Unconfirmed - Ep.208 - $12 Billion Has Been Lost in DeFi Value to Crime - Here’s How

Transcript

hey all before we begin a couple quick announcements first i'm doing an end-of-year show with crypto predictions for 2022 by you please make a video or an audio recording of your 2022 crypto prediction or predictions and email it to hello at unchainedpodcast.com with the subject line crypto prediction by the end of day tuesday december 28th and although i have asked people to send their name and where they're from as somebody pointed out to me on twitter if you don't want to dox yourself i guess you don't have to do that either unfortunately i do need to give a forewarning that if you excessively promote anything we will not include your prediction if you just want me to read on-air a prediction that you just email that's

okay too it's just a little bit less fun don't forget the deadline is tuesday december 28th and the email address is hello and unchainedpodcast.com please put crypto prediction in the subject line also a reminder my book is coming out onto 22 22. if you're looking for a holiday gift pre-order it now to deliver later pre-order sales really helped that book that first week to help establish further demand and get it on any lists if you want to get a normie into crypto this fun tale just may do it someone who worked with me on the book and knew nothing at all about crypto when we started and after just two days of reading it and being nowhere near done with it was asking me such intelligent

questions about crypto that i asked how do you know so much about crypto their response from your book by the end they were completely obsessed and had already ordered a hardware wallet pre-order the cryptopians idealism greed lies and the making of the first big cryptocurrency craze today at bitly cryptopians that's bit.ly c-r-y-p-t-o-p-i-a-n-s and now on to the show hi everyone welcome to unconfirmed the show that reveals how the marquee names and crypto are reacting to the week's top headlines and gets the inside scoop on what they see on the horizon i'm your host laura shin a journalist with over

two decades of experience i started covering crypto six years ago and as a senior editor at forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time this is the december 17th episode of unconfirmed with the crypto.com app you can buy earn and spend crypto in one place download and get 25 with the code laura link in the description tired of your exchange taking 25 of your staking profits the avato blockchain computer allows you to stake ethereum and other crypto at home and keep 100 of the rewards go to ava.do wish you could earn crypto but don't want to spend thousands on hardware just

download the nodal cash app on your smartphone visit nodal dot io unconfirmed that's n-o-d-l-e dot io unconfirmed to start earning nodal cash today today's guest is jess simmington research lead at elliptic welcome jess hi laura thanks for having me there have been a number of recent hacks in crypto and in d5 in particular elliptic just came out with a report giving an overview of crime and defy which you dubbed d crime in the report can you give us an overview of the state of crime and defy sure so in terms of um hacks we monitor for

two main types so that's um with regard to exchanges and also if you as you've said with regard to d5 um so we've seen um a vast increase in the um hacks in the d5 space within the last year and so to give you some figures so of all time so since around 2016 when we started um monitoring for these there's been a total of over 12 billion dollars worth of loss in the d5 space and that's with regard to two um different types of loss so one which we call direct loss so that's the um funds that were stolen directly from the d5 protocols and the second is called the protocol protocol loss so if a um protocol is attacked by a hacker the the value of the protocol may um drop in

the days afterwards so for example the value of the governance tokens may drop in the dates afterwards so there's a lot um of that loss is accounted for by the protocol loss rather than the direct loss so of that 12 billion um 1.5 billion was lost last year and 10.5 billion has been lost this year so we've seen a vast increase in this loss in the last year not only are we seeing an increase in the value loss but we're seeing an increase in the frequency of these attacks and so these days it's not unusual to see sort of over 10 hacks of this type per month wow and just to clarify about the 12 billion number um 10.5 billion lost this year

is that the direct loss or is that the economic loss where it's the value of the protocol that you know decreased afterward and the 10.5 this year is accounts for both both the direct loss and the protocol loss so and then the 1.5 from last year again also accounts for both and if you were to just break out direct loss what is the figure um so we see generally the um direct loss accounts for you know a much smaller portion of the um total loss so if we go back to those original figures so two billion um and direct loss of all time and ten million in protocol loss of all time so you can sort of see how that would work out um over this year so if we're seeing around

10 billion total loss this year we might see um you know one to two billion in direct loss okay and so you said that the frequency is accelerating what also do you see in terms of the size of the thefts in d5 yes so um the size of thefts um isn't necessarily increasing at the same rate as the frequency um it really depends on the protocol which is attacked and the success of the particular hacker we are seeing a number of very very high profile um high value hacks though so we can um look at the polynetwork hack earlier this year in which the hacker stole 611 million dollars worth um so we

are definitely seeing an overall increase but not as easily as we're seeing in the frequency increase and for these different hacks do they tend to be more the user's fault because obviously i know that everybody in crypto is aware that there are a lot of phishing scams out there on twitter in your email on your text messages in telegram like just pretty much every anywhere you go on the internet there's phishing scammers targeting you or is it more often the case that the protocol or smart contract has flaws it's definitely more often the case that the protocol or the smart contract has flaws so um the biggest cause of loss so the biggest um exploit that the hacker

takes advantage of is what we call bug vulnerability so that is consists of either code vulnerability so there's been an error in the coding which the hacker takes advantage of in order to steal the money or there's an error in the way in which the protocol was up in the first place so we call this like an economic vulnerability um so in an example of that um the monox hack recently occurred when a hacker artificially inflated the price of the mono token and they used the artificial value in order to purchase all of the other assets um related to that d5 so that's what we would describe as an economic um vulnerability but both of those types are under the umbrella term of a bug

vulnerability so that's definitely the highest sort of category that accounts for the most hacks further down we have sort of unauthorized access to private keys and that's private keys of individual users as well as private um keys of like hot wallets belonging to um protocols and exchanges themselves and then we also have rug pulls the stats we have show that rug pulls account for quite a small portion of the overall hacks one of the main reasons for that is it's it's always quite difficult to verify rugpull and there's always um accusations of rugged pools whenever a d5 protocol is attacked but a really clear example we can see from this year is the squid coin so squid coin was popularized um due to the squid game netflix show um and received a lot

of interest um from users uh shortly afterwards they rugged and sort of withdrew all the value out of that token so but that's yeah a very very small proportion of hacks um are down to rugged balls and so for the rug pool example how how do you prove that it was something that was intentional because you know as you said i'm sure a lot of the various hacks you know do like people will accuse the developers themselves of having done it and in a way it probably isn't that difficult to you know this isn't the normal meaning of simple attack but you know basically fake your identity and pretend like it was somebody else so how how do you

prove that yeah that's a really good question um so one of the ways you can try to prove a rug pool is to look at the behavior of the protocol around the time that the hack occurs so some very clear examples might be that all social media or you know telegram groups or discord groups are closed at the exact same time that the um hack occurs and the sort of creator of the d5 protocol is just trying to disappear um so that would be a very clear indicator that you know accusations of a rug pull may be correct and so earlier you were saying that code exploits are the number one most common way uh for these hacks to take place what's an example of one of those

sure so an example of a code exploit so the difficulty with um d5 and the daps that um run these d5 reticles is that um a lot of dapps are based on previous steps so if you find a vulnerability in the code of one of them chances are that vulnerability is going to you know be in existence in a lot of the other codes as well so uh an example of a code hack well from your report you guys had v swap and when i saw that i was like oh this is a replay sort of of the first oh not the fro the second parity multisig wallet hack i don't know if you do you know about the initializing the contract um no i'm not sure what you're referring

okay well so in in the elliptic report um it said that this v swap code hack basically happened because i guess initializing kind of like makes you the owner of so i'm not gonna be able to explain it on a super technical level just off the cuff but um then because they were able to make themselves the owner then they they pulled the funds but the same thing happened back in 2017 with the second parity multi-sig hack where they were able to set themselves at the owner as the owner and so they did so and um then they locked the funds away right yeah and and but did you have another idea in mind of another code exploit not at the top of my head the example i

was going to give you with regard to bug exploits was um the poly network but that was like an economic export rather than a codex exploit oh yeah and those are really fascinating because i feel like you know they're only possible in in d5 or maybe not only but you know especially very quickly uh with the flash loans so are there any particular chains that you feel are more susceptible to having their d5 protocols hacked than others yes so what we see um is the majority of hacksaw on the ethereum blockchain and the reason for that is you know ethereum is more established um it's more used um in the d5 space but this year in particular we are also seeing a number of hacks on the binance smart chain and on polygon network so they're definitely

diversifying across different blockchains and another thing that we've seen quite commonly um in recent um instances is that a hair core an exploit will affect a number of different blockchains so it might affect ethereum and binance smart chain rather than just an individual blockchain well super fascinating okay so in a moment we're going to discuss more about where hacks are going but first a quick learn from the sponsors who make this show possible join over 10 million people using crypto.com the easiest place to buy earn and spend over 150 cryptocurrencies spend your crypto anywhere using the crypto.com visa card get up to 8 cashback instantly plus 100 rebates for

your netflix spotify and amazon prime subscriptions download the crypto.com app now and get 25 with the code laura link in the description there's a new cryptocurrency made for mobile that you can earn by downloading the nodal cache app it's free easy to use and there's no hardware to buy the nodal cache app allows you to earn crypto whether you're on the go stuck in traffic or even while you're sleeping nodal cash is the crypto you earn 24 7. go to nodal dot io unconfirmed to get started today that's n o d l e dot i o slash unconfirmed back to my conversation with jess so as we were discussing at the

beginning there's been a few big hacks recently um there was vulcan forged which was hacked for 140 million bitmart which is actually a centralized exchange was hacked for 196 million there was badger dao 120 million and um another one ascend axe for 83 million and i know elliptic will be publishing a blog post i believe monday noting that it's about 600 million dollars in 14 days that's been stolen so what do you make of this recent spate of attacks yeah i mean it's certainly shocking um and i think it doesn't quite receive the attention that it deserves um if this was like a traditional finance maybe

this would be more sort of front page news but there is like a very very high um value losses occurring very regularly and i think um one of the aspects of that that might be slightly being lost is that it's not just the sort of decentralized apps that are losing funds there's very human stories behind these as well so whenever like a hack occurs we see these very sad stories on social media or in telegram groups of people losing their entire life savings and so that's one aspect of it that i think um could also be focused on more and earlier this year there was an uptick in ransomware and that really dominated the news what's happened to that trend and they're still very very active in the ransomware space

and we've seen a number of different trends this year so particularly around summer or june july this year a number of very very high profile attacks occurred and as a result a number of the top ranks and where groups retired slash rebranded and an attempt to avoid sort of law enforcement attention um so we've seen um a very common trend this year has been these sort of like constant rebrandings after a very high profile attack but another trend that we've seen this year is like increased law enforcement success so recently we've seen funds being seized um from rival affiliates we've seen individuals associated with those ransomware groups arrested so there's been a number of really interesting trends this year around ransomware and so now once these various thieves

get a hold of their crypto how easily can they cash out and are you fine are you finding that they're able to at all yes so i think there's an interesting difference when you look at a type of crime like a d5 hack versus ransomware so with d5 there's a very clear um method of cashing out which if you're sort of on the more sophisticated end of the hackers you'll identify and be able to use very easily so the first thing you want to do um if you steal a load of funds and that's probably going to include like native um currencies like ether and binance coin as well as tokens so specifically erc20 tokens stolen a lot in these type of hacks because you're stealing tokens there are some

token issuers that are able to freeze the funds and this is particularly um with regards to stable coins but also other types of um tokens so if you steal um some tether and some usd coin the first thing you're going to want to do is to swap that into either the native currency of the blockchain you're using or um other potentially stable coins like die which don't have those um freezing abilities so that's the very first step that we see hackers take is to quickly swap all of those tokens into the native currency and the second thing you'll probably want to do is use something like a decentralized mixer and on the ethereum blockchain is one very very clear standout leader in that space and that's tornado cash so a lot of these funds are then um laundered through tornado cash

which makes it tricky to follow the flow of funds and to see where they're cashing out interestingly we don't see all d5 hackers use that methodology so some defy hackers um keep hold of the funds and they might try to bounce it through a few different wallets but they don't sort of make any attempt to cash out and that might be because um they were sort of focused on whether they could steal the funds and once they've stolen them they're not quite sure what to do with them or maybe they're just trying to lie low for a bit um and not you know cause any huge transactions which might alert token issuers or um exchanges so that's sort of the d5 space if we look at ransomware it's definitely becoming more uh tricky to cash out ransomware funds and that's because um the majority of

ransomware payments are still paid in bitcoin and we've developed very sophisticated techniques to be able to trace um the fleur funds on the bitcoin blockchain they are however able to utilize certain services which are so available to them so unregulated exchanges for example we've seen some in-person exchanges um that are accessible by visiting particular offices in particular um countries or you know there's certain services um available in the bitcoin blockchain which are not regulated because they don't take custody of your funds so particular services like wasabi which is a privacy wallet is quite heavily used by ransomware groups and because of its non-custodial nature it means it's not currently regulated and therefore they

can use that service in order to enable the cashing out activities wow this is so fascinating um i just wanted to ask about uh one of the examples you gave of how people can do this in person they can cash out in person i'm assuming that those are either in jurisdictions where there isn't a lot of a lot of law enforcement around these things or how do like what what jurisdictions does that typically happen in yeah that's i mean you're you're completely correct there that is um specifically in jurisdictions where there's not that sort of law enforcement appetite to crack down on ransomware but interestingly we've seen those services also operate in other jurisdictions so

recently we came across a service very similar to the two exchanges which have recently been um sanctioned by the us so those two exchanges were called suex and chatex and it's a very similar service to that which also uh has um the ability to facilitate cash transfers in america um so we we are sort of actively investigating those services as well and which can you put a percentage on maybe uh the um how many of these thieves or what amount of the funds actually does get cashed out um in terms of the ransomware groups um or just for uh yeah all of cryptocrime or both well okay sure um i can give you

an exact percentage in terms of ransomware we see like a much longer term cashing out strategy so they don't tend to move um they don't necessarily move the funds as quickly as something like um a hacker for a defy um protocol um but yeah unfortunately i can't give you a percentage on the exact number of all elicit funds that are cashed out but we have seen very very high usage of services like wasabi wallet and who do the hackers tend to be have you guys identify or or and maybe they differ depending on whether it's like d5 versus ransomware or centralized exchanges yes um yeah i would say they differ depending um not necessarily on the

crime type but with regard to d5 hacks we don't necessarily always um or most occasions potentially don't identify individuals behind the hacks but there could be um features of the hacks which might enable you to build like a profile of the type of hacker so we see very sophisticated attacks that occur and then very sophisticated money laundering patterns that occur afterwards which indicates they might be you know experienced in this whereas we also see hackers who steal the funds and then sort of panic afterwards um they might be in contact with the exchange um we see the use of messages on the ethereum blockchain so messages are bouncing back between the hackers and the victims um or they might sort of show off about

their hacks on social media and particularly sort of twitter um so there's very like a very distinguished different groups um of people that commit these sort of defy hacks with regards to crime types like ransomware again we see um a sort of variety of people engaged in these kind of activities um but generally sort of young sort of technically um capable individuals okay and how well has law enforcement been able to go after these various thieves yeah um so again differs per crime type because crimes like ransomware occur in jurisdictions where um sort of us uk law enforcement don't have

easy access to they're not always able to successfully um you know conduct investigations although we have seen an increase in success this year particularly and even where individuals haven't been you know like arrested they may have been um sanctioned or they may have had funds seized from them so there still are law enforcement activities that can take place other than like the arrest of a suspect so yeah it really differs per um crime type and and it differs um with regard to sort of the sophistication of the crime so some um hacks um or some like money laundering activities can be susceptible to very easy mistakes and if those mistakes occur it makes it easier to follow um the flow of funds

and therefore it might be easier to identify like identification opportunities for example if those funds then go to a regulated exchange which does conduct um like kyc then that might be an identification opportunity for law enforcement and does the fact that most of these blockchains or is the fact that most of these blockchains are transparent affect that ability or does it make it easier for or for law enforcement it's definitely um a benefit to law enforcement so if you think about the transparency of the fleur funds on something like the bitcoin blockchain versus traditional finance so the benefit of bitcoin is that we can all study the blockchain and we can look for patterns and identify sort of red flag indicators or identify suspicious

activity and we also you know blockchain analytics companies like elliptic have been around for a fair amount of time now and have developed very sophisticated techniques to be able to um follow um the flow of funds so definitely and the transparency of blockchains is a massive bonus in these kind of cases and what would you say could be done to help prevent more of these hacks in the future yes so that's a really good question um so because right now d5 is like a very new very innovative space unfortunately that also means it's not particularly um sophisticated yet in terms of like regulation or um industry wide like agreed upon um certain standards so there are certain things as a user

you might be able to look out for so some d5 services um have their smart contracts audited and that's just an indication that they are trying to you know avoid things like code exploits so that might be something you can look out for but really the onus on this potentially should be more on the defy protocol itself to ensure they are carrying out these checks um to look for any vulnerability so that they can be um sort of closed off and what would your advice be for people who participate in defy who don't want to become victims of these various crimes uh i think my advice would be um as always with anything to do with crypto um if you're using it as an investment don't invest more obviously than you're

prepared to lose so we see lots of stories of people investing their life savings um into various cryptocurrencies or into d5 protocols who are then obviously very um distressed when they lose all of these funds so um that's very like one general rule around cryptocurrency in general um again as a user there's not a whole lot you can do other than look out for these things like has the smart contract been audited is the issuer um of the token or um the creator of the smart contract is there any like footprint about them that you could look at do they have like a website or is there like a telegram group that you could join and engage with the um creator but in general is the easy yeah um is unfortunately a

little bit risky all right well this has been such a fascinating interview thank you so much for coming on unconfirmed now thank you very much having me it's great to speak with you don't forget next up is the weekly news recap stick around for this week in crypto after this short break did you know that exchanges take up to a 25 cut on your staking rewards but you don't need an exchange to stake you can run a validator at home join thousands of solos takers get nevado device plug it in deposit your stake and earn the full reward avato created the best hardware and specific software to stake and keeps your validator on the latest version through auto updates one-time investment 100 profit go to

avato that's ava.do [Music] thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap in hearing senators go tough on stable coins this week senators took both stablecoins and defy to task during a banking committee meeting senator and committee chair sherrod brown started the hearing with prepared remarks saying cryptocurrencies advocates argue that crypto assets are superior to real dollars because they are decentralized and transparent but stable coins are neither he added stable coins make it easier

than ever to risk real dollars on cryptocurrencies that are at best volatile and at worst outright fraudulent senator elizabeth warren also chimed in expounding upon the dangers of stable coins and defy saying staple coins pose risks to consumers and to our economy they're propping up some of the shadiest parts of the crypto world defy where consumers are least protected from getting scammed she went on to say defy is where the regulation is effectively absent and no surprise it's where the scammers and the cheats and the swindlers mix among part-time investors and first-time crypto traders not every voice in the room was so

negative senator pat toomey took the side of defy citing cross-border payments programmability and deficiency as different ways that stablecoins improve upon fiat money toomey also emphasized that regulations should not stifle innovation and called for regulators to have the humility to recognize that many of our views about how financial services are delivered and how investments work are quickly becoming outdated tuesday's senate hearing comes less than a week after the house financial services committee hosted ceos from six digital asset firms in a meeting deemed positive by ftx ceo sam bankman freed it also comes shortly after the

president's working group released a report on stablecoins which advised regulators to restrict stablecoin issuers to insured banks bitcoin jumps as fed accelerates its stipulus taper on wednesday the federal open market committee began its two-day summit to discuss u.s monetary policy during day one federal reserve officials acknowledged the threat of inflation which is currently at a 39-year high in the wake of coven 19 induced stimulus packages supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic and the reopening of the economy have continued to contribute to elevated levels of inflation that fomc

explained however according to fed chair jerome powell the economy no longer needs increasing amounts of policy support with that in mind the fed announced that it is looking to cut down on stimulus spending and will taper monthly bond purchases twice as quickly as planned reducing purchases by 30 billion dollars per month to zero by early 2022 for context the fed had originally intended to decrease stimulus spending by 15 billion dollars per month on wednesday after the fomc statement crypto prices jumped with the entire crypto market searching from a low of 2.03 trillion dollars that morning to a high of 2.27 trillion dollars by

afternoon ave votes to close source code token holders of ave the fourth largest d5 protocol by total value locked voted to make the code for the upcoming ave v3 release restricted by a business license this vote is essentially a signal on whether or not the ave community wants to protect its intellectual property from unauthorized use or simply allow anyone to use the code in any way they prefer explained the proposal that was passed by a slim majority of 55 a business license restricting the use of code in defy was first introduced by uniswap which most likely instituted such a practice due to being forked and

vampire attacked by sushi swap during 2020's d5 summer the proposed ave v3 business license would be similar to uniswaps in that it would restrict the usage of code for an initial amount of time which would most likely be one year during that time ave governance would keep their rights to authorize code forks for projects and teams who have a track record of collaborating with avei in the past the proposal didn't pass with overwhelming support 44 percent of ave's community voted for v3 to be released under an mit license which grants without limitation the rights to use copy modify merge publish distribute sub license and or sell

copies of the code for free cinepaineventure's adam cochrane believes that d5 protocols close sourcing some of the code is a slippery soap that could lead to crypto applications running into the same issues they are trying to solve wrote cochrane we've seen more restrictive licenses and closed source pop up across d5 protocol and other chains over the past year when we design systems to be anti-competitive profit seekers we're just going to recreate the broken banking system but on chain one week three unicorns nydig a new york-based bitcoin firm announced a one billion dollar funding round at a valuation of more than seven billion dollars

according to dove metrics this is tied as the largest funding round of 2021 in the crypto space the capital from the rays will be used to further develop its btc infrastructure capabilities including lightning payments westcap led the round joining existing investors like affirm fis phi serve mass mutual morgan stanley and new york life on wednesday anchorage a crypto focus bank announced a 350 million dollar raise at a valuation of over 3 billion dollars in a series d funding round anchorage which launched in 2017 as primarily a custodian for digital assets has since grown into a full service bank

kkr a private equity firm with 459 billion dollars in assets under management led the investment through a technology fund its first direct equity investment in a crypto firm also included in the round are goldman sachs blackrock paypal ventures andreessen horowitz and alameda research on thursday the block reported that dune analytics a crypto analytics company is raising money at a valuation of one billion dollars the block says that dunes raise would make for 39 crypto unicorns minted in 2021. shopify is launching an nft marketplace on thursday the ecommerce platform shopify announced the beta release of an nft marketplace where businesses can

mint and sell branded nfts with shopify and shopify payments from their own storefront the website notes that nfts will be available on ethereum polygon near and flow with customers being able to claim nfts via email nike made a metaverse acquisition rt fkt studios an nft fashion company has been acquired by nike created in january 2020 the metaverse native rtfkt is known for creating nfts of virtual sneakers and other collectibles this is not nike's first foray into digital goods nike has shown interest in tokenized fashion since 2019 when it filed for a patent regarding cryptokicks

in 2021 nike has actively pursued virtual fashion filing for patents on nike and just do it along with air jordan jumpman and swoosh logos for that reason benoit pagoto a co-founder of rt-fkt is super excited about the acquisition nike is the only brand in the world that shares the deep passion we all have for innovation creativity and community and we're excited to grow our brand which was fully formed in the metaverse concluded pagodo notably the acquisition comes on the heels of a series of metaverse partnerships from adidas a nike competitor senators rally across the aisle to push

for changes to infrastructure bill this week u.s treasury secretary janet yellen received a letter from six senators asking her to clarify how the treasury department will interpret the broker definition for crypto tax reporting in the recently passed infrastructure investment and jobs act in the letter senators rob portman mark warner mike crapo kirsten cinema pat toomey and cynthia lummus noted that the vague definition of broker could pose significant issues for crypto actors and asked yellen and the treasury department to honor the intent of the bill which they felt was cemented during a conversation between senators portman and warner on the floor of the senate earlier this year

at that time they specified the term would only cover brokers who enabled a transfer of digital assets while entities ancillary to the process would not be considered brokers the senators urged the department of treasury to provide information or informal guidance within the current calendar year the move from the bipartisan group comes after multiple failed attempts at changing the language in the bill during its time in the senate catherine hahn leaves a16z crypto to launch her own fund on wednesday katie hahn a general partner at andreessen horowitz and gp of a16z crypto announced her intention to leave a16z to start her own crypto fund focused on crypto and web3 early next

year the information reports that andrews and horowitz will be an anchor limited partner in her new fund and make a large capital commitment up front but at least one other institution has made a larger commitment additionally a16 founders marc andreessen and ben horowitz and her partner gp of a16z crypto chris dixon are all personally investing in her fund as the firm's first female general partner han was hired with the launch of a16c's first crypto fund in 2018. in the past year alone she has helped ink 45 deals the information reports that she will be the sole gp of her new fund and intends to hire as many as 20 people with at least six founding team members being

women which is notable in the male-dominated industry recently han has been hosting dinners for celebrities crypto community members lawmakers and policy makers drawing together people who intersect with crypto from everything from the nft to regulatory angles and all are in various ways necessary to crypto's success khan sits on the boards of open c and coinbase before joining a16z in 2018 han served at the department of justice for over a decade a16z crypto will now be helmed by dixon ariana simpson anthony albanese and aliyah time for fun bits elon musk says tesla is letting the doge out

according to data from coin gecko dogecoin was at 15 cents at 5 a.m eastern time on december 14th by 6 a.m eastern time the price of doge had jumped to 21 cents an increase of 40 in roughly two hours why because elon of course at 5 34 am on the 14th the tesla ceo tweeted tesla will make some merch buyable with doge and see how it goes now what does this mean it means that doge holders can order anything from a tesla umbrella to a tesla buckle belt on tesla's website though after perusing the shop dogecoin purchases do not seem to be live yet

nfts come to a congressional race shrina karani is running for a house seat in california and dropping 2022 nfts on solana representing potential web 3 policies in a conversation with coindesk karani said there is a ton of misunderstandings surrounding crypto and specifically points to tax and accounting rules as areas that can be addressed with new legislation south park makes crypto twitter feel seen south park did a bit on crypto that pokes hilarious fun at crypto and all its memes drama and jargon although i probably can't play the whole thing without creating copyright issues for myself here is a fun little taste

next thing you know these people over here started chanting hot or hottle and their nft started mooning and then these guys over here started saying those guys right there right clicked them and and called for a pump and dump which made these guys beat the living hell out of anyone who said it was just fomo and died screaming that it was the flipping all right thanks for tuning in to learn more about jess elliptic and tf hawks be sure to check out the links in the show notes unconfirmed is produced by me laura shin without from anthony yoon mark murdock and daniel ness thanks for listening [Music] [Music]

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