Motion: Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators (CasPiancey vs. Matthew Graham)
12/03/20 • 54 min
Guests:
CasPiancey (@caspiancey)
Matthew Graham (@mattysino)
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators.”
In this debate about the controversial pioneer stablecoin, we talked about pending lawsuits, a lack of regulatory framework for Tether to work with from the outset that cornered them into the way things are for them, how Tether issuance is affecting bitcoin prices, why Tether dominates stablecoin market cap despite its troubles, and more.
Today’s debaters include CasPiancey, a long-time and vocal Tether skeptic; and Matthew Graham, the founder of a well-known Asia-based crypto fund.
If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
I hope you will enjoy listening to this debate. Let’s dive right in!
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):
- UT Austin paper suggesting correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://archive.is/fMboo
- Paper #1 showing no correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3508006
- Paper #2 showing no correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165176518302556
- New York Attorney General case against Tether: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ny-attorney-general-sues-bitfinex-210643545.html
- Tether lawsuit from crypto traders: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-traders-lawsuit-claims-bitfinex-tether-cost-market-over-1-trillion
Debater bios:
CasPiancey is an independent investigator and reporter of business and financial fraud. He writes regularly about projects, exchanges and scams in crypto.
Matthew is CEO of Sino Global Capital. He has seven years of mainland China investment banking experience with a focus on representing international technology companies in China for strategic partnership and investment. Matthew has been involved in blockchain since 2013, first slowly, then all at once. As Managing Partner of Sino Global's Liquid Value blockchain fund Mr. Graham invests in blockchain technology with strategic relevance for China. Significant 2020 investments include primary market deals such as FTX, Serum, Mintbase, Mask Network; and secondary market deals such as Solana and Nexus Mutual.
Guests:
CasPiancey (@caspiancey)
Matthew Graham (@mattysino)
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators.”
In this debate about the controversial pioneer stablecoin, we talked about pending lawsuits, a lack of regulatory framework for Tether to work with from the outset that cornered them into the way things are for them, how Tether issuance is affecting bitcoin prices, why Tether dominates stablecoin market cap despite its troubles, and more.
Today’s debaters include CasPiancey, a long-time and vocal Tether skeptic; and Matthew Graham, the founder of a well-known Asia-based crypto fund.
If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
I hope you will enjoy listening to this debate. Let’s dive right in!
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):
- UT Austin paper suggesting correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://archive.is/fMboo
- Paper #1 showing no correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3508006
- Paper #2 showing no correlation between Bitcoin price and Tether issuance: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0165176518302556
- New York Attorney General case against Tether: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ny-attorney-general-sues-bitfinex-210643545.html
- Tether lawsuit from crypto traders: https://www.coindesk.com/crypto-traders-lawsuit-claims-bitfinex-tether-cost-market-over-1-trillion
Debater bios:
CasPiancey is an independent investigator and reporter of business and financial fraud. He writes regularly about projects, exchanges and scams in crypto.
Matthew is CEO of Sino Global Capital. He has seven years of mainland China investment banking experience with a focus on representing international technology companies in China for strategic partnership and investment. Matthew has been involved in blockchain since 2013, first slowly, then all at once. As Managing Partner of Sino Global's Liquid Value blockchain fund Mr. Graham invests in blockchain technology with strategic relevance for China. Significant 2020 investments include primary market deals such as FTX, Serum, Mintbase, Mask Network; and secondary market deals such as Solana and Nexus Mutual.
Previous Episode
Motion: ZK rollup has a better set of security/scalability tradeoff than optimistic rollup (Alex Gluchowski vs. John Adler, co-host: James Prestwich)
Guests:
Alex Gluchowski (@gluk64)
John Adler (@jadler0)
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
James Prestwich (@_prestwich, special co-host)
Today’s motion is “ZK rollup has a better set of security/scalability tradeoff than Optimistic rollup.”
Rollups are a class of layer-2 Ethereum scalability solutions. They allow an off-chain aggregation of transactions inside a smart contract. Users can transact inside the contract with security guarantees, and they will settle to the mainchain at some future point.
ZK and optimistic rollups are different in the way they ensure the validity of these transactions that are being kept off-chain.
The ZK approach uses math. It bundles the transactions, compresses them, and adds a zero-knowledge proof that indicates the validity of the state transitions. When the transaction is sent to the mainchain, the block is verified by the attached zero-knowledge proof.
The optimistic approach uses economic incentives. An operator publishes a state root that isn’t constantly checked by the rollup smart contract. Instead, everybody hopes that the state transition is correct. However, other operators or users can challenge the validity of the transactions, revert the incorrect block, and slash malicious operators.
We compared the two approaches from the standpoint of security, usability, capital efficiency of exits and more.
Today’s debaters are John Adler and Alex Gluchowski. John is the proposer of the original construction of the optimistic rollup and cofounded Celestia, and Alex is implementing a ZK rollup at Matter Labs. Our co-host James Prestwich is a security consultant and auditor for solidity contracts, among many other things.
If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate:
- Coindesk's layman guide for rollups: https://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-dapps-rollups-heres-why
- Alex Gluchowski on the difference between the two rollups: https://medium.com/matter-labs/optimistic-vs-zk-rollup-deep-dive-ea141e71e075
- John Adler explains optimistic rollup: https://medium.com/@adlerjohn/the-why-s-of-optimistic-rollup-7c6a22cbb61a
- Celestia: https://celestia.org/
- Fuel Labs: https://fuel.sh/
- Matter Labs: https://matter-labs.io/
Debater bios:
Alex Gluchowski is co-founder of Matter Labs, currently working on scaling Ethereum with zkSNARKs. He was previously CTO of PaulCamper, an online platform for sharing campervans and caravans in Europe.
John Adler is co-founder of Celestia and Fuel Labs. He is the original proposer of the optimistic rollup construction. He previously did layer-2 research at ConsenSys. Interestingly, he is a self-proclaimed blockchain skeptic.
James Prestwich founded cross-chain solution company Summa, subsequently acquired by the layer-1 blockchain firm Celo. He previously founded Storj, a decentralized cloud storage provider.
Next Episode
Motion: Today’s blockchains can’t increase TPS without taking a hit on decentralization, II (Evan Shapiro vs. Anatoly Yakovenko)
Guests:
Evan Shapiro (@evanashapiro)
Anatoly Yakovenko (@aeyakovenko)
Host:
Richard Yan (@gentso09)
Today’s motion is “Today’s blockchains can’t increase TPS without taking a hit on decentralization.”
This is a follow-up debate, or you can think of it as a re-match. Previously Emre from O(1) Labs also debated Anatoly from Solana on this very topic on the show. So make sure to check that out if you’re interested.
Here are some of the topics we covered:
* the inherent shortcoming of proof-of-stake in guaranteeing the canonical chain for a new full node
* why some chains have been designed to disallow rollback beyond certain point
* How Evan thinks faster synching process for new full nodes will allow further decentralization
* Why Anatoly thinks trustless synching doesn’t solve the Byzantine Generals Problem
If you’re into crypto and like to hear two sides of the story, be sure to also check out our previous episodes. We’ve featured some of the best known thinkers in the crypto space.
If you would like to debate or want to nominate someone, please DM me at @blockdebate on Twitter.
Please note that nothing in our podcast should be construed as financial advice.
Source of select items discussed in the debate (and supplemental material):
- Solana: https://solana.com/
- Coda: https://www.codaprotocol.com/
- Weak subjectivity explained: https://academy.binance.com/glossary/weak-subjectivity
- Long range attacks: https://blog.positive.com/rewriting-history-a-brief-introduction-to-long-range-attacks-54e473acdba9
- Coda article on mental model of Scalability-per-unit-of-Decentralization: https://codaprotocol.com/blog/solving-the-scalability-trilemma
- Byzantine general's problem: https://medium.com/coinmonks/a-note-from-anthony-if-you-havent-already-please-read-the-article-gaining-clarity-on-key-787989107969
Debater bios:
Evan is CEO of O(1) labs which operates Mina protocol, previously known as Coda protocol. He used to be an engineer at Mozilla and Personal Robotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University.
Anatoly is founder and CEO of Solana, a layer-1 public blockchain built for scalability without sacrificing decentralization or security, and in particular, without sharding. He was previously a software engineer at Dropbox, Mesosphere and Qualcomm.
The Blockchain Debate Podcast - Motion: Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators (CasPiancey vs. Matthew Graham)
Transcript
Motion: Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practices and defiance against regulators (CasPiancey vs. Matthew Graham)
Richard: [00:00:00] Welcome to another episode of the blockchain debate podcast, where consensus is optional, but proof of thought is required. I'm your host Richard Yan. Today's motion is: "Tether will likely get crushed by authorities in the next two years, thanks to its shady practic
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