Thread by @JohnEDeaton1

Four months before the lawsuit, Clayton’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell (SC), negotiated the purchase of JPM’s Quorum and the #JPMCoin by Lubin and Consensys. It appears that Clayton, helping his firm, directed Hinman to contact Lubin (represented by SC).

coindesk.com/business/2020/…

When interviewed by @laurashin, Lubin described his Quorum acquisition’s offering, an “interbank information network” that is “similar to what SWIFT does” and works with “north of 400 financial institutions around the world”.  He adds that ConsenSys supports the #JPMCoin.

https://twitter.com/cryptolawus/status/1440774992174608391

Lubin’s description of Quorum & #JPMCoin’s use case sounded very similar. 2 1/2 years earlier, @bgarlinghouse described how Ripple was utilizing #XRP to disrupt and replace #SWIFT.

When Lubin said Ripple & XRP were not competition just look at WEF memo.

On October 15, 2019, writer @NickPaumgarten profiles Ethereum and ConsenSys. Lubin explained that he escaped having #ETH being seen as an unregistered security by:
“creating a reality through words”.

Lubin said that they

“defined what #Ethereum is and what #ETH is” and that “we could create reality that way. It seems to have worked.” 👇

newyorker.com/magazine/2018/…

Lubin falsely claimed “there are only two decentralized protocols on the planet right now that are sufficiently secure enough and decentralized enough so that they can be trusted. Those are Bitcoin and Ethereum.”

Lubin adds that Bitcoin is too difficult to program, and therefore for all developers of “value tokens”, Ethereum is “the only game in town.”

https://twitter.com/digitalassetbuy/status/1450893630256910341

On October 6, 2020, 2 months before the Ripple lawsuit, Lubin bragged about having a:

“regulatory advantage.”

He stated:

“#Bitcoin and #Ethereum arrived before regulators were paying attention”

and that:

“we were fortunate enough to frame our token as a utility token.”

He also said:

“regulators are watching so pretty much all the tokens need to be introduced to the world in a convoluted fashion or are really just going to be seen as securities.”
👇👇

https://twitter.com/digitalassetbuy/status/1445083402852573207

One month before the lawsuit, Jay Clayton said:

“the area [of crypto] that is of particular interest to me … is the payment system. Our payment system is inefficient. Domestically it is inefficient. Internationally it is extremely inefficient.”

“So if we don’t work and use technology to address those inefficiencies the market is going to do it for us.”

One month later, Clayton’s SEC sued the highest profile market leader providing a solution – Ripple – at a time ConsenSys was moving to directly compete with Ripple.”👇

https://twitter.com/milerman50/status/1474136037517664264

In November 2020, @VitalikButerin tells Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong how “we” are “getting rid of” the network’s proof of work mechanism to replace it with one “entirely based on proof of stake”.

Vitalik adds that this transition depends on Ethereum’s users:

“abandoning the $50 billion base layer that they know and love and move to the one we consider better. It’s still a leap that people have to take.”

This was one month before the SEC filed the Ripple lawsuit.
👇👇

https://twitter.com/sentosumosaba/status/1439111168191172608

Clayton met with Gensler twice in December 2020. They met the day before the lawsuit was filed. There is no doubt that the lawsuit was discussed. It appears to me that a deal was struck between VCs and regulators, with Gensler’s blessing.

Ethereum would get the free pass while Ripple and #XRP would be served up as the proverbial sacrificial lamb offered to the regulators to make example of.