1/ On November 5th, 2023, I posted my longest and most widely read Twitter thread (47 tweets/2m+ views) explaining the reasons behind the collapse of Genesis, one of the crown jewels of Barry Silbert's crypto empire, in 2022. There has been a major development in this story.🧵 2/ At the time I posted the thread, I had to piece together the story from publicly available facts (such as the @NewYorkStateAG lawsuit against @DCGco and @BarrySilbert), but many of the details, especially what was happening behind the scenes, remained a mystery.

The media is hyperventilating about Bitcoin's correction and many are suggesting the top may be in (it is not). This correction is fairly run-of-the-mill when you consider the last two years.

Let me explain... 🧵 Prior to SEC capitulation, the market began pricing in an increased likelihood of a Bitcoin ETF approval and went on a tear from November, 2023 into March, 2024, with Bitcoin's price more than doubling and tagging its prior all time high (69k)

1/ The Effect of the Halving

Bitcoins are produced by a competitive process known as mining that requires the expenditure of computational energy. 2/ The Bitcoin production schedule is predetermined by its protocol and, by design, approximately every 10 minutes a new block is mined by a miner (a computer participating on the Bitcoin network).

On March 6th, @DCGco tweeted a response to the @NewYorkStateAG's lawsuit alleging fraud by DCG, @BarrySilbert and @michaelmoro. It was full of corporate boilerplate and mincing of words, instead of addressing the substantive and detailed suit in plain language. 🧵👇 So I want to give @BarrySilbert the opportunity to publicly respond to some of the questions that the 200,000+ victims of the Genesis want answered.

7 questions for Barry Silbert:

1/ A tale of two bankruptcies, separated by a decade, and the two men who caused them. One of them with a conscience, and the other without one (@barrysilbert).

Time for a thread 🧵

2/ In early 2014, Japan-based MtGox filed for bankruptcy in Japan after the company discovered that it had lost almost 850,000 bitcoins in a long-running hack of its website. It later found almost 200,000 bitcoins in an old cold-wallet.

1/ The reason for #Bitcoin's recent drop in price, despite the ETF floodgates being opened, is directly related to GBTC redemptions by bankruptcy estates such as FTX.

And the reason GBTC is held by so many companies in bankruptcy is directly tied to the fraud by @BarrySilbert 2/ Despite many conflicts of interest @BarrySilbert encouraged lending to companies performing the ill-conceived GBTC arb trade because this increased the assets under management at his portfolio company Grayscale.

1/ There was a much more important fraud than SBF's embezzlement that took place in 2022. It was a fraud (allegedly) perpetrated by one of the oldest companies in the space, @DCGco and its CEO, @BarrySilbert.

Time for a thread 👇 2/ To fully understand the fraud and its repercussions we have to go back in time to 2013 when Barry Silbert started @Grayscale which offered the first fund that enabled investors to purchase #Bitcoin from their brokerage accounts.

1/ Regulatory certainty and guidance are crucial for any industry to thrive, especially a nascent one. Yet US regulatory bodies have shirked their duty providing clarity to the companies in the #Bitcoin space. This includes the SEC, CFTC, FinCEN and the IRS. 2/ Instead of providing clarity, regulatory bodies have been content to allow the industry to operate in a grey area muddied by uncertainty and risk of regulatory action. Instead of providing clear rules regulators swoop in and prosecute, carving out small pockets of regulation

1/ .@lexfridman I'm a fan of your podcast, especially episodes where you've interviewed @elonmusk but in your latest interview you asked him to explain why he prefers Dogecoin to #Bitcoin and there are serious errors in his answer you didn't challenge him on 👇🧵 2/ Elon: "it has a much higher transaction volume capability than #Bitcoin"

My experiment in creating a #Bitcoin NFT, thread 👇 I launched my book The Bullish Case for #Bitcoin a few months ago and instead of using a publisher, I decided to self-publish.

The book launched on Kickstarter, a website that allows entrepreneurs to fund their projects to completion and backers to be rewarded for their support.

"There is but one means available to improve the material conditions of mankind: to accelerate the growth of capital accumulated as against the growth in population. "The greater the amount of capital invested per head of the worker, the more and better goods can be produced and consumed.

Good news, friends: The hardcovers for The Bullish Case for #Bitcoin just rolled up on a truck. I will endeavor to have them shipped out to my Kickstarter backers over the next week or so (signed copies may take slightly longer).

Thank you so much for supporting my book launch!

1/ In November 1992, in an English village called Hoxne, a villager searching for a lost hammer with a metal detector discovered a hoard of almost 15,000 gold coins that had been buried during late antiquity when the Roman empire was beginning to crumble in Britain. 👇 2/ The amazing thing about this hoard of gold coins is that it had maintained its purchasing power for over 1,500 years (accounting for only its bullion value, not its historical value).

1/ Over the years, the New York Times (aka Mouth of Sauron) has produced some fairly poor takes on #Bitcoin. But the one published today by @BCAppelbaum (who's on their editorial board 🤦‍♂️) may be the most embarrassing yet.

nytimes.com/2021/09/14/opi… 2/ It is so rife with misunderstandings and errors (both technical and economic) that one is left with the impression that the NYT isn't capable of the most basic reporting of facts on #Bitcoin. Quelle surprise.

1/ Central Bank Digital Currencies are a threat to human freedom and should be vigorously opposed (it is no surprise that it is China that is pioneering their use). 2/ While the current fiat system is antiquated and unjust, it provides at least one basic protection for human freedom: the ability to default to cash. Cash is anonymous and provides a level of financial privacy that allows us to live outside of a surveillance state.

I'm very excited to announce that The Bullish Case for Bitcoin is now available for general sale! You can find a copy on Amazon for $21 (naturally).

If you've found my writing useful in the past I would truly appreciate a positive review for the book on Amazon.

🙏♥️🚀 I will endeavor to have the Kindle edition available on Amazon by the end of this week.

1/ Many members of the US Congress do not seem to recognize the direction of the political winds. There are over 20 million Americans with a financial stake in the success of the nascent industry being built around #Bitcoin. 10 years ago there were almost zero such people. 2/ The infrastructure bill was crafted in the hope of shearing this new economy to finance a ballooning budget proposed by the Biden administration. Instead the language of the bill would skin the industry.

You may shear a sheep many times, but skin him only once.

1/ While the resumption of #Bitcoin's bull market is a cause for optimism, anyone who cares about Bitcoin should be aware that its adversaries are attempting a major attack on the Bitcoin ecosystem as you read this.

Thread 👇 2/ President Biden's infrastructure bill has had new provisions added that specifically target industry participants with onerous new legislation.

@jchervinsky has a great summary here:

https://twitter.com/jchervinsky/status/1421150344051048451

Watching @Elon chat with @jack, @moneyball and @CathieDWood and the question about whether #bitcoin should scale at the base layer came up (Elon often brings this up). I cover this in great detail in my book The Bullish case for Bitcoin (I can send you a copy, Elon). Thread.👇 This is NOT about physics. It's about *credibility*. If it were possible to modify the base layer easily it would completely destroy the credibility of the inflation schedule.

Decentralization and the difficulty of changing Bitcoin is our prophylactic against inflation.

1/ While there are no a priori rules for the path a monetary good will take as it is monetized, a curious pattern has emerged during the relatively brief history of Bitcoin's monetization.

Thread 👇 2/ Bitcoin's price appears to follow a fractal pattern of increasing magnitude, where each iteration of the fractal matches the classic shape of a Gartner hype cycle

On the eve of Coinbase's blockbuster direct listing (importantly it is NOT an IPO, meaning employees and insiders can sell their shares immediately) many are speculating that interest in #Coinbase will trigger a fresh wave up in #Bitcoin's bull market. Will it?

A thread 👇 With Coinbase reporting Q1 revenues of 1.8B with huge margins (~800m in profit) it is likely that Coinbase will be valued in the ballpark of 100 billion dollars when they become public. The question is, will this huge liquidity event transfer over to #Bitcoin?