It was surreal to be back in court for Do Kwon's trial, just a few floors from where SBF was convicted

I was the first to interview Do after Terra's collapse, and went to SBF's home right before his trial. Here's why these cases are both extremely different and eerily similar 🧵 For starters, this is a civil fraud case against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs. There is no jail time associated with this ruling (though the DOJ was lingering around the courtroom today)

At the heart of the case is exactly what we explored in our interview — Failure vs. Fraud

NEW: Do Kwon / Terra vs. SEC off to a hot start in Manhattan court today

We already got a jury selected along with opening statements from both the SEC and defense teams (plus’s some pretty hilarious material from Judge Rakoff)

Here’s everything from Day 1 🧵 It’s my first time back at the courthouse since SBF’s trial, and this one is way less crowded

Showed up late cause I was coming straight from Newark, but still got a seat.

Most obvious difference: all suits in the courtroom. Terra and the SEC came to play for the civil trial!

People always ask me why I get so excited about Web3.

The answer is that it enables more intimate and better user experiences that have been destroyed by terrible Web2 models that misalign incentives

Let me use a simple example in this thread: Dating Apps 🧵🩷





First off, start by liking and bookmarking this thread so you have something to come back to whenever someone else asks you why Web3 is better 😄

Alright, let's get into why the old Web2 model for tech has been resulting in terrible user experiences — starting with Hinge

The Winklevoss Twins' crypto platform Gemini is the latest player to get hit in the crypto collapse

But they were seen as one of *the good* crypto platforms — above board, regulated, and backed 1:1. So how did even they run into problems? A mini thread 🧵 First off, as we've seen this year — centralized crypto lenders have basically been operating as unregulated banks: promising interest rates 140x-higher than traditional banks, taking in customer deposits, and loaning them out

Even Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said that

Most NFT mints optimize to sell out as quickly as possible, or make a lot of money. But if NFTs are all about "community" around a shared goal you'd think fostering the *right* community would be a higher priority

Here's one decentralized approach to put community first 🧵thread 2/ First thing first: Identify a genuine shared goal that isn’t “number go up.”

With precious few exceptions, the NFT market is currently driven by speculation. People will always want to make money. That’s never going to change.

But that creates a destructive paradox

Crypto project @terra_money ( $LUNA ) has surged 50% in the last week to hit a new all-time high even with bitcoin down 5%

Its algorithmically-backed stablecoin $UST has become the largest of its kind and keeps picking up Web3 adoption as THE DeFi dollar

Why that is huge ⬇️ 1/X A "DeFi dollar" has been the elusive holy grail of crypto. How do you make a stablecoin stay at $1?

The largest stablecoins (Tether and USDC) are backed by cash. But what if regulators seize those accounts? What if a company lies about its holdings? 2/X

If you're bullish on ethereum because of the planned network upgrades to burn ETH in transactions, you should really be paying attention to $LUNA and what @terra_money is doing

It's the same idea on an entirely different scale 🔥🔥 1/X Previously, any time someone converted $LUNA into Terra's algorithmically backed stablecoin UST, a portion of $LUNA would stack up in a community pool in a process called "seignorage."

Now, after Terra's Columbus-5 upgrade, $LUNA is just being burned 2/X

CRYPTO RISKS, A THREAD:
You can love bitcoin’s technology, you can love the way #crypto is decentralizing finance, but the system being built around it can still fall victim to greed or error that present new risks. Let's dig into a big one 1/X The Federal Reserve has increasingly called out risks tied to so-called stablecoins, or cryptocurrencies that are built to stay pegged to the dollar ($1)

Stablecoin issuers can hold an equivalent total of dollars or other cash-like assets to back them, so what's so risky? 2/X

Robinhood is not the only brokerage that limited buys on GameStop this week, so why is it catching all the heat?

Maybe because @stoolpresidente & others were quick to spread a theory that hedge funds must have forced the move? Or, Robinhood acted alone

A thread on facts 1/X In our 20-minute interview with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev I tried to push for answers tied to their decision in 2018 to internalize a boring but important part of users' trades to boost revenue

Their decision came with a tradeoff: A spike in volatility could be very, very bad 2/X

Robinhood blocked trading on GameStop and AMC so people are now turning to trade on Webull, a Chinese-owned trading platform

The "free market" is so "free" we are turning to China NEW: The CEO of Webull tell us the decision to join Robinhood in restricting AMC and GameStop trades came from soaring costs to settle its users trades:

"It wasn't our choice ... this has to do with settlement mechanics in the market."

Indiana just opted to fully reopen in a Stage 5 return to normalcy

Stage 5 dictates:

• Restaurants, bars, and nightclubs may operate
at FULL capacity
• Conventions, sports events, fairs, festivals and like events may resume Indiana's positivity rate at last clip was 3.9%.

Keep in mind that New York has held under 1% for more than a month and has STILL not yet allowed indoor dining in NYC to resume (resumes September 30)

Even Florida, with a similar 5% positivity rate, kept bars at 50% occupancy

Grading the opening statements from Zuck, Bezos, Cook and Pichai in today's House antitrust hearing, a thread: Jeff Bezos is appearing before Congress for the first time and his prepared statement is making up for lost time clocking in at an amazing 8 pages

-1 for violating Strunk & White’s 17th rule. Brevity.

BREAKING: Final 880-page text of the Senate's $2 trillion bill H.R. 748 (CARES Act) as the vote heads to the floor

assets.documentcloud.org/documents/2005… First up, the vote on the so-called Sasse amendment to address concerns that some Americans would be getting paid more in unemployment benefits to not work than to work

New York City is shutting down, a thread on #coronavirus

At 8pm all bars/restaurants are ordered to close for takeout only

Some bars, like East Village’s Crocodile Lounge are using that as an incentive to get drink now

ALL BEERS MUST GO! 1/n 7-Eleven remains open in NYC, and it wants you to know it has hand sanitizer to battle #coronavirus

Unfortunately, it also has weenies rotating in the open air 2/n

Getting mad Windows '95 launch party vibes from @elonmusk at the Tesla factory launch party in China @elonmusk I mean the similarities are striking 😂

The world’s most expensive #Thanksgiving dinner is being served at New York’s Old Homestead Steakhouse for $181,000

I went to try it, a thread and an invitation to AMA 😂

yhoo.it/2QU5zSG First off, the most noticeable thing is the gold-painted, gold-dusted, and gold-flaked $145-per-pound, free-range turkey.

The dinner comes with two of them ($7,800) seasoned in special imported and exotic Middle East spices ($4,000)

The #YangGang has gotten Andrew Yang's fight with MSNBC to #TellTheTruthMSNBC trending- but as I've said, the #MATH backs his claim:

Yang's speaking time trailed the avg. by the biggest margin in debates moderated by MSNBC (1 & 5)

1: -4.97 mins
2: -3.51
3: -4.7
4: -2.8
5: -5.9 As I pointed out before, the stats become even more egregious when you correct for the expected airtime given a candidate's pre-debate polling position

The red line indicates the expected airtime given polling position. Yang trailed considerably in #TellTheTruthMSNBC's Debate 5

Only at the Harvard Yale game:

A group of Harvard and Yale students stormed the field to protest climate change The Game is now officially delayed

The movement for both universities to divest from fossil fuels has been underway for at least the last 8 years.

Now, it’s delaying the biggest collegiate sporting event of the year

#TheGame #HarvardYale

Marijuana companies are shockingly less diverse than the overall Fortune 100

At the same time that a black man in the US is 4x as likely to be arrested for marijuana posession than a white man, only 2 out of the 65 top board members are minorities...

yhoo.it/2HbiPNd ...At the same time that Hispanics account for nearly 60% of all federal marijuana sentences, but not a single seat in the board room

You have to wonder how it's impacting the discussion around marijuana legalization and how revenues are to be shared w/ communities of color

Thanks to CNN's fun facts ahead of the #DemDebate I learned that Bill De Blasio changed his name twice.

First, he was Warren Wilhelm Jr. and then he was Warren de Blasio-Wilhelm.

Yet, as of the last Quinnipiac poll, all three versions of DeBlasio are tied with 0% of the vote. Wait, why was Cory Booker founding Jewish student groups if he's a Baptist?

More importantly, why was he founding Jewish student groups at Yale Law?
#DemDebate

We need to talk about Maxim Dadashev, the 28-year-old boxer who died today due to injuries he sustained in Friday's Top Rank fight - not only because his death was unnecessary but because before it, the ESPN crew applauded this as the way a fight is "supposed" to be handled 1/9 As others who watched the fight including @maxkellerman will tell you, nothing about the fight stood out.

No knockdowns. No crazy punches.

But things started to turn in the 11th round of the fight scheduled for 12 when Dadashev seemed unable to avoid Subriel Matias' punches 2/9