Eric Wall Profile picture
Dec 26, 2021 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
I asked an AI app to render an image based on the input ”bitcoin 2022” to give me some hints of what’s in store for the next year. It gave me this.

What does it look like?

Dogecoin? A bear? A honeybadger that don’t care? Image
This is ”Ethereum 2022”

I see the Ethereum logo hovering over a skyscraper… or a money lego DeFi city. But I also see a big rift in it. Does this mean there will be a chainsplit upon the Merge after all (the PoW => PoS hardfork)? Image
This is ”Solana 2022”

I see something very impressive. A breathtaking monument of the future. But it also looks inherently unstable, as if it could crack at any moment under the sheer load the structure puts on itself. It doesn’t look to have a very reliable baselayer. Image
”AVAX 2022”

I see a boat—a stranded yacht as the tide went out? Image
@zhusu is that yours?
Let’s try an ETH L2

This is ”Arbitrum 2022”

The architecture looks quite bold and advanced, but it doesn’t look like it’s falling apart nevertheless. It looks more like ”Wow, do you really think we could build things like that?” than a city in mayhem. Image
Who did it better—

@ChainLinkGod communicating to the LINK marines

Or Mufasa to Simba?

LINK marines, remember who you are. ImageImage

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More from @ercwl

Feb 21
If you want to understand what happens to funds after they’re stolen by North Korea/Lazarus Group, the Chainalysis 2022 report is great

Step 1: Swap any ERC20s (like stETH) into ETH

Step 2: Swap any ETH into BTC

Step 3: Cash out BTC to cash (Chinese Renminbi) using Asian exchanges

This process can take years. They are in no hurry.

In 2022, it was noted how North Korea was still sitting on $55 worth of funds from hacks that happened six years earlier (2016).Image
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In the meantime, @Bybit_Official will have to shore up ~$1.5b worth of ETH.

They’re doing that now by loans

But the reason to go the loan route was likely because there was a chance to retrieve the funds.

Then it’s easier to use the confiscated ETH to pay back the loan than going out and market blasting $1.5bn worth of ETH and ending up with double the money if you get it back.

But seeing as this is confirmed to be the Lazarus Group, there’s very little chance that those funds will ever be returned.

So @Bybit_Official will have to buy the ETH to pay back their loan (or pay back the USD amount owed, which would then constitute an OTC buy), and there’s really not much sense in waiting that long to do this.

So net net, Bybit will be buying ETH and Lazarus will be dumping ETH for BTC.

Net effect on ETH should ~cancel itself out.

BTC will catch a bid from Lazarus and over the years turn into sell pressure, but that can take long.
@Bybit_Official Link to Chainalysis report:

Start at page 132, but the whole report overall is a worthwhile read.go.chainalysis.com/rs/503-FAP-074…
Read 9 tweets
Dec 3, 2024
one piece of analysis i haven’t seen on ct yet surrounding the xrp pump is

”is asia driving this?”

if anyone remembers e.g. xrp mania was always driven by south korea whose population always went crazy for this coin for some reason

a cursory view suggest it might be (upbit): Image
compare this imbalance to other exchanges. can’t find any other exchange of similar size that has volume so heavily skewed toward xrp pairs

(could be a result of % of retail vs institutional on the exchange—i’m a bit rusty doing these analyses these days)
this is for example what it looks like on bitstamp and bitfinex

doesn’t have the same skew AT ALL

i highly suspect it’s the asians again Image
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Read 5 tweets
Jul 9, 2024
i'm still mulling over the fact that the @OpenAI board fired @sama because he couldn't be trusted and the entire superalignment team quit over safety concerns

for months i've been wondering what actually happened and there's quite a lot of content out there for anyone who's interested.

my goal has been to understand if this happened because there was too much money involved in the ai industry, and if it made sense for engineers/employees to switch jobs since ex-OpenAI engineers are hard currency for any other AI startup

so i've been doing my own research into the individuals involved and unfortunately it doesn't seem to me as if there are any mitigating circumstances here.

You have (all former):
- Jan Leike (senior engineer @ superalignment)
- William Saunders (researcher @ superalignment)
- Ilya Sutskever (chief scientist, cofounder)
- Daniel Kokotajlo (researcher @ governance)
- Leopold Aschenbrenner (researcher @ superalignment)
- Helen Toner (board)

they all paint pretty much the same picture. the incentives push @OpenAI to participate as any capitalistic enterprise in an arm's race and to neglect safety.

to the extent that i'm able to intuit what a person is about and what their motives are (i've read mostthere is to read from these people and listened to nearly all the podcast episodes they've done on the subject) and i can't come to any other conclusion than that they're being sincere about what they experienced.

it's most clear to me from leike (and also aschenbrenner)

i've watched long clips from leike from before the superalignment team disbanded and he struck me as genuinely excited about the work he was going to do - only to discover that the resources his team was promised (20% for alignment research) wasn't going to happen

what i've heard from saunders and kokotaljo also confirms the picture. sutskever is always been a bit political (understandable), and toner i don't know that well, but the picture comes together in a way that's hard to refute.

i did not find any breadcrumbs of insincerity or something that could allow me to spin an alternative theory for why they're saying what they're saying.

i'm a big fan of @OpenAI's products and it just sucks to have it so confirmed that it's an untrustworthy organization

(yes, i should have known, worldcoin eye scanner orb bad etc etc)

i'll post my sources below for anyone who's interested to make their own assessment:
long podcast episode with leike when the superalignment team was new:
Read 11 tweets
Jan 28, 2024
2024 predictions:
1. Bitcoin hits a new all-time high.
2. ETH/BTC has seen its bottom for the year.
Read 13 tweets
Jan 7, 2024
Time to review my 2023 predictions. As usual, it'll be most interesting to see what I was wildly wrong about, and why.

(and if I'll beat my score from last year which was 21.5/30)
Half a point.

He was found guilty on all seven fraud counts and faces a maximum sentence of 115 years, but hasn't been sentenced yet.
Read 33 tweets
Dec 5, 2023
Why did BRC-20 take over not only Bitcoin, but also *Ethereum, Solana, Near, Polygon, Celo and Fantom*?

Because burning gas/wasting blockspace is one if the last distribution mechanisms that exists with _open access to retail_.

Read on 🧵👇


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How are you supposed to get access to a low cap cryptocurrency these days? Say, a sub-$1m mcap coin?

Retail-facing ICOs are simply illegal at the moment. Only accredited investors can buy. You’ll get access to these coins at exchange listing, at $100m+ FDV market caps.
What about airdrops? Yes, you can farm airdrops. This means you have to fuck around with every chain and dapp that doesn’t have a token yet, hoping you do it before the snapshot date, hoping you fulfill the evermore elusive criterias trying to exclude routine farmers like you.
Read 23 tweets

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