Early Bitcoin Proponent Erik Voorhees: Crypto Will Be the Currency of AI

May 16, 2024 Bitcoin.com

SBF gets prison advice: Shave head, deepen voice and listen to rap

December 27, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Martin Shkreli outlined that “Sam isn’t exactly gonna be somebody that fits into prison” and that he needs to rebrand himself to fit in and make friends.

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried has been given some free advice on surviving federal prison by former white collar criminal Martin Shkreli, also known as “Pharma Bro.”

Shkreli, who spent around four years behind bars for securities fraud between 2018 and 2022, said the currently-on-bail former FTX executive should consider shaving his head, deepening his voice and skill himself up on gang culture and rap music.

The former prison inmate was speaking on a Dec. 23 episode of the crypto podcast Unchained, where he suggested that SBF needed to rebrand himself for jail, as being a rich white kid from a good neighborhood doesn’t “sound great.”

SBF getting prison survival advice from Martin Shkrelihttps://t.co/wvfZJJH2Ux pic.twitter.com/zrRmQuaRhK
— Liron Shapira (@liron) December 25, 2022

“Sam isn’t exactly gonna be somebody that fits into prison” Shkreli said, adding that his type of “sensibility doesn’t go over well” there, as it's a “very testosterone filled, masculine place.”

Alongside “shaving his head,” and “deepening his voice,” Shkreli outlined that SBF needs to make friends fast and embed himself in the culture of the prison system. For example, Pharma Bro said SBF should “ no longer say he’s from Standford [University].”

“He also doesn’t know anything about the streets and criminal culture, my advice is to pick those things up as quickly as he can, he should be listening to as much rap music as possible, he should be trying everything there is to know about gangs.”

“This sounds funny, but this could save your life,” Shkreli added.

Meanwhile, another former convicted felon, Sam Antar, the former CFO of the famously corrupt 1980s company Crazie Eddie, gave Bankman-Fried an alternative piece of advice: “JUMP BAIL AND RUN [...] They can only hang you once.”

Memo to Sam Bankman-Fried @SBF_FTX: I have just one piece of advice for you.

JUMP BAIL AND RUN!

Better to lose $250 million to gain your freedom than spend two decades or more in prison. I’ll give you the same advice my criminal lawyer gave me, “They can only hang you once.” https://t.co/FtOES1oaUW
— Sam E. Antar (@SamAntar) December 23, 2022

Shkreli appears to have developed a knack for giving crypto bad boys unsolicited advice about prison. During an appearing on the The UpOnlyTV podcast last month, Shkreli was a guest alongside Terra/LUNA founder Do Kwon, and told him:

“I just want to let you know jail’s not that bad, it’s not the worst thing ever, so don’t fret. I hope it doesn’t happen. But if it does happen, it’s not that bad.”

“Good to know,” Kwon replied, rather awkwardly.

In an update on the unfolding SBF drama, the New York Post reported on Dec. 26 that workers were spotted on Monday installing security cameras outside his parents house in Palo Alto, where the FTX founder is staying while on house arrest.

*Security camera's being installed: Photo by David G. McIntyre via the New York Post*

As it stands, SBF is required to wear an ankle monitor, and can only leave his house for exercise and treatment for mental health and substance abuse. He also has stringent limits on what payments he can make.

He is set to face the courts again in early January.

4,400 disgruntled investors are hunting for Terra’s Do Kwon

October 20, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A retail investor group is trying to track down Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon following the crash of the Terra ecosystems’ cryptocurrencies.

Members of a 4,400-strong Discord group called the “UST Restitution Group” (URG) have been attempting to track down the whereabouts of Terra co-founder Do Kwon.

Members of the group, seemingly out of frustration at the lack of results from law enforcement agencies, are scouring the internet for clues and sharing them with the group in an attempt to track down Kwon.

Members have suggested that he could be residing in places such as Russia, Dubai, Azerbaijan, or even on a yacht.

Their continuing efforts come despite authorities in South Korea taking significant steps to bring Kwon to justice, with a Seoul court issuing a warrant for his arrest on Sep. 14 and Interpol having reportedly issued a “Red Notice” to law enforcement worldwide on Sept. 26 in response to the warrant.

URG was originally formed on May. 16 as a chatroom for Terra ecosystem investors and to help launch lawsuits on behalf of its members to recover funds lost from TerraClassicUSD (USTC), the so-called stablecoin that depegged from the U.S. dollar.

One member of URG, Kan Hyung-suk, will soon be traveling to Dubai according to an Oct. 19 report from the Financial Times, a city where many from the group believe Kwon is hiding. Another member from the URG was reported as saying:

“Dubai is friendly to crypto, very international (he would not stand out), and has limited extradition treaties in place. It would seem like the best fit for the 3-5 hour timezone shift apparent in the data.”

Hyung-suk is a 26-year-old software engineer and a former employee of Terraform Labs, the company behind the development of the Terra blockchain, and has been a member of the URG since May 26.

Kwon, who became a controversial figure in the wake of the Terra ecosystem implosion, has maintained claims he is not “on the run” and is fully cooperating with all government agencies in communication with him.

Kwon was interviewed on Oct. 19 by Laura Shin, a crypto-journalist and host of the Unchained podcast, who asked him a range of questions relating to current news stories.

Speaking on his current whereabouts, Kwon suggested that he moved from Singapore following the Terra crash due to privacy and personal security concerns, saying as an example that his apartment was broken into, and stated:

“It’s not in the interest of being on the run or something like that, that I don’t want to disclose where I live. It’s just that every time the location where I live becomes known, it becomes almost impossible for me to live there.”

A spokesperson from Terraform Labs maintains the charges against Kwon are “highly politicized”, and that South Korean prosecutors have expanded the definition of financial securities in response to public pressure. Kwon echoed this sentiment during his interview with Shin.

Charles Hoskinson under fire for… not dropping out of a PhD program?

March 9, 2022 Coin Telegraph

ada

“The schools say he didn’t graduate from undergrad. Also, he has said multiple times, including in our interview, that he dropped out from a PhD program,” claimed crypto-journalist Laura Shin.

A debate has surfaced online following claims that Cardano founder and Ethereum co-founder Charles Hoskinson may have fudged the specifics of his educational background.

While the issue is a hardly a major scandal, it concerns conflicting reports around whether Hoskinson dropped out of a Number Theory focused PhD program – as he suggested – or if he embellished the story. Crypto journalist and Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin suggested in her new book and on social media that he never finished an undergraduate degree or enrolled for a PhD.

The dispute started on March 6 after a Twitter user stated they were reading Shin’s book “The Cryptopians” to get a rundown of the early days of Hoskinson and Cardano as reported in the book.

Hoskinson responded to the post by stating:

"Great work of fiction. Tough market to beat George R.R. Martin and Tolkien, but we wish her well.”

Shin promptly fired back at the Cardano founder, as she questioned “speaking of fiction, do you want to address the discrepancies between your claims of dropping out of a PhD program and the schools' assertions that you were enrolled as an undergrad?”

The journalist’s book was launched on Feb. 22, and in it she stated that she contacted both the Metropolitan State University of Denver “which doesn’t have a graduate math program” and the University of Colorado where Hoskinson previously studied. According to Shin, both institutions stated that the Cardano founder studied as an undergraduate, but didn’t earn a degree from either.

“The schools say he didn’t graduate from undergrad. Also, he has said multiple times, including in our interview, that he dropped out from a PhD program.”

Shin also noted that she gave Hoskinson and his team “ample opportunity” to talk with her and provide their perspective, but they all ghosted her. Commenting on the thread, BitTorrent founder Bram Choen chimed in jokingly that she could also let everyone know that he “dropped out of undergrad” too.

Feel free to let everyone know that I dropped out of undergrad
— Bram Cohen (@bramcohen) March 8, 2022

The community debated whether Hoskinson’s wording about not completing a PHD could be technically true, but a little misleading, however Shin also pointed to an interview with him where he explicitly said he dropped out of a PhD program.

During the interview, Shin asked Hoskinson whether he was getting a masters or a PhD when he first heard about Bitcoin. The founder stated that:

“Yeah, I was a grad student. I was trying to get a PhD and I ended up dropping out and never finished.”

He didn’t say he dropped out of a PhD program. You’re putting words in his mouth, clearly. Also, Gates, Zuckerburg, etc. all college drop outs. We care about tech not small conversations @laurashin
— McLovin ADA (@RubbishBullocks) March 6, 2022

Much like the rest of the crypto market, the performance of Cardanao’s native asset ADA has seen strong downward momentum of late. At the time of writing, ADA is currently down 26.9% of the past 30 days to sit at $0.83. However, over the past 24 hours the price is up 3.5% with many other top assets seeing a significant bump in this timeframe.

Laura Shin