As many of you know, I sold 40,000 ETH at about $1 to put solar panels on a house I no longer own. That ETH was worth over $100 million shortly after. 1/5
My father, ironically, did almost the same thing. After my older siblings moved out, my parents didn't need the enormous house we were living in. But it needed quite a bit of fixing up to sell. 2/5
So my father sunk a lot of money into gutting and redoing the house. But during the months it took to do that, as renovation costs escalated, the real estate market crashed. He took a huge loss on the deal. 3/5
@ScamDetective5 Sure. 1. XRPL certainly needs the Internet for now and the foreseeable future. 2. No CBDCs on XRPL right now. ...
@ScamDetective5 ... 3. We've never seen 1,500 TPS on the live XRPL. I suspect it could, as currently configured, probably sustain about 300-500. 4. While someone could create a basket containing XRP, the only current reason to do so I can think of is as for cryptocurrency index exposure. ...
@ScamDetective5 ... 5. True, RippleNet does not use ODL liquidity and proposals to allow it to do so all include new sources of liquidity. 6. True XRPL is the only public blockchain missing 32,569 blocks but others (like ETH) have much worse gaps in public transaction data. ...
Let's talk about 10 things. Nobody can speak for XRP(L) and these are just my own views. Also, it's dangerous to say something will definitely not happen. I'm talking about what it's reasonable to expect. 1/13
"XRP can't be pegged to gold, silver or anything else."
In theory, nothing prevents someone from trying to peg the price but It's absurd to expect someone to do this when it's virtually impossible to imagine why anyone would want to do that. 2/13
"XRP can't magically become a stablecoin."
Someone could offer to redeem XRP at some fixed rate for something else to set a floor price. But why would anyone want to do that? Why wouldn't they just issue a stablecoin and not mess up XRP? If you want a stablecoin, buy one. 3/13
I've gotten some criticism recently for not calling out scams more than I do. I'd like to share some of my thinking on this. 1/4
I'm not going to call out a scam that isn't obvious. I really don't want to take the risk that I'll call out a legitimate project as a scam. Having had my work called a scam so many times by people who didn't take the time to understand it, I don't want to do that to anyone. 2/4
And I'm not going to try to call out every scam. That's a fool's errand. But also that can wind up backfiring and effectively endorsing everything you don't call out as a scam. 3/4
Sam made a serious miscalculation in his public communications after FTX collapsed. Almost literally everyone could see that nothing he could say would help him. Prosecutors will ignore anything he says that helps him. But anything harmful will be an exhibit in a future case. 1/5
Sam likely figured his biggest risk of criminal prosecution was around him knowingly loaning, investing, or risking FTX customer funds. Thinking he could reduce that risk, he created a narrative that he failed to provide adequate controls against doing so accidentally. 2/5
But as anyone who watches Law and Order knows, when you commit to a narrative, the prosecution can adjust their accusations to fit that narrative. There is, of course, a huge moral issue with charging people with crimes based on a narrative you know is false. 3/5
Sam's political contributions could have been a brilliant strategy to insulate him and his company from scrutiny, get himself favorable regulation, and so on. But I think that they are actually going to backfire on him spectacularly. 1/3
For one thing, many of his contributions will probably be clawed back or recipients will be shamed into returning them. The contributions are also a source of embarrassment to those who received them. 2/3
But worst of all for him, they are likely producing anger in many of the recipients. Variants of "That jerk thinks he can buy me off? I'll show him!" are probably running through the heads of every recipient of Sam's money not named Kevin O'Leary. 3/3