1:1. So how did even they run into problems? A mini thread 🧵

First off, as we've seen this year — centralized crypto lenders have basically been operating as unregulated banks: promising interest rates 140x-higher than traditional banks, taking in customer deposits, and loaning them out

Even Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said that

But unlike Celsius, and BlockFi, Gemini had tried to appear safer with its operations

For one, it never launched its own risky token. It had a stablecoin, sure, but GUSD was backed 1:1 with audited cash held in a trust ✅

It also didn't offer 8% interest to its customers alone

Read 9 tweets

Zack Guzmán

@zGuz

Sep 6, 2022

Most NFT mints optimize to sell out as quickly as possible, or make a lot of money. But if NFTs are all about "community" around a shared goal you'd think fostering the *right* community would be a higher priority

Here's one decentralized approach to put community first 🧵thread

2/ First thing first: Identify a genuine shared goal that isn’t “number go up.”

With precious few exceptions, the NFT market is currently driven by speculation. People will always want to make money. That’s never going to change.

But that creates a destructive paradox

3/ A “community” of people trying to outmaneuver and undercut each other for profit is not a community. That’s a 10,000-way Mexican standoff

When the shared goal is only financial upside, you can share the desire, but when push comes to shove, you’ll rarely all share the success

Read 23 tweets

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