9th October 2024 > > Satoshi & ENA.

tl;dr

HBO’s Satoshi documentary is both wrong factually and wrong morally speaking. The ENA ecosystem has a new product that might just save it from blowing itself up one day.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

A combination of 10-year rates over 4% and a Chinese stock sell-off has the world’s largest market manipulators aka central bankers reaching for the on-button for the money-printer once more.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Satoshi doxxed

Or probably not, it seems.

HBO’s documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” identified Peter Todd as Satoshi. Peter has been involved with BTC since the beginning, and publicly discussed concepts, issues, problems, and improvements with Satoshi in various online forums.

The evidence does seem a bit thin, mainly resting on a claim that an improvement proposal submitted by Peter in 2015 for “replace-by-fee” functionality is related to a post made in 2010 discussing the possibility of allowing a transaction to supersede an earlier one in the same block by using a higher fee, which was initiated by Satoshi, and to which Peter gave a short reply.

And, er, that’s it.

Peter’s response to HBO’s claim:

If Satoshi is still alive, he clearly has no intention of accessing the BTC fortune held in the first wallets to mine BTC, and neither did he seek the fame. The downside to being outed is that would make life quite dangerous. The journalistic integrity about speculating over the identity of Satoshi is discussed here:

https://finbold.com/please-stop-speculating-on-who-satoshi-nakamoto-is/

Well worth a read.

The one thing we do know is that fantasist and liar Dr Craig Wright is not Satoshi.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – ENA & USDe

We have touched on Ethena Labs ecosystem of ENA and its associated stablecoin USDe a number of times. USDe is a synthetic stablecoin, a hybrid of an algorithmic stablecoin and a fully collateralised stablecoin. It works using the traditional cash and carry trade, and is 100% certain to blow-up one day. That day is not now, and is not for a while, and so in the recent past the CC Treasury has made a small investment in ENA.

The CC’s warnings about USDe have been heard loud and clear in the corridors of power at Ethena Labs. The company has launched a new stablecoin, UStb, which is a fully collateralised stablecoin. Absent fraud, or operational issues, UStb should only ever deviate from its peg by very small amounts.

UStb has an interesting angle – the collateral is BlackRock’s BUIDL fund which is a tokenised fund of short-term US treasuries. This set-up offers an interesting possibility of a crypto virtuous circle. Stablecoin growth has been nothing short of spectacular, and is likely to continue in the same vein. If UStb can capture that growth curve, that will feed directly into BUIDL, further embellishing the credentials of tokenisation, a concept that will dramatically democratise access to the financial markets for everyone’s benefit. Reminder – tokenisation cannot exist without cryptos.

…

Ethena Labs made on comment on X that amply demonstrates the truth of the CCC’s earlier criticism of USDe:

“This (UStb) will exist as an isolated product separate from USDe offering users and exchange partners a new product with a differentiated risk profile to USDe.”

Eh? These are stablecoins – the ideal risk profile is none at all. USDe is a product whose time has surely passed. If UStb replaces it, that bodes very well for the long-term prospects of ENA, and so I can now sleep a little easier at night.