Newsletter #253 - DeFi in Disarray

Hey Shitcoiners,

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Are you ready for an epic deep dive into this week’s spicy news?

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Before indulging in all that, check out the latest episode of Wage Cucking With Jmo. We pulled him away from his vacation to get his hot take on the Curve situation, which we cover extensively in this week’s newsletter. Watch it now and equip yourself with some essential knowledge.

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The 30th of July was the day shit got spicy. It started as any other day, but things would take a turn…

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It was not looking good for Curve due to an issue in the Vyper compiler. Yikes.

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While the technical issues may go above many of your heads, the numbers do not. Initial reports surfaced with 32M CRV being touted as the amount taken in the exploit.

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The exploit hit several DeFi projects, leading to estimates totalling around $52M in damage.

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With the CRV/WETH pool suffering some serious price deviation, an opportunity was taken by one MEV bot,c0ffeebabe.eth, which made over $5M.

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However, c0ffeebabe.eth is good people. They returned the proceeds to the Curve deployer. Nice!

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With all of this going down, the inevitable memes ensued.

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We don’t really get this one, but the imagery is fun.

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With the CRV price tanking it wasn’t looking good for Michael Egorov, his large positions and possibly his Australian mansions.

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DeFi platforms began to freak out and invent ways to get their money back from Mich as quickly as possible.

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Speculators began trying to work out what this all meant. Would Mich be able to gather enough cash to cover the loans and save CRV? Some whales began accumulating on the basis it was all going to be alright.

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As the end of that last tweet mentions though, this guy should have just bought directly from Mich! He’d have saved a house or two in the process. The CRV founder was making OTC deals left and right.

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Those closed-door deals will have inevitably had the term that they couldn’t dump the CRV. If one falls, they all fall.

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This news was so juicy that if we were back in 2009, this could have made The Times’ front page!

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The dweebs on crypto Twitter might have misunderstood how deep the pockets and connections of Mich are. We saw many calling for CRV to go to zero, but the big boys were busy longing this bad boy.

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Did you think it was over?

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As the dust settled we started to wonder who was behind all of this. It couldn’t be, could it?

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Zach was on the case. He pinpointed @MichaelRazum as a suspect…

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Would Michael remain silent?

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No, he would not. It looked like Zach had caught the wrong scent.

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Zach sometimes can’t do anything right.

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This exploit opened more questions about DeFi founders and their large positions. We are eagerly awaiting the Hayden Adams position hunting that should begin in the coming weeks.

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It has been a rough 2023. RIP.

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The hacks have been coming in thick and fast lately. The Multichain hacker has been moving some WBTC and has weirdly been converting it to Tether. Do they not think they’ll be blacklisted?

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Oh god, here’s another conspiracy theory to keep you occupied.

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In Sam’s absence from the space, CZ has been busy catching scams of his own.

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Here’s more colour to that story.

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Another controversial story of the week came from Coinbase and their “Base” chain. BALD, a memecoin, launched and made some crypto Twitter participants millionaires.

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But the GMI vibes would be short-lived as the liquidity was pulled, taking the token price down with it. They would be millionaires no more. RIP.

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Our thoughts are with you, cheatcoiner.

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Supposedly SBF is behind every hack and rug going at the moment. Was he behind BALD too?! If so, this is a disgusting act from SBF, shaming someone with far less hair than you is unacceptable.

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Those internet sleuths think they are onto something though…

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With SBF facing court battles, the liquidators of FTX are looking to reboot the disgraced exchange.

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Jesse is not convinced.

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In a normal newsletter Richard Heart being charged by the SEC would be a headline. But alas, there has been a lot going on.

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Richard replied…

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And Martin Shkreli, who knows all too well about the long arm of the US government, didn’t think it was looking too great.

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This situation could also be disastrous for DeFi too.

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Here’s Richard installing a bidet. Riveting stuff.

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Worldcoin was making headlines recently but it turns out governments are not so into it. Kenya does not like Sam Altman taking the biometrics of its whole country.

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