(2022-11-19) Solana Twitter Vs The Cathedral

Mike Solana: Twitter Vs. The Cathedral. Two weeks ago, in a storm of allegations concerning everything from fraud to outright theft, the world’s second-largest crypto exchange (FTX) evaporated overnight.

But perhaps the most fascinating thing about this story is where it broke, and where it continued to break as the tale evolved — not the “expert,” fraud-chasing, tech-loathing media outlets you would expect, but extremely niche publications close to the source, and then, for the most part, anonymous writers on Twitter.

Brandon Gorrell breaks it down in a special weekend edition of Pirate Wires.

On November 6, @AutismCapital tweeted the meme of the kid ripping a bubbler behind two girls in a fist fight

The tweet came a few days after the account noticed a Binance transaction that, at the time, seemed like a shot across the bow, aimed at FTX.

November 6 was the day that CZ had, put simply, tweeted something truthful about FTX that caused everyone to realize it was probably not safe to keep their money on that exchange.

cascade of damning revelations about SBF, his political connections, and how he ran his company.

what has ultimately begun to play out looks like total war: citizen journalists, armed with blockchain technology and social networking trying to find consensus on the next version of the narrative, up against an amoral, ideologically motivated big media backed by the cathedral, whose agenda it is to maintain and expand its control of the information landscape at any cost.

the account watched and waited, then sounded the alarm: “We would HIGHLY suggest removing ALL your funds off of EVERY exchange until this all blows over. Do not be lazy, do this NOW.”

ultimately resulted in a series of scoops that, among other things, allegedly revealed:

November 11, whale-sized balances of various tokens were withdrawn and liquidated into a single wallet. From what I can see, the exploit was essentially the theft of around $300,000,000 of FTX user funds. FTX seems to be claiming this was a hack. But:... Former HIGH level FTX insider: "I think this has to be an inside job. There is just no way to have this much root access so quickly. There are too many different wallets and products to pull this off at once."

The implosion of FTX also brought SBF’s ties to the Democratic Party under scrutiny, and raised questions about the nature of his relationships to institutional centers of power

The role of some mainstream outlets can’t be ignored, either. WSJ reported that FTX executives possibly knew about Alameda Research’s use of customer funds. FT broke the news that Galois capital had $100m stuck on the exchange.

On Wednesday, November 16, the mainstream outlets woke up.

In the wake of the leaked DMs between SBF and a Vox reporter that showed Sam saying his philanthropy was “mostly a front,” the author of the Washington Post piece was busy drafting up what would become a 2,200-word article dedicated to cataloging SBF’s thankless, angelic philanthropy and lamenting the fact that Fried wouldn’t be able to give money to politicians and Washington nonprofits for pandemic stuff anymore

The day before, NYT entered the vanguard by publishing several soft pieces on SBF

The Clown World headlines have not stopped coming in. The same day the NYT published the interview with Lerner, Vox published a piece headlined “The impact of Sam Bankman-Fried’s support for Democrats is massively overstated.” A piece published in Forbes on Friday seems to blame the FTX meltdown on Caroline Ellison.

The autists on Twitter have activated, Elon Musk has enthusiastically entered the fray and made clear what side he’s on, and the battle for truth against an incumbent media unable to report honestly on realities that may compromise their agenda is just getting started. My money is on the autists.