Thread by @el33th4xor

At times like these, when the news is ironically dominated by the failure of a centralized custodian but served as if it's a crypto failure, it’s important to remember why we are here.

Over the next few days and weeks, I'm going to be talking about innovations in blockchain that I believe are solving real world challenges. #ThisisWhyWeCrypto

In 2013, David Murdock, the chairman, CEO and biggest shareholder of Dole Food Co (yes, connected to one time presidential candidate Bob Dole), took it private for $13.50 a share.

bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…

The shareholders felt that the price was way too low, so they sued Murdock for self-dealing, and won an additional $2.74, plus interest, per share.

The only problem?

There were a total of 4,662 shareholders claiming a total of 49,164,415 shares for a company that issued only 36,793,758!

So.

What

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A
P
P
E
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E
D
?

It turns out that over the preceding years, when the shares were traded during off market hours, the systems that Wall Street used to trade the shares could not keep track.

Multiple people ended up thinking that they owned the same shares. In crypto parlance, Wall Street double-minted.

They had just one job, to keep track of assets, and they failed.

The impact of this on the share price is incalculable. They printed 36% extra shares, but depending on which portion of the demand curve they straddled, the price could well have been impacted by a very large number.

The entire episode was hushed in order not to create widespread panic about the trustworthiness of our financial system. Press coverage, save by the indefatigable @matt_levine, was quite limited.

In contrast, crypto assets in DeFi are readily auditable by the public at all times and cannot be manufactured out of the thin air. We do not need to rely on the say-so of any operator. We build safeguards into the fabric of our (non-centralized) systems.
#ThisIsWhyWeCrypto