Adam Cochran (adamscochran.eth) Profile picture
(Something New), Partner@CEHV, Adj. Prof Info Sci, SC @synthetix_io, @amphoraprotocol.
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Feb 19 16 tweets 3 min read
1/16

Right now most of the AI projects seem to be shovels and picks, which is great to sell when people are mining.

But no one is mining yet.

The comparable in our space is Bittensor vs Ritual. 2/16

But, outside its the fact we have tons of models on HuggingFace, StableDiffusion, OpenAI, Gemini, LLaMa, Mixtral, Smaug, MidJourney, etc but not a lot of people using them for any specific commercial gain at scale.
Jan 26 9 tweets 3 min read
1/8

So Justin Sun's HTX/Huobi has suddenly turned off their proof-of-reserves system, at the same time as a few other concerning things are happening. Image 2/8

Their live reporting on DefiLlama shows only about $120M in ETH assets despite their last audit claiming closer to $300M in raw ETH. Image
Jan 26 9 tweets 2 min read
1/8

As we move into the L3/Appchain era, a lot of providers are focused on a race to the bottom of fees, or maximizing platform flexability.

But, the winner is probably just whoever has the most pre-made features that are easy to activate. 2/8

Should every L3 have deep in-house technical expertise to customize their launch? Maybe, but its probably overkill.

But beyond that, most won't.

I think of it like WordPress.

Some people will customize it and need access to code. Some will use pre-built assets.
Jan 25 24 tweets 6 min read
1/23

As I said, we needed lower, but I don't think we got the chop we needed yet, so lets look at where we are at in price, with a ton of charts and data: 2/23

On BTC your aggregate OI is down, a good chunk (-17% from recent highs) but that's still a good +20% higher than the averages we've seen in more stable ranges recently. Image
Jan 1 17 tweets 3 min read
1/17

On Synthetix:

There has been some FUD today about TRB manipulation that left a lot of exchanges (CEX and DEX) holding the bag on bad trades.

Of course the dex perp market leader gets it’s unfair share of attacks, so let’s breakdown what happened: 2/17

Yesterdays $TRB pump and dump was abused for some traders to enter into outside positions that left the debt pool -$2m.

Unlike some centralized places that think that’s grounds for legal action, Synthetix thinks that’s grounds for fixing shit.
Dec 11, 2023 14 tweets 4 min read
1/14

So why a flush?

This chart right here really says it all, but let's break it down further. Image 2/14

As of last night, we were hitting around $12B in OI across all exchanges on Bitcoin.

That level is one where we can start to expect increases in volatility if its skewed - as its about 0.1% of the entire mcap. Image
Dec 9, 2023 14 tweets 2 min read
1/14

Depending on your jurisdiction there is an extra 50% to 100% gain in crypto that most people miss out by not structuring their trades correctly.

All comes down to a few tax optimization strategies that wealthy people use in tradfi. 2/14

1. Buy spot, not derivs.

In and of itself, this doesn't save you much but its crucial for the next strategies.
Dec 8, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
1/7

One overlooked thing, is that when coming out of a bear market, some standard trading wisdom like "sell the news" doesn't always apply in crypto.

This is something I refer to as "the Zealot effect" 2/7

Markets aim to be efficiently priced on the metrics, but they aren't always perfect (meme stocks, tech forwards, etc) because sometimes an outsized class of non-rational or emotional investors have greater influence on the trend.
Dec 7, 2023 13 tweets 4 min read
1/13

I was trying to decide if we were at "euphoria" yet and due a major correction versus a mild pullback.

But on this pullback, too many people went from "wgmi" to "take money off the table"

In real euphoria people just yolo every dip.

This looks healthy + bullish. 2/13

The recent legs up have been caused by OI build up of bears getting liquidated, which has helped break through key levels with ease.

Normally each consolidation phase led to new short OI piling on. Image
Nov 27, 2023 10 tweets 3 min read
1/10

I'm optimistic about @_RichardTeng's leadership at Binance, and hopeful that he truly means the things he saying.

While there is a long list of things I'd want to see improved before I'd use it, there is one glaring top list issue they need to address: TUSD. 2/10

This past year, Binance began to treat TUSD as a first class citizen.

Despite the fact it was recently purchased by Justin Sun, who:

A) First denied buying it.

B) Stopped supporting the other "True" currencies without offramping

C) Printed $2B+ of it on Tron Image
Nov 8, 2023 15 tweets 3 min read
1/14

If I were new to crypto, and more or less deployed my capital, I would absolutely be grinding any project that had a following, high TVL, or venture funding and hadn't yet dropped a token.

Here's a list of 67 potential airdrops and some farming tips for the new folks: 2/14

First, make sure your wallets aren't linked if you're going to farm on mulitple wallets.

On Coinbase if you go to accounts.coinbase[dot]com/profile/crypto-addresses you can manually create a new Ethereum address each time you withdraw Image
Nov 6, 2023 4 tweets 2 min read
Chainlink is trying to do waaay to much on the product side and keeps missing the mark.

Initial oracles made sense but:

-CCIP slower and higher cost than LayerZero, Synapse and others [so far]
-Data Streams cost structure is insane compared to Pyth.
-Automation is ok-ish but OZ defender is better, and Alchemy has decent solutions starting up around this.
-VRF, PoR and Functions are good, but, not used a lot.

Streams also took them forever and kept getting pushed back - and I have to imagine the divided engineering focus was part of it.

Hopefully with renewed token value, and some products starting to get over the line they can re-prioritize focus, as market data is a multi-multi-billion dollar opportunity and from an integrator standpoint they are fumbling the bag.

Which is a shame as I think they are one of the most important operators in the space, and a great example of Ethereum alignment in a defi protocol. Would love to see L2 oracles move to a batch pusher model so easier to update large amounts of oracles and get more data feeds.

Would like to see realistic pricing for their datastreams (although I still think the Pyth signature verification model has an edge here right now)

Would also love confidence bands/liquidity depth data added to oracles from onchain sources, so defi can make realistic predictions about liquidations - offchain depth means us trusting liquidators executing at a certain price without depth data.
Oct 15, 2023 12 tweets 3 min read
1/12

Here’s my last piece of Binance FUD because I think I’ve convinced just about everyone I can.

But, if you are still on the fence or even just open minded, I’d like you to consider three statements that even my critics will agree with: 2/12

1) We all agree Justin Sun is a sketchbag & TUSD is a shitcoin he controls.

2) We all agree that Binance has taken varying levels of sanctions risk.

3) We all agree Binance US, refuses to properly comply with US courts on proving asset custody.
Sep 27, 2023 25 tweets 9 min read
1/25

The past few weeks I've been suggesting Binance had OFAC violations and yesterday called out that Binance was laundering Russian money.

Today they announce they are selling their Russian business to Commex.

The one problem, is Commex doesn't really exist... 2/25

Until the early 2000s, Commex was a commerce credit card company.

But as you can see from the name server history on the domain, it was available for purchase on uniregistrymarket (GoDaddy) and only updated on the 21st of this month.
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Sep 18, 2023 6 tweets 3 min read
1/6

Been playing around with a tradingview script on comparative volume. Original is by Ekliptor and used for watching different pairs, but I realized its really good for identifying volume anomalies both positive and negative.
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2/6

Here's a great example from today, comparing Coinbase:BTC/USD to Binance:BTC/TUSD

Right as we get a new tick that is about to go red and break the average line, a bid slams in from the Binance pair pushing the tick green and having the TUSD pair leading. Image
Sep 18, 2023 6 tweets 2 min read
1/6

SEC seeks court order for inspection of Binance US.

Now expressly calling out that Ceffu is indeed a Binance related entity and that Binance US has been misleading the court. Image 2/6

The SEC calls out that this violates the consent decree that required new wallets expressly away from Binance International control/access, but interesting specifically notes this is important as Binance has "controlled" BAM for it's "own unlawful purposes" Image
Sep 12, 2023 20 tweets 3 min read
1/

Live thread on Gensler hearing:

(Skipping intros cause, same shit, different day) 2/

Although will note Gensler is saying comment period on rule making takes 12-24 months after public feedback.

Which is wild cause he was also telling courts it can take *many* *many* years to make rule making when asked about crypto -.-
Aug 25, 2023 5 tweets 1 min read
1/4

"Operators of websites that interact with wallets"

Given that a wallet seems to be defined as the actual blockchain account rather than a software, that means that this would find *everything* including Etherscan and tax software to be "brokers"? 2/4

This isn't just heinous overreach.

This is a failure to fundamentally understand the technology.

It's like requiring every browser company to get a postmaster license because they deal with email...
Aug 23, 2023 17 tweets 4 min read
1/17

No, Coinbase is not violating federal laws.

This claim from ChainArgos is a bad faith legal argument, and poor technical knowledge, to try and sell more onchain risk monitoring/reporting software to L2s even if they don't need it. 2/17

It comes down to either a bad-faith interpretation, or a poor technical understanding of what "custody" means in terms of the blockchain, or what an L2 actually is.

So let's break it down as to why Coinbase is *NOT* breaking any laws here.
Aug 14, 2023 10 tweets 2 min read
3/12

Either:

A) The chain's design is susceptible to Sybil attacks.

or

B) The chain's design is not susceptible to Sybil attacks. 4/12

If the system *IS* susceptible to being farmed, sophisticated actors will farm it and tokens will become overly concentrated.

But, having accessible bots that retail users can use to farm as well, will tip this scale back to slightly more egalitarian.
Aug 7, 2023 7 tweets 2 min read
1/7

Even with banks open in Asia and Europe and US coming online, USDT peg is off by the deepest sustained amount since the FTX fall out.

Makes up 70% of Curve 3Pool and has $1M USDC vs $80M USDT in Uniswap 0.01% pool.

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2/7

Selling pressure once again coming in from the Binance funded accounts (bots?) that we saw 2 days ago.

Plus addresses like this which are pulling USDT off of Huobi and Kraken to dump at scale:
0x9fA746DA25E46F82079Db7d7CAC9E77a8747cd2b