24 Comments

Awesome analysis--well done!

If there was a shred of courage or moral fiber in our generation your article would have the same galvanizing effect that Zola's 1898 open letter declaring "J'accuse!" had on France.

Sadly, we're apparently a nation of sheep.

But if you can think of anything I can do, at least--let me know. I'm ready!

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Nov 6Liked by Balaji

What a fabulous article you have written. I LOVE it!

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Nov 6Liked by Balaji

This is fantastic! You forgot about Michael Lewis. You have the basis for much better book and/or movie. Can the establishment's behavior be explained by their embarrassment? How did these smart, rich, and powerful people be so fooled? It's easier to obfuscate and muddle the situation than confront their inadequacies. Of course, this does not justify their behavior and inaction. Or, do you think it is more nefarious on their part?

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disappointed the post turned into a long winded rant against Democrats and liberalism writ large with misleading facts/statements throughout. had such promise.

am curious what contributed to citizen journalism doing a better job here. domain expertise, no ad rev from ftx, being away from the beltway ech chamber, etc?

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This is a fantastic article. Thanks for writing it. I agree with Sunil, Michael Lewis was horrible. My friend Terry Duffy sniffed out the fraud right away. I'd also say that the VCs are still not blaming themselves. "He lied to us". Bullshit. They didn't understand what an exchange is and how they operate. No amount of regulation is going to save crypto. Only crypto can save crypto. There are fraudsters all over. Can't go mainstream until you make them marked men-and the government will never do that for you. They are never ahead of the curve

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Next up, SafeMoon! All these scammers need to exposed and brought to justice.

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Nov 6·edited Nov 6

I'm not closely involved in US politics or the left-right fight, and which side is suppressing the other and with which tools or weapons

However, I find it fascinating how SBF manipulated the political, moral, media, and regulatory systems, and how the network was able to bring them all down to some extent.

I am mostly supportive of the mission of TNS, especially the idea that the anti-fragile crypto network can self-regulate. But, I'm not entirely convinced that the current state of parallel systems in media, law, regulation, medicine, etc. can exist without some level of collaboration with the legacy systems.

There is a lot of criticism towards X that makes sense to me, considering the opposition from legacy media, which may have some truth at its core regarding bots and algorithms amplifying more division with propaganda.

Let's hope Satoshi has been working on a PoW for those parallel systems in the mean time.

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Oh, Nefarious, for sure.

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Reminds me of Harry Markopolos's numerous failed attempts to alert the SEC to Bernie Madoff's fraud.

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Wow, thank you for the detailed blog. Sitting 7K miles away, we just heard something happened somewhere, now we know the details of it.

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What an amazing piece! I read this and immediately became a paid subscriber. You will NEVER get this type of analysis from the main stream media because they, as this article points out, a large part of the problem.

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Thanks for writing this! it is great analysis.

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I agree with all of this, but missing is any critique of the VC/tech industry that also supported the ruse and inflated valuations.

Alfred Lin got spanked on Twitter, but there's no mention of it in this piece.

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Another aspect to this: Crypto media cared _less_ than the mainstream about preserving access to SBF, so the coverage tended to hit harder and with devastating effect a year ago. No mainstream outlet wants to lose its access to "the next JP Morgan," however, "the next JP Morgan" is exactly the kind of person crypto doesn't like.

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I think if you some director would reach this article. He could make a movie out of this case study. I think better than 'The Big Shot'.

P.S: Balaji I am reading your book. Makes more sense why we need digital communities like this now. You are a time-traveler.

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