Sharks Cuban And O’Leary On Crypto, Do Kwon Speaks

Mark Cuban has been more vocal of late on Cardano ($ADA.X) and ($DOGE.X), with a noticeable bias towards the latter than the former. 

However, it seemed as if Cuban was attempting not to take any particular sides when comparing the two in his most recent Twitter back and forth.

Adam, This isn’t a competition between platforms. Although each platform’s Maxis would like to think so. It’s a competition between applications to drive crypto use by non-crypto users. The winning app will determine which underlying chain will get the most use.

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) August 11, 2022

Kevin ‘Mr. Wonderful’ O’Leary threw his opinion into the Flippining. The Flippining is when Ethereum ($ETH.X) overtakes Bitcoin ($BTC.X) by market cap. 

O’Leary mentioned that if there was a solid regulatory policy on Bitcoin, “I swear to you the price will be $60,000 in two weeks.”

It’s hard to believe that not too long ago, both of these Sharks were major crypto skeptics

Galaxy Digital ($BRPHF) has backed out of its purchase of the institutional digital custody service, BitGo. In response, BitGo has threatened to sue Galaxy Digital for $100 million in damages. Galaxy Digital blames BitGo for not delivering audited financial statements on the appointed date. BitGo claims the accusation is “absurd.”

The fintech company Revolut is getting more serious about its involvement in the crypto space. The company is the first to receive a thumbs-up from the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission. This comes after Revolut just added twenty-two new tokens to its platform. 

Nasdaq-listed digital asset firm Eqonex ($EQOS) announced they are getting out of the crypto exchange business. 

Important announcement from EQONEX. Today we announced that we will streamline our operations to focus on asset management and custody.

Read our press release: https://t.co/M9zmDyOjIB (1/6)

— EQONEX Group (@EQONEXGroup) August 15, 2022

Zipmex gets a 3-month protection extension from Singapore courts. The exchange recently allowed some withdrawals of certain altcoins last week after halting any withdrawals during the Three Arrows Capital crypto collapse. 

It’s been a few weeks since we’ve highlighted anything from one of the crypto’s super villains, Terra’s Do Kwon. If you don’t know or forgot, he’s the dude who made Luna ($LUNA.X) and the spectacularly failed algorithmic stablecoin TerraUSD ($UST.X).

Kwon sat down with Coinage’s Zack Guzman for his first sit-down interview. It’s a fantastic read and a look into how unrepentant and disconnected this guy is to what happened. The further I got into that excellent interview, the more miffed I got.

Some key takeaways:

Kwon said, “I, and I alone, am responsible.” 

If you are looking for your daily dose of B.S., here it is. If that were true, he wouldn’t have spent a good chunk of his interview blaming conspiracies or moles in his company. Taking responsibility is easy if you can put the blame on someone else and become a fake victim and martyr.

Here’s another winner of a comment from Con Kwon: “You cannot be emotional about markets, right? Markets are dispassionate.”

Many Litecoin and Daily Rip readers are aspiring traders. You want to take control of your future. Yes, trading and investing are exciting. But, it’s a journey filled with trials and tribulations. 

And it is made worse by how many bad actors there are in the space. People are shilling you fake trading systems, fake strategies, and blatant lies. Hell, even some of the professional technical analysis software out there isn’t even up to date with the best practices and changes in how we use certain tools. 

Remember, Kwon is the same guy who responded to critics as “the poor” and would say cringe-worthy things with a smug smile in interviews like, “… there’s entertainment in watching companies die, too.’’ When someone like that tells you not to be emotional about markets, somethin ain’t right.

Telling people to be emotionless or to act like robots isn’t realistic or normal. You’re dealing with money, and if you’re a normal person, your money is pretty damn important to you. 

Ya, money isn’t everything. But it is the thing that puts clothes on your back, food in your belly, and a roof over your head. And when you risk the thing that provides shelter, clothing, and food, you’ll probably be emotional about markets when they move against you.

The only people who don’t worry about money are sociopaths and people who already have a metric crap ton of it. 

“There are probably not too many people that are alive with this type of experience.”

Is this dude totally disconnected from the people affected by his actions? Did he not hear or read on Reddit or Twitter the suicide notes, or how many people considering killing themselves? Did he not know about the people who did kill themselves over Terra’s collapse?

The arrogance that Kwon has, to suggest not many people alive have experienced what he has, is astounding – not shocking given his hubris, but astounding nonetheless. 

Guzman asked Kwon, “Former and current Terraform Labs employees can’t leave Korea. Does part of you say I should go back?” 

Kwon replied, “So right now, it’s kind of hard to make that decision because we’ve never been in touch with the investigators; they never charged us with anything.” So if you’re waiting for some news about when South Korean authorities will come after him, you’ll have to wait a little longer.

But when Zack Guzman said, “My co-founder had a family friend who killed himself, too. It was just – there’s a lot of stories like that. I mean, what do you tell the people who were impacted by this?” Kwon’s response?

He looks away. Deep breath. Puffs out the chest. He straightens his arms and flexes them. Scrunches his shoulders. All that body language within a couple of seconds before responding and claiming to call people in the Terra community and describing the calls as “rough.” 

But no ‘sorry.’ Not. One. Sorry. Judging from Kwon’s past behavior and answers, he probably didn’t say he’s sorry because he isn’t. 

We’ll keep you updated as this story develops.