TDTY: Terra wreckage 🤕 🧯
One year since Do Kwon’s algorithmic disaster and the crypto crash. If Bitcoin is rat poison, AI is atom bomb. China is developing AI without US chips. Spotify deletes thousands of AI-generated songs
Hello, y'all. You are a hero, and you don't care bout it.
Matt Furie the creator of the popular internet meme Pepe the Frog.
Asked what he thinks about the PEPE coin, says he is a Dogecoin maxi 🙈
Life is indeed a PEPE #DoListen.
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Exactly one year ago, Do Kwon's brainchild, Terra, spectacularly depegged and crashed to zero. 📉 The domino effect was swift and merciless, resulting in mass liquidations and the collapse of Terra's $18 Billion ecosystem. This event wiped out $800 billion from crypto markets.
And crypto winter sets in.
The timeline of Terra and Kwon:
May 8: UST depegged .015 cents to $0.985, Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) loaned $1.5 billion to defend peg. It didn't work.
May 12: Luna crashed by 99.7%.
May 12: Kwon's family was placed under police protection. An investor who lost money, knocked on Kwon's door, demanding an apology.
May 28: Luna 2.0 launched. It didn't work.
June 17: The class action lawsuit Patterson v. Terraform Labs Pte Ltd. et al was filed in California - Kwon and Terraform Labs had solicited unregistered securities and misleading investors.
June 27: Three Arrows Capital plunged into liquidation.
July 5: US crypto lender Voyager Digital announced bankruptcy.
September 14: South Korean court issues arrest warrant for Kwon on five others.
September 26: Interpol has issued a red notice for the arrest of Kwon and this.
2023 - March 23: Kwon was arrested in Montenegro with associate Han Chang-Joon. - charged by a federal grand jury in New York of eight counts including securities fraud, commodities fraud, wire fraud, and conspiracy.
📉 The contagion:
Bitcoin (BTC), BNB, and XRP are still down by a gloomy 19% compared to their pre-Terra collapse glory days. Ether (ETH) has yet to regain 30% of its lost market cap, while Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT) find themselves submerged a staggering 50% underwater.
Spare a thought for SOL, once valued at over $27 Billion, now languishing below $8.5 Billion.
🚀 The Few Survivors
Amidst the ruins and despair, a few cryptocurrencies managed to weather the storm. Only one top-20 cryptocurrency, Polygon, fully recovered from the market crash caused by Terra's depegging. It proudly added about 9% to its market value while the rest of the pack suffered losses. On average, the other top coins shed a whopping 38% of their capitalisation!
If you look at the market cap of cryptocurrencies in the top 100 leaderboard over the past 18 months, 31 of them have managed to defy the odds and grow their market values since Terra's fateful wobble, achieving a respectable 20% success rate.
Kwon situation
Kwon is now facing the possibility of spending up to 40 years behind bars.
Right now, both South Korean and US prosecutors are vying for his extradition. This potential sentence for Do Kwon would be unprecedented for a financial crime in South Korea, surpassing even the 40-year term handed to a hedge fund manager in Seoul.
But after what happened to SBF (out on bail, living with family) there's only little hope left.
SBF pleads not guilty
Mr. Bankman-Fried could potentially face up to 115 years of imprisonment for everything he has done.
The trial is scheduled for October and SBF is pulling out all the stops in his quest for freedom. On a mission to dismiss TEN criminal charges against him.
He has now filed motions to dismiss everything but:
conspiracy to commit commodities fraud
conspiracy to commit securities fraud
conspiracy to commit money laundering
SBF extradited to the U.S. from the Bahamas and he's been accused of eight counts of alleged fraud and money laundering. Now his legal team says that four of the five additional charges that were since been added from February "violates the Treaty's rule of speciality provision."
And about his second-favourite game after League of Legends - Good Luck Games' Storybook Brawl has shut down its servers, months after FTX Ventures acquired it.
TTD Blockquote 🔊
Warren Buffet, if Bitcoin is rat poison, AI is something even worse.
“It can do all kinds of things and when something can do all kinds of things I get a little bit worried. I know we won't be able to uninvent it and, you know, we did invent—for very, very good reason—the atom bomb.”
Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has dumped $13.30 Billion worth of equities and increased exposure in cash and United States Treasury in Q1. Report.
Given the firm’s holdings range from American railroad to electric utilities and retail businesses, it's performance is a key indicator for the markets to gauge the US economy’s health.
Buffett is no longer optimistic.
“The majority of our businesses will report lower earnings this year than last year … The incredible period for the U.S. economy has been coming to an end over the past six months.”
The 92-year-old Oracle of Omaha.
TTD AI📍
China's creative chip: While the US sanctions may have cut off China's access to cutting-edge chip technology for AI development, local companies are not backing down! 🚫🔌 Chinese tech firms are on a quest to create home-grown AI using alternative methods, like weaker semiconductors and clever combinations of chips.
So, while the Chinese market can't feast on the latest Nvidia chips, they have the A800 and H800 chips at their disposal, albeit for smaller-scale AI models.
Fake news guy: A guy, "Hong," got caught red-handed in the Gansu district of China, generating fake news stories with the help of ChatGPT.
This came to light when cybersecurity specialists stumbled upon an unsubstantiated article about a train crash on a popular Chinese blogging site hosted by Baidu. At least 20 accounts simultaneously shared the fake news article.
Now, if charged, Hong could be facing up to five years in prison.
Quest for AI supremacy: Chinese tech company iFlytek steps into the AI game with its groundbreaking creation, the Spark Model - which is expected to surpass ChatGPT.
TTD Delete 🫷
Spotify hits delete
A Financial Times (FT) report revealed that the music streaming platform had removed 7% of songs created by the AI music startup Boomy.
Spotify is also said to be ramping up its policing of the platform in light of the situation. The Boomy songs were removed due to the suspected “artificial streaming” of bots posing as listeners, Spotify commented, saying:
“Artificial streaming is a longstanding, industry-wide issue that Spotify is working to stamp out across our service.”
Spotify and other streaming services began receiving complaints of fraud and clutter on the platform for music labels across the industry raising concerns over suspicious streaming activity on Boomy tracks.
Lucian Grainge, CEO of Universal Music Group, commented to investors:
“The recent explosive development in generative AI will, if left unchecked, both increase the flood of unwanted content on platforms and create rights issues with respect to existing copyright law.”
Last month, UMG emailed streaming services, including Spotify, to request they block AI services from accessing music catalogs for training purposes.
Boomy, on its part, has said that the platform is categorically against all manipulation or artificial streaming of any kind.
From songwriting and music production to marketing and distribution, AI is revolutionising all aspects of this beloved art form. The way music is created, consumed and monetised feels as though it is on the cusp of a major change.
The impact of AI technology on the music industry is undeniable, and the future implications remain uncertain.
TTD Numbers 🔢
$1.1 Million
Spanish law enforcement recently freed a Syrian cryptocurrency dealer from three kidnappers that were demanding a ransom of $1.12 million (or €1 million).
As per the report by a Spanish-language publication, the captured trio was set to appear in court on May 6 where they were expected to face kidnapping as well as illegal possession of weapons charges.
TTD Surfer 🏄
American crypto exchange Bittrex files for chapter 11 bankruptcy weeks after the SEC accused the exchange of at least $1.3 Billion in illicit revenue.
Estonia’s money laundering regulator squeezes out 400 crypto firms after new laws highlighted issues within local crypto firms.
Berlin-based Unstoppable Finance will roll out Europe’s first compliant DeFi-native bank alongside a fiat-backed Euro-pegged stablecoin following MiCA’s guidance.
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