Ethereum

Tales from the crypto

I don’t gamble. But in October 2016, I made a bet. It was obvious Trump didn’t just have skeletons in his closet but a walk-in necropolis. As we stumbled toward November, the question wasn’t whether one of these skeletons would break free, but just how bad the October Surprise would be. It was supposed to be a polling-shifting, election-sealing, reputational nuclear bomb. And if you read the press, that’s what the “Pussy-Grabbing Tape” was. But to me, it was just another example of Trump being vulgar. And Trump had always been vulgar. And voters liked that he was vulgar, or didn’t care that he was vulgar, or liked that he was so unlike other politicians that he could be vulgar.

crypto

When celeb-backed crypto schemes took over the Super Bowl

This time last year, football fans dubbed the Super Bowl the "Crypto Bowl," after eToro, Coinbase, Crypto.com and FTX all paid for airtime. Just twelve months on, Mark Evans, the executive vice president of ad sales for Fox Sports, told the Associated Press there would be "zero representation in that category on the day at all," following the disastrous downfall of FTX, In other sporting news, NFL legend Tom Brady has finally retired, which is nice for him. Anyone who took his investment advice won’t be doing that any time soon. The seven-time Super Bowl champion is currently named in a class action lawsuit that claims he and his now-ex Gisele Bundchen lured fans into a massive fraud.

Kardashian

Saying goodbye to the crypto nerd utopia

It’s been a great year for those of us who didn’t have the nerve to invest in crypto. The value of Bitcoin, Ethereum and Luna crashed in May. Now, crypto giant FTX has gone bankrupt amid serious allegations of criminal misconduct. At last! For years, we kicked ourselves for not investing in Bitcoin, ETH, et cetera, when we had the chance. We heard tales of people who went from bums to millionaires, while we grinded in our offices and fretted about debts. Suddenly, we can reframe our risk aversion as foresight! Of course we knew that this would happen! Of course we did! Really, I shouldn’t joke about this crypto craziness. A lot of people have lost a lot of money. People will lose businesses, homes, and families. Some might even commit suicide.

The nightmare after crypto

What’s worse to lose – your keys or your wallet? That’s the question more than 100,000 angry investors who used the QuadrigaCX exchange to purchase cryptocurrency now contemplate. The apparent sudden death in December of Canadian Gerald Cotten, the exchange’s 30-year-old founder, has without warning left them in a $250 million-shaped hole. Mr Cotten, who had Crohn’s disease, is said to have died while on honeymoon in India after his bowel became perforated during what is reported to have looked at first like a bad case of Delhi belly. With him, we are led to believe, went the only crypto key to the place in which QuadrigaCX investor money is stored – repositories known as offline ‘wallets’.

gerald cotten quadrigaCX