Catch up on crypto with these 5 stories

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Happy 2023 to all of you. I’m on my way back to Colorado from Southern California, and it turns out to be home to the world’s largest weather fugitive. A few days of rain and everyone is whining about the cold. Poor one! Either way, I spent the last day of my vacation catching up on my crypto reading and thought I’d use our first newsletter of the new year to share with you some of the best things I’ve read. .

On the news front, the Winklevoss twins spent their vacation with Digital Currency Group founder Barry Silbert. The ever-cheerful Winklevie wrote to Silbert on Christmas Day that DCG subsidiary Genesis was suspending interest payments as cryptocurrency lenders struggled to keep bankruptcy at bay. I blamed myself for making the decision. Bloomberg has a great explanation of the hype, including this big picture view. He unifies the “Let’s do it all” atmosphere around all companies. ”

Meanwhile, Sam Bankman-Fried is still making headlines. On New Year’s Day wall street journal Another myth about cryptocurrency Bernie Madoff has been blasted. So it turns out he wasn’t much of a trader. Here are some key quotes from Bankman-Fried’s research on hedge funds: And he Bankman-Fried continually tried to borrow cash and cryptocurrencies to fuel those bets, promising lenders his double-digit interest rates. ”

Functionally, MIT Technology Review We published an interesting article about a company called CertiK, which occupies a small but important niche in blockchain auditing. This is a particularly important task because, unlike traditional software, once a company publishes buggy code, cryptography becomes unforgivable. This is the founder of his CertiK on his $600 million hack of gaming his blockchain Ronin. “They say he’s Web3 eating the world, but the hacker he’s Web3 eating.”

here luck, I teamed up with Jessica Mathews at Term Sheet to explore why no one was betting big short style on FTX like previous traders did during the 2008 mortgage crisis. Simply put, the crypto world lacks prime brokers and other financial infrastructure to facilitate such transactions. [bad actors]”

Matt Levine wrote the coda for his epic article on cryptocurrencies. Bloomberg BusinessweekWhile the tone of the original story offered a cautious but somewhat optimistic view of the industry, the follow-up story is (understandably) more skeptical, but not outright crypto-denial. No. Levine describes it as a more fun version of finance for smart people who love trading but don’t like the restrictions of compliance departments.

Finally, make time to peruse my colleague Leo Schwartz’s excellent 2022 Jealousy List. This highlights some stories that Fortune Crypto wanted us to write last year.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@Jeff John Roberts

decentralized news

game giant plan ubisoft bring up NFTs There are still a few believers who argue that cryptocurrencies belong to video games. (polygon)

OG Bitcoin The developer claimed someone stole 216 bitcoins from his self-managed wallet, but asked if the alleged hack was a “tragic boating accident,” i.e. code for tax evasion. There are also people (cointelegraph)

wirecrypto service provider for merchants nearly bought by PayPal wannabes for $1.5 billion bolt, shutting down. (Axios)

Sam Bankman-Fried He pleaded guilty to fraud ahead of a trial set for Oct. 2, but the judge amended his bail conditions to bar him from moving FTX funds.luck)

profile of winter mute paints the London-based cryptocurrency hedge fund as a burgeoning but non-criminal version of Alameda, poised to dominate after its rival’s demise. (forbes)