The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day |
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Welcome to The Node! This is Marc Hochstein to take you through the latest crypto news. In today's news: Bitcoin is up 40% year-to-date, but gold wins on risk-adjusted returns; Polymarket bettors change their minds about whom tonight's HBO documentary will finger as Satoshi; UN agency recommends criminalization of unlicensed crypto businesses in Southeast Asia; and a curious case of 1.35 million missing Solana tokens. The Takeaway: Who really cares who Satoshi is? I don't. I explained why seven years ago, but with all the hype about that HBO documentary, the matter bears revisiting.👇 |
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'Screwing With the Prediction Markets' |
The odds of the late Len Sassaman being revealed as the elusive pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, in an HBO documentary slumped to 14% after Sassaman's widow, Meredith L. Patterson, said he was not and that the filmmakers had not approached her when making the documentary. A Polymarket contract asking bettors whom the documentary would name saw the odds on Sassaman, who died in 2011, as high as 55% over the weekend. They dropped sharply after DLNews published an interview with Patterson. The program will be screened at 02:00 UTC on Wednesday (9 p.m. Tuesday ET). “I kind of wonder whether I’m screwing with the prediction markets by answering honestly when people ask me questions, but long story short, f*ck em,” Patterson told DL News. |
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OKX is a technology company with a mission to organize the world's blockchains and make them more accessible and useful. We want to create a future that makes our world more efficient, transparent and connected. OKX began as a crypto exchange giving millions of people access to trading and over time became among the largest platforms in the world. In recent years, we have developed one of the most connected onchain wallets used by millions to access decentralized applications (dApps). OKX is trusted by hundreds of large institutions seeking access to crypto markets on a reliable platform that seamlessly connects with global banking and payments. Our most well-known products include: OKX Exchange, OKX Wallet, OKX Explorer, OKX OS, OKX Ventures and OKX Institutional. To learn more about OKX, download our app or visit: okx.com |
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The Curious Case of 1.35M Missing SOL |
A brokerage firm has a few key jobs. One involves holding assets for clients and keeping track of who owns what. FalconX, a cryptocurrency prime brokerage, apparently failed to do that for years with a pile of 1.35 million solana (SOL) tokens, now worth about $190 million, that it'd had in its possession since 2021. Then, Binance, the largest crypto exchange and a key liquidity partner of FalconX, recently came forward as the rightful owner and asked for its SOL back. It's unclear exactly how FalconX was unable to keep track of the crypto and how Binance itself seems to have lost track of the money for years. But the situation raises questions about accounting systems and controls. |
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All That Jitters Is Not Gold |
Bitcoin (BTC) has surged over 40% this year, outshining major equity indices, fixed-income securities, gold and even oil, which recently rose on the back of geopolitical tensions. However, according to data tracked by Goldman Sachs, its stellar performance in absolute terms is not sufficient to compensate for its volatility. Bitcoin's year-to-date return to volatility ratio is under 2%, significantly lower than gold's industry-leading risk-adjusted return of around 3%. The ratio gauges the return an investment generates per unit of risk/volatility. The yellow metal has gained 28% in absolute terms. Ethereum's native token ether, Japan's TOPIX index, and the S&P GSCI Energy Index are the only non-fixed income growth-sensitive investments with return to volatility ratios lower than bitcoin, the chart from Goldman's Oct. 7 note titled "Oil on the boil" shows. |
UN Agency on Unlicensed VASPs: Book 'Em |
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime called on Southeast Asian nations to make operating a money service business or virtual asset service provider (VASP) without a license a criminal offense. Some VASPs – including those with links to known criminals – are facilitating transactions for fraud outfits and high-risk gambling sites, the agency said in a report published Monday. One unidentified entity engaged in “at least hundreds of millions of dollars” in transactions with criminal operations, according to the report. Among them were groups connected to or directly involved in large-scale drug trafficking, human trafficking, cybercrime and child sexual abuse material, as well as entities sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) and wallets linked to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. “It is more critical than ever for governments to recognize the severity, scale and reach of this truly global threat, and to prioritize solutions that address the rapidly evolving criminal ecosystem in the region,” Masood Karimipour, UNODC's regional representative, said in a statement. |
The Takeaway: Who's Satoshi? I Don't Care |
The following is excerpted from a piece I wrote in 2017, which I mostly stand by. In retrospect, I would add two caveats. First, there are rare cases when the identity of a protocol's creator is a matter of a public interest, namely when that person is deceiving investors. It's fair to say this was not the case with Bitcoin. Second, Satoshi's identity matters insofar as he (or she or they) holds a significant amount of BTC, and if he (or she or they) were to dump his (or her or their) coins on the market, the price would tank. Even in that scenario, I don't believe bitcoin would go to zero. – M.H. For all we know, the first cave-dweller to rub two sticks together was a misogynist. Or maybe just a mean person. Even if so, fire is still useful for cooking and warmth. To use more concrete examples, Richard Wagner and Henry Ford were nasty anti-Semites. But we can still appreciate the beauty of the Ring Cycle and the efficiency of the assembly line. In other words, the identity or character of the creator has little, if any, bearing on the value of the creation. That's why the mainstream media's obsession with unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of bitcoin, was so silly. We've seen what bitcoin does, we know how it works, the code is public. The focus on its author would be laughable if it weren't also destructive. Quite apart from doxxing poor old Dorian Nakamoto and rewarding Craig Wright with the limelight, these circuses distracted public attention from the much more interesting questions about money and society raised by Satoshi's work and by the projects it inspired. Questions like: Why did it still take days to transfer money between bank accounts when an unknown geek had demonstrated that value could be zapped across the globe in minutes? Could capital controls still work in the age of the internet (if they ever did) – and if not, is that really a bad thing? And what do you mean, I don't actually own the stocks in my portfolio? But far too many people in my profession are less interested in engaging with big ideas than in talking about other people. As President Trump would say: Sad! Yet, this is one more way bitcoin opens up new vistas. When you spend time exploring the rabbit hole of cryptocurrency, it inevitably gets you thinking about identity – when it's important, when it isn't and why. To be sure, there are times when knowing someone's identity is helpful, even critical. Businesses often need to know something about their customers to guard against fraud or assess credit risk, for example. But there are other times when identity can serve to cloud people's judgment. Read the rest and a more recent piece on the topic by Galaxy Digital's Alex Thorn. |
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A message from EnigmaFund |
Is UNA Hope for LUNA and UST Victims' Financial Recovery? What do a venture capitalist, a tokenomics expert, a memecoin legend, an eCommerce pioneer and a top-tier CTO have in common? It may sound like the setup to a punchline, but the reality is far more serious. This diverse group of innovators has united with a shared mission: to build a groundbreaking protocol aimed at reviving and recapitalizing communities devastated by the collapse of projects like Luna and UST. For those who lost everything due to market upheavals or the manipulations of bad actors in the crypto world, hope is on the horizon. Continue reading here |
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No. 3 Disappears From the List in a Bull Run |
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