Long Reads Sunday #95

Snippets and podcasts for your long Memorial Day weekend

Happy Sunday from the Hudson Valley!

This will be a very abbreviated Memorial Day LRS. Just news highlights, podcast rundown, and a few extra awesome threads worth checking out. Hope you’re having a great long weekend.

NLW

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This Week’s Top Bitcoin & Crypto News

• Iran is exploring a national mining strategy

• The latest in US crypto exchange competition is the just launched FTX.US

• Is a Chinese province trying to ban bitcoin mining?

• A US lawmaker has proposed a legislative groundwork for a new national blockchain approach

• Genesis trading acquires a crypto custodian in a bid to become crypto’s first primer broker

• Tokensoft distributes $4m in equity via blockchain

• A new pan-Asian stablecoin has been proposed in China

• Steem tried to confiscate $6.3M in STEEM, prompting a hard fork

• $500k in Satoshi-era coins moved

• BlockFi hacked

• Libra names a former director of FinCEN as its general counsel

• A class action lawsuit around the EOS ICO?

• CashApp is now allowing recurring buys of bitcoin (plus display in satoshis!)

  jack @jack

  You can now do automatic recurring purchases of #bitcoin in @CashApp. Daily, weekly, or every 2 weeks. And change the display to sats. #stackingsats

  

  

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This week on The Breakdown podcast

• Monday | Economic Freedom in the World After Capital, feat. Albert Wenger

• Tuesday | Lessons from the Financial History of Pandemics, feat. Jamie Catherwood

• Wednesday | Why a Strong Dollar Is Bad for the US and Bad for the World, feat. Lyn Alden

• Thursday | ‘Dismantle the Euro to Save Europe’ Feat. Tuomas Malinen

• Friday | The Shadow of Satoshi’s Ghost: Why Bitcoin Mythology Matters

Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw

"The European banking sector is actually the biggest threat to the world economy this time around." @mtmalinen on @BreakdownNLW on why the European economy was fragile ("zombified") coming into the crisis, and why that fragility has its roots in '08. nlwcrypto.libsyn.com/dismantle-the-…

Nathaniel Whittemore @nlw

"Instead of thinking in terms of strong dollar or weak dollar, we should look for one that is at equilibrium and makes exports and services competitive without totally destroying the purchasing power of our citizens." @LynAldenContact on @BreakdownNLW nlwcrypto.libsyn.com/why-a-strong-d…

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Long Reads Snippets

On STEEM/Sun drama…

Ari Paul ⛓️ @AriDavidPaul

The drama with STEEM is probably the most important thing happening in crypto now. It’s an amazing experiment in crypto M&A, adversarial strategy and the legal/social repercussions of “stealing” via hard fork, forcing tough discussions across many large exchanges. /1

Jameson Lopp @lopp

Witness the rise of crypto anarchy! The most impressive part of this story is not the Proof of Stake power play by Sun. It's that those who dissented exited the network they considered compromised and created one that was EVEN MORE VALUABLE.

decrypt.coSteem network to seize $5 million from its own users - DecryptA hardfork has been scheduled for May 20 which will seize the accounts of several Steemit users, and drain $5 million worth of STEEM coins from their wallets.

On the true meaning of Bitcoin Pizza Day…

nic carter @nic__carter

This is your annual reminder that Bitcoin pizza day may well have been a consequence of Satoshi admonishing Laszlo over accumulating so many BTC from his experiments with GPU mining

On Goldman Sachs paying attention…

Frank Chaparro @fintechfrank

We’ve reached a point - post halving, post Paul Tudor Jones - at which Wall Street can no longer ignore bitcoin. Buckle up folks:

On bankruptcies…

Ben Hunt @EpsilonTheory

Both Hertz and Argentina declared bankruptcy today.

On Hong Kong…

Miles Suter @milessuter

Things have accelerated even more quickly than I could have envisioned. It's hard to overstate the implications of the loss of Hong Kong independence.

Miles Suter @milessuter

While the world is distracted by a pandemic that they downplayed and covered up, China is seizing the opportunity to crack down on the democratic foundations of Hong Kong that are so tenuously hanging on for dear life. https://t.co/sw2RSMJYU9

On competing inflationary and deflationary forces…

Gabe Bassin @gabebassin

A little thread on some of the most impactful inflation/deflation dynamics moving forward. Hopefully people add on to this so we can debate/discuss.

On the size of stimulus so far…

Dan Tapiero @DTAPCAP

Great chart of world monetary/fiscal stimulus enacted. All adds up to $20 Trillion. Total amount to be injected in just 2 MONTHS equivalent to entire nominal GDP of the US economy. And dollar still not falling and real US rates not dropping. Policy will go easier. +Gold/Btc.

On higher ed…

Chamath Palihapitiya @chamath

This pandemic will hopefully mark the end of the perversion of higher education. Since the 1980s, kids and parents have been forced to play a series of stupid finite games - grades, extra curriculars, influence peddling, donations for infinite assets: skills and knowledge.

On something brewing in Africa…

Matt Ahlborg [UsefulTulips.org] @MattAhlborg

[1/2] Africa had ANOTHER record week on global P2P markets. In all, over 13M in USD equivalent was traded across 18 African currencies and this was the first week on record where African volume exceeded Latin American volume on these P2P exchanges. usefultulips.org/combined_Sub%2…