The Chopping Block: In ‘the First Crypto War,’ How Should the Money Be Spent?

Welcome to The Chopping Block! Crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Robert Leshner and Tarun Chitra chop it up about the latest news in the digital asset industry. In this episode, Laura stops by to talk about The Cryptopians! Show topics:

• how people have reacted to The Cryptopians 
• what Laura found out about Charles Hoskinson while researching The Cryptopians
• how web3 has been used in Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invasion
• how crypto donations are being used by Ukraine
• why concerns about Russia using crypto to evade sanctions are overblown
• why Haseeb believes there could be a significant spike in global inflation in the wake of Russia’s invasion into Ukraine
• why the disparity between private and public valuations of crypto protocols could be an issue now that Electric Capital, Bain Capital, and Sequoia are entering the crypto space
• why Robert believes Andre Cronje’s decision to quit crypto is a “rug pull”
• what effect Andre’s departure from crypto could have on Fantom
• why benchmarking blockchain performance and throughput is difficult 
• what happened to the Evmos “Rektdrop” and what this means for IBC blockchains

Hosts

• Haseeb Qureshi, managing partner at Dragonfly Capital
  • https://twitter.com/hosseeb
• Tom Schmidt, general partner at Dragonfly Capital
  • https://twitter.com/tomhschmidt
• Tarun Chitra, managing partner at Robot Ventures
  • https://twitter.com/tarunchitra 
• Robert Leshner, founder of Compound 
  • https://twitter.com/rleshner 

Episode Links

• The First Crypto War – sanctions, donations, airdrop
  • Binance won’t unilaterally freeze Russian accounts (amidst requests by Ukraine) https://www.reuters.com/technology/crypto-exchange-binance-says-it-wont-unilaterally-freeze-accounts-russia-2022-02-28/
  • Rube volumes spike https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/02/28/ruble-denominated-bitcoin-volumes-surges-to-9-month-highs/
  • Ukraine cancels airdrophttps://blockworks.co/ukraine-cancels-proposed-airdrop-after-receiving-record-donations/
  • Visa, Mastercard withdraw from Russia https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/03/05/visa-mastercard-join-paypal-in-suspending-russian-operations/
  • Singapore sanctions Russia https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapore-sanctions-russia-over-unprovoked-attack-ukraine-2022-03-05/
  • Coinbase blocks 25K wallets rinked to Russian “illicit activity” https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-07/coinbase-blocks-25-000-crypto-wallets-linked-to-russian-users
  • Over $40M donated to Ukraine in crypto https://dune.xyz/msilb7/Ukraine-Crypto-Donations
• New private funds
  • Bain Capital closes $560M fund https://twitter.com/stefancoh/status/1501190432910237698
  • Electric announces $1B fund https://blockworks.co/electric-capital-raises-1-billion-to-launch-crypto-venture-token-funds/
• Andre Cronje ragequits
  • https://cointelegraph.com/news/defi-godfather-cronje-quits-as-tvl-and-tokens-tank-for-related-projects
• The AMM test – no BS look at L1 Performance
  • https://twitter.com/hosseeb/status/1498703792266645506
• Evmos pauses “Rektdrop”
  • https://thedefiant.io/evmos-paused-rektdrop/ 

The Cryptopians

• http://bit.ly/cryptopians 
• On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Cryptopians-Idealism-Greed-Making-Cryptocurrency/dp/1541763017/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1645037311&sr=8-2
• On Barnes. &. Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-cryptopians-laura-shin/1138980345?ean=9781541763012 
• On Bookshop.org:  https://bookshop.org/books/the-cryptopians-idealism-greed-lies-and-the-making-of-the-first-big-cryptocurrency-craze/9781541763012
• Unchained: https://unchainedpodcast.com/how-writing-the-cryptopians-shaped-my-views-on-ethereum/