🟠 Do Kwon Plays Hide And Seek

TLDR inside TLDR: Faketoshi sues the blockchain, Twitter is dying and Do Kwon plays hide and seek

GM.

It’s Arsen, bringing you the 5th edition of TLDR - the newsletter that keeps you informed AND entertained.

First off, happy Sunday to 573 of you reading today.

As always, this will be a short one.

I have a rule: if the newsletter takes over 5 minutes to read, it’s too long and needs to be trimmed.

Bitcoin is scarce, and so is your time.

Alright, let’s get into it.

Here’s what I got for you this week:

• Two More Bitcoin Maintainers Quit

• Twitter Is Dying A Slow Death

• Do Kwon Playing Extreme Hide Snd Seek

Estimated read time: 4 minutes and 16 seconds

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BITCOIN CORE LEFT WITH ONLY 4 MAINTAINERS

We’re all plebs here.

We all contribute to bitcoin in one way or another. It’s called the division of labor.

Some of us:

• Create educational videos on YouTube

• Orangepill local politicians

• Dunk on central bankers on Twitter

• Put bitcoin stickers on random cars’ windshields (don’t do this)

And others are Bitcoin Core maintainers.

No, those guys are not important - they just maintain the very foundation of the bitcoin economy.

And recently, two long-serving Bitcoin Core maintainers, Marco Falke and Wladimir van der Laan, have stepped down.

Both stepped down voluntarily. Wladimir was the lead maintainer for over nine years, and Marco was the quality assurance and testing maintainer for seven years.

Unfortunately, bitcoin maintainers quitting is becoming a rule and not an exception.

Five have resigned in the last 18 months.

Here are their reasons:

1. December 2021: Samuel Dobson leaves to finish his PhD

2. October 2021: Jonas Schelli leaves, citing stress and legal risk for developers

3. July 2022: Pieter Wuille leaves for unknown reasons

4. February 2023: Wladimir Van der Laan leaves due to burnout and social media harassment

5. February 2023: Marco Falke leaves, citing that being a maintainer was “not a good fit”

Do you notice a pattern?

Many of them openly say that stress because of online harassment is why they’re stepping down.

I cannot say for sure, but my intuition says this is because of harassment by Craig Wright, AKA faketoshi and his minions.

Not convinced?

Here’s a casual lawsuit he dropped last year where he sued half of the Bitcoin Core development team. In one lawsuit

Take a look at the list below - our boys Marco, Pieter Wladimir, Samuel, and Jonas are all on it…

TLDR: Craig tries to sue the blockchain

I don’t know what Craig is smoking, but I want some too.

Anyhow, with Marco departing, bitcoin’s development will be steered by four remaining maintainers:

• Hennadii Stepanov

• Andrew Chow

• Michael Ford

• Gloria Zhao

Wladimir, Marco - I know you’re reading this.

Thank you for your service.🫡

Developing on bitcoin is often a thankless job, and I’d like to thank you from the bottom of my heart - for everything you’ve done for bitcoin.

I wish you all the best in whatever you choose to focus on.

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TWITTER INTRODUCES A SHITCOIN

We both know: you’re addicted to Bitcoin Twitter.

The ‘GM’ tweets, the dank memes, Yellow’s daily ‘DON'T STOP BELIEVIN' HODL ON TO THAT FEELIN' spaces…

It has a special place in your heart. Me too man, me too.

We also both know that Twitter is dying a slow death.

And just when you thought Twitter couldn’t get any worse, they get their biggest brain fart yet.

While Nostr adds lightning tips (zaps), Twitter launches its own shitcoin. It’s called ‘Twitter coins’.

Yes, very original.

A user @Tree_of_Alpha was one of the select few who got early access to…Twitter coins.

When I was little, I used to play a lot of Mario Cart.

Starting the race with good stats was crucial, which meant selecting the right character, car, wheels, etc.

Let’s take a look at bitcoin vs. Twitter coins stats, Mario Cart-style:

Trustless

Bitcoin: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twitter coins: ⭐

Censorship resistance

Bitcoin: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twitter coins: ⭐

Scarcity

Bitcoin: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twitter coins: ⭐

Memeability:

Bitcoin: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Twitter coins: ⭐⭐⭐

I don’t know, guys. It seems like a close tie.

Jokes aside, Twitter is already dead. It’s just not priced in yet.

And this is just a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

Anyways, are you on Nostr already?

Give your boy a follow (npub1txz2gr0ug5ggr3qemmdxee5g2589dy47s663dt6g37pvkes9ke9ssqzu0c).

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DO KWON IS HIDING FROM THE SEC

An SEC complaint has been filed against Luna’s Do Kwon.

Grab your popcorn. There are some juicy details involved.

The SEC charged Kwon and his company, Terraform Labs, with fraud over misleading investors about his algorithmic stablecoin.

As it turns out, it wasn’t stable. Despite Kwon’s promises about it increasing in value, it crashed, causing a crypto contagion.

I looked into all the details surrounding Do Kwon, so you don’t have to.

Here’s what I found out:

• Kwon is charged with selling unregistered securities and unregistered security based-swaps

• The ponzi amounts to ~$40B in losses (lightweight baby!)

• Kwon and Terraform worked with an unnamed US trading firm (spoiler, it’s these guys) that bought a ton of Luna at an over 50% discount when its peg fell 10 cents in May 2021. The trading firm made ~$1.28M in the deal

• Kwon and Terraform boasted that a Korean payments app ‘Chai’ was using Terraform’s blockchain for payments. Except it wasn't. It turns out Kwon replicated the app’s transactions onto its blockchain to make it seem like it had adoption

• Kwon transferred 10,000 bitcoin from Terraform wallets to a cold wallet and then moved the funds to a Swiss bank in May 2022. Over $100M in fiat has been withdrawn from that bank since then

As it turns out, doing stupid and dishonest stuff was a bad strategy, as the Korean-Amercan crypto fraudster is now chased by the SEC.

Kwon’s response?

*disappears*

Kwon is nowhere to be seen. Some reports say he is hiding in Serbia, but nobody knows for sure.

Turns out Kwon is almost as good at playing hide and seek as he is at scamming people.

He also claims he was unaware of these things happening at Terraform Labs.

Do Kwon? More like ‘Don’t Know’

Do, I know you’re reading this: there’s nowhere to go.

Big Daddy Gensler is coming for you.

I’m happy we have Gary and SEC to protect us!

And remember, kids: there is no such thing as a ‘stablecoin’.

Sats are the only stablecoin.

1 sat = 1 sat.

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Rabbit Hole Reads

• The SEC sues an NBA Legend. Paul Pierce was sued for promoting a crypto token and has to pay $1.4M to settle the charges

• Say no to CBDC. Congressman Tom Emmer introduces anti-CBDC bill

• Bad AI, bad! A blockchain security firm found dozens of pump-and-dump schemes made with of AI bots like ChatGPT

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This week in a meme

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Job of the week

Robert Breedlove is looking for a producer for his “What is Money” Show, which has exploded in popularity in the last few years.

When it comes to picking guests for the show, Rob does not miss.

Getting paid for creating bitcoin content? Sign me up!

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From the archive

First they laugh, then they join you.

And then we win.

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Shoutouts

Shoutout to @jb55 (Damus) and Martti Malmi (Iris) for building user-friendly Nostrs clients. Heroes.

Also, shoutout to the whole Relai team. We have big announcements on the way.

Yes, I just gave a shoutout to myself. Fight me.

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That’s it for this one.

I know this week was shitcoin-heavy. But it’s important to highlight the dark side of the cRypTo industry.

I’d like to hear what you think of this week’s edition.

Let me know in the comment section below or by responding to this email.

See you next Sunday,

Arsen

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