It’s All About Crypto Blog
Can TON Pay Turn Telegram into a Crypto Service?
This is a story about how Apple has been keeping cryptocurrencies at arm’s length for more than a decade - and why TON Foundation’s new initiative is unlikely to change that overnight. Screenshot of a 2014 petition demanding the return of Bitcoin wallets to the iPhone This week, TON Foundation announced the launch of a new software platform for...
Did FTX Accidentally Do Investors a Favor?
Today, the FTX bankruptcy estate recorded another batch of approved customer claims. As you may know, FTX clients are being repaid in U.S. dollars, based on the market prices of their crypto holdings at the time the company filed for bankruptcy in November 2022. And that gave me a slightly crazy idea: what if keeping crypto on FTX actually turned out to...
Crypto Is Not a Business Model
According to Coinrank, the largest companies that were publicly and demonstratively buying up crypto throughout last year are now sitting on unrealized losses - regardless of which cryptocurrency they chose. The only difference is the size of the loss in percentage terms. I think these numbers are important for everyone to see. Several times last year I wrote that if...
Bitcoin Privacy: What Is Actually Missing?
Barry Silbert has said that 5–10% of capital currently held in Bitcoin could flow into privacy-focused cryptocurrencies over the next few years. Statements like this always leave me puzzled. They seem to imply that Bitcoin has unresolved privacy issues. It is not true. Bitcoin does not suffer from some inherent, unfixable privacy flaw. People who work closely with Bitcoin...
Before You Buy Crypto, Do This
In a recent interview, Changpeng Zhao shared a telling story: it took him about six months of intensive study to truly understand Bitcoin - and that was with his technical background and experience building trading systems. Once he grasped what Bitcoin really was, he saw it as a technology on the scale of the internet itself. He sold his apartment and invested the...
LINK Futures on CME: A Milestone or a Warning Sign?
Yesterday, CME Group launched LINK futures trading on its exchange. The official Chainlink account on X called it a major milestone - and that is easy to understand. We are talking about the worlds largest derivatives exchange, regulated by the CFTC. But this immediately reminded me of how Bitcoin went through the same milestone back in 2017. At the time, the entire crypto community celebrated...
A Bet on HYPE, Not on Decentralization
Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital - an investment firm known for bold bets (like an early investment in Solana) and deep analysis - published a critique of the Hyperliquid exchange today. He called out a wide range of issues, from frankly odd ones (such as the founder's relationship with his home country) to very serious concerns like...
Who Will Replace Bitcoin at the Top
We are used to seeing Bitcoin at the very top of the cryptocurrency rankings by market capitalization. It often feels as if that position is secured forever. But I am almost certain that this will change very soon. Someone else will take that spot. Let me explain why. A TECTONIC SHIFT MANY ARE UNDERESTIMATING In the US, Depository Trust...
The Hidden Cost of Trusting CEXes With Your Bitcoin
Here is the ending of yesterday's story about the extra bitcoins mistakenly credited to Bithumb users. If you missed the beginning, read my post from yesterday: Or here is the shortest possible recap: * due to an error, the exchange "drew" 2,000 nonexistent BTC on the balances of hundreds of users; * some of those users immediately sold these bitcoins on the spot market...
Fake Bitcoin, Real Obligations: What Really Happened on Bithumb
Interesting news is coming out of the Bithumb exchange. 1. First, the Bitcoin price there drops about 10% below the market average. And given that the market-wide price was already unusually low, Bithumb's rate looked unbelievably attractive for buyers. 2. Then definalist reports that the reason was a mistakenly credited deposit of 2,000 BTC to one of the exchange's users, which the...
