🛠️ BUIDL 6.27.22 - Insolvency, contagion and dipping in honey jar 🍯
Weekly update email on the most important web3 trends, thoughts, and jobs and internships
weekly recap
🏁 Celsius prepares for bankruptcy with users on the hook. Celsius prepares for restructuring, while Goldman Sachs aims to buy Celsius assets. The catch: retail depositors on Celsius may Get. Nothing. Back. Celsius terms of service state that depositors ‘may not have any rights in connection with Celsius other than as a creditor’. When you use a CeFi exchange, you give up rights to your money.
🧯 SBF companies on a bailout spree. FTX signed a $250m revolving credit facility term sheet for BlockFi. Alameda signed credit facilities worth $485m to Voyager Digital. Sam Bankman-Fried, a crypto billionaire who founded both FTX and Voyager, is on a roll to build his CeDiFi empire.
🙊 NFT NYC entertains 50k degens. NFT NYC impressed with dazzling galleries, mind-tingling stunts and a massive wealth transfer from degens to Uber drivers. The 2022 crypto winter is warmer than the 2018 crypto winter, in the sense that there are plenty of projects that keep degens engaged.
Insolvency, contagion and dipping in honey jar 🍯
Dominoes keep falling. Contagion spreads. Voyager, TrueFi, and BlockFi suffered from their exposure to 3AC. Much has been written about the 3AC contagion.
All this would have been fine from a legal standpoint. A bad trade is a bad trade. These are sophisticated investors who should have known better. But Su Zhu has hired lawyers specialized in white collar crime to avoid jail time. Why is he afraid of going to jail?
It turns out that 3AC has been dipping in the honey jar, stealing its clients money to make degen trades.
8Blocks Capital’s CEO claimed that 3AC used their treasury to pay up 3AC’s margin. Similarly, whistleblowers have claimed that Babel Finance has been taking risky, highly leveraged positions without their consent.
As founders (or ex-founders), what can we learn from this?
🦁 Have integrity
Failures don’t destroy your career, in fact, they may even make you stronger. VC’s are known to prefer repeat founders, whether or not previous startups were a success. A founder who has make mistakes would learn from those mistakes and become stronger founders.
Have integrity, do right by your customers, build trust, and mistakes are just lessons to be learned.
⛰️ Build to last
While the world of CeFi is crumbling, much of DeFi is churning like another regular Tuesday. Uniswap, MakerDAO and Aave have largely been quiet in the background, but they are the true winners to emerge from this saga.
Build your companies to last. Going fast isn’t winning. Going far is.
web3 tweet of the week 💬
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jobs 💻
Nillion - Senior Software Engineer, Blockchain App Layer (Remote)
That.app - Business Development Manager (SF)
Goldfinch - Institutional Sales Lead (Remote)
Harmony - Blockchain Protocol Researcher (Remote)
Moonpay - Senior Blockchain Engineer (Remote)
Messari - Customer Success Manager (Remote)
Visa - Product Manager - Identity and Data Platform (Foster City)
Paradigm - Product Designer (SF)
Point72 Ventures - Associate (SF)
internships 🎓
SuperRare - Security Intern (Remote)
Polychain Capital - Intern, Cryptocurrency Researcher (SF)
Gelato Network - Marketing Intern (Zurich)
Ledger - Financial Project Management Intern (Paris)
candidates 💼
For founders hiring crypto talents, find a list of ex-Coinbase employees here. These candidates are excellent and passed Coinbase’s thorough vetting process. They are great people who were unfortunately hit by macro-driven CB18 layoff. Feel free to reach out to me for resumes. #WAGMI #GetEmHired
All views are my own. Statements above are not investment advice.
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