WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Oct 14

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Important note: Some people are trying to claim that Hamas was funded via crypto. This actually isn’t true. Hamas asked donors NOT to use crypto because it was too public. Whatever your opinions are on the Israel-Palestine conflict, it’s important to remember that the blockchain is public and people trying to keep their money private don’t want to use it.

DeSci Touches on Anti-Aging

One of the biotech companies that created a COVID-19 vaccine, Pfizer, backed a DAO called VitaDAO that has just launched a company called Matrix Biosciences. This company, in conjunction with the University of Rochester, will be doing research on life-spans and cancer treatments. Specifically, they will focus on longevity sciences.

Learn more here.

SBF Trial Highlights

Overall, the general feel of the FTX exchange trial so far is that ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF) is in Trouble. Key points from the trial this week:

• Gary Wang (FTX Co-founder) and Caroline Ellison (CEO of Alameda) both testified.

• Coded into the exchange, Alameda was able to borrow funds from FTX right from the start of the exchange in 2019, with no limit to how much they could borrow (even if it took them into the negative).

• Alameda was also able to complete trades faster than other FTX users.

• Alameda had seven different balance sheets to give to prospective investors, depending which one suited the occassion.

• SBF thought he would be US President.

• OKX exchange froze FTX assets and so SBF et al. set up accounts using Thai sex workers in an attempt to move funds.

• SBF et al. tried to bribe Chinese officials.

• SBF really liked his hair and thought he gained favors due to it.

Learn more here and here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore