Right to Privacy vs. Right-to-Know

The tension between anonymity and journalism's mission

Exploring the transformation of value in the digital age By Michael J. Casey, Chief Content Officer Feb. 11, 2022 If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here. Supported by   Crypto time, many have noted, moves faster than normie time.    An action-packed week has been a reminder of that. Token prices had such a big rally that it seemed like the bear market that hit hard last month was already over. And then there were the rapid-fire revelations from the bombshell story that federal agents had seized $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin from a New York couple charged with conspiring to launder proceeds of the 2016 Bitfinex hack. This week's column looks at the crypto community's reaction to that story, and, in drawing a contrast with how it reacted to a separate one about the "doxing" of two NFT founders, explores the trade-offs between a need for transparency and people's right to privacy.     In this week's podcast, my co-host Sheila Warren and I talk to Francesco Rulli, a crypto OG whose journey in the space – from sending bitcoin to Afghan high school girls in 2014 to modernizing museum patronage through NFTs – has consistently embraced the social impact potential of cryptocurrencies.    Have a listen after reading the newsletter. Cryptocurrency comes to the tax-advantaged 401(k) Now, for the first time, ForUsAll's new Alt401(k) adds cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin and up to 40 others, to the list of 401(k) investment options – and the tax savings for you and your employees can be jaw-dropping. This is all thanks to the 401(k)'s tax-advantaged status and our self-directed cryptocurrency window, powered by Coinbase Institutional. Now, by using after-tax (Roth) contributions, it's possible to eliminate capital gains taxes on your cryptocurrency gains forever.*   Learn more about crypto in a 401(k)    *To be fully tax exempt and subject to withdrawal without penalty, you must meet the 5-year rule for the initial Roth deferral and be at least 59 1/2 years old. Consult your retirement plan provider or your accountant for details. Of course, ForUsAll does not provide tax advice and the tax laws could change in the future. Cryptocurrency feature available Q1 2022. Crypto's Anonymity Dilemma Rachel Sun/CoinDesk It was striking how quickly Crypto Twitter's obsessions this week went from "How dare you dox that couple of Floridians" to "Woo-hoo, give me all the crazy dox you've got on that New York couple."   Many in the community were incensed when BuzzFeed journalist Katie Notopoulos revealed the identities of the two founders of the iconic NFT project the Bored Ape Yacht Club, accusing her of "doxing" them against their wishes to remain anonymous.    By contrast, after two people were arrested Tuesday on federal charges of conspiring to launder proceeds of the 2016 Bitfinex hack, there seemed to be an insatiable demand for details on the lives of a couple from whom the Department of Justice says it seized a gobsmacking $3.6 billion worth of ill-gotten bitcoin. Most of all, the crypto community delighted in the absurdist spectacle of rap videos by Heather Morgan, whose LinkedIn account describes her as a "serial entrepreneur," a "SaaS Investor," and a "Surrealist Artist/Rapper."   Clearly, these cases are different.    With Wylie Aronow and Greg Salano, the identified founders of BAYC creator Yuga Labs, there's no suggestion of criminality. We should accept at face value the notion that when they adopted the pseudonyms of, respectively, "Gordon Goner'' and "Gargamel," they were simply exercising a civil right to privacy that deserves respect. It's quite different for Morgan and her husband, Ilya "Dutch" Lichtenstein. Assuming they're guilty of the crimes they allegedly committed, a reasonable person can argue they forfeited that right. (We'll come back to those words "assuming" and "allegedly.")   Nonetheless, these two cases' juxtaposition – coming on the heels of a revelation that a founder of DeFi protocol Wonderland (0xSifu) was in fact Michael Patryn, a co-founder of scandalous Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX – compels us to think about what we care about as individuals and as a society. It gives us a lens on where the lines lie between a shared need for information versus the mere desire for it, and thus how far the right to privacy extends.    These are trade-offs, and they are not nearly as easily determined as either side makes it out to be. Many in the crypto community who defend pseudonymity at all costs fail to acknowledge that there must be a line beyond which a public "right-to-know" exists. And, on the other side, journalists who frequently trumpet that right, tend to gloss over how much their story is driven by the need to titillate their readers (and please their bosses), or that doxing people has far-reaching consequences.    Right-to-know or clickbait?   My colleague, media reporter Will Gottsegen, whipped up the hornets' nest this week when he came to the defense of BuzzFeed's Notopoulos in a column with the headline "Of Course It's OK to Out the BAYC Founders." Will put it this way: "Aronow and Solano are at the helm of a business that's potentially worth billions of dollars. Apes have flooded the market and saturated the culture. Why shouldn't a journalist go looking for more details?"   There's great responsibility that comes from leading something as transformative as the BAYC project. Whether the subject has done anything wrong may be irrelevant. If such individuals have a capacity to influence others' well-being far greater than most people, shouldn't we have a means of keeping them accountable in case they misbehave? Too often, the hacks and "rug pulls" that keep draining billions of dollars out of DeFi protocols are the work of insiders operating in the shadows.    The counterpoint is that to develop decentralized systems that empower users while disempowering Silicon Valley's and Wall Street's middlemen, we must make privacy a foundational principle. As proponents of crypto-engineered financial inclusion argue, identity requirements in incumbent centralized systems are a gatekeeping mechanism for enforcing control. To hold up that principle, surely we need to respect it for all, starting with those who build these systems.   It's also hard to disentangle the public's right-to-know from its appetite for a good yarn or from the business interests that feed off it. Notopoulos' article argued, not unreasonably, that the BAYC founders should be held accountable for some of the unsavory aspects of their project – the claims, for example, that its images perpetuate a racist trope and that the artist who inspired the work has not been fairly compensated. Yet the BuzzFeed business model, like most digital media outlets, is based on ad models that rely on reader clicks (also true, to some extent, of CoinDesk). The reality is that "gotcha" articles that dox someone against their will are quite effective at achieving that.    It's the same base instinct that drove people to scroll through social media gawking at the videos of Heather Morgan's rapper alter ego "RazzleKhan." We love this stuff: laughing at other people's failure, delighting in them being caught out. Is that the right instinct on which to base a public's right-to-know?   Read the rest of this column here. Off the Charts Bukele's Dip-Buying Two weeks ago, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's penchant for "buying the dip" every time bitcoin drops in price seemed to be imposing a terrible price on his country's finances. Having purchased 410 bitcoins on Jan. 21 for $15 million, at what he declared to be a "cheap" average price of $36,585, the subsequent drop to a six-month low of $32,984 three days later clearly put the country's portfolio of 1,801 bitcoins deeply into the red. But since then, a rebound in world markets has come to Bukele's rescue.    So what's the overall profit/loss In El Salvador's multiple forays into the bitcoin market since it adopted the cryptocurrency in mid-2001 as legal tender? Thankfully a Twitter account with the handle @SalvadorTracker is keeping count. Breaking even. Almost.  But before you start declaring Bukele's unorthodox move a victory, consider that the cost the country is now bearing in servicing its $19 billion in foreign currency debt. On Wednesday, Fitch downgraded El Salvador's debt to CCC, the lowest level before a borrower is deemed to be in default. These kinds of negative takes on the government's economic performance – informed significantly by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund's criticism of its Bitcoin strategy – are driving down the price of its bonds, which means it is going to be even more expensive for it to roll over a looming expiry of $1.2 billion in bonds before the end of 2023. On a total dollar basis, no one can argue that El Salvador's bold experiment has been a success. At least until the next explosive rally in bitcoin.  The Conversation A Gary Vee-ctory Gary Vaynerchuk can be a bit tiresome sometimes. There's the whole "crush it" bro mentality that, like so many self-help advisors, flimsily suggests that success flows naturally from believing in yourself and what you want to do.    But it's hard not to be impressed with how the now all-in-on-NFTs influencer handled a rather combative CNBC interview this week.   Dubai-based anchor Hadlee Gamble, who set up her question with the premise that crypto is "problematic at best," posited that it is "an avenue not just to make a lot of money or lose a lot of money, but it's also an avenue for money laundering, and it's also a place where white supremacists are taking options." Vaynerchuk's confident response: "I don't think that the crypto space has any more problematic issues than the internet, society at large, mainstream media, Wall Street. It is a new avenue of innovation and like any avenue of innovation it has good characters and bad characters."   Vaynerchuk's reply garnered a lot of support on Twitter. Here's a screenshot of his poised, pounce-ready face, described by @ElGuapoKushman as "the moment you know you were about to catch a body."   Inevitably, the whole episode became its own meme.  Brave Wallet is the first secure crypto wallet built natively in a web3 browser. No extensions required.   Store, manage, and grow your portfolio, get NFT & multi-chain support. Even connect other wallets and DApps. All from the security of the best privacy browser on the market.    Whether you're new to crypto, or a seasoned pro, it's time to ditch those risky extensions. It's time to switch to Brave Wallet.  Download Brave today, and click the Wallet icon to get started. Relevant Reads The Story That Gives and Gives Alright, so in the column above I took the high road. But, you know what, the low road is a lot more fun.    What a story it was! Here's how CoinDesk covered the blow-by-blow of the arrest of Heather Morgan and Ilya Lichtenstein – aka "RazzleKhan" and "Dutch" – on charges of trying to launder $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin.   It starts with Danny Nelson and Nikhilesh De's straight take on the stunning news of the bitcoin seizure, which included valuable background on the saga of the 2016 Bitfinex hack.   As social media users had a field day discovering Morgan's prior video and photo posts, Lawrence Lewitinn wrapped the details into an entertaining piece that profiled the Bushwick, Brooklyn-based rapper, who described herself as "Genghis Khan but with more pizzazz," and her sidekick husband.    The pair's bail hearing became an event unto itself, as a federal judge stayed a New York magistrate's earlier ruling granting the couple bail after the lower court had heard defense accounts of Morgan's recent breast surgery and other health problems, Cheyenne Ligon and Eli Tan reported.   The biggest winner in this affair, it would seem, is the blockchain tracing technology employed by firms such as Elliptic and Chainalysis, whose praises were sung by a federal judge involved in the case who quoted "The Big Lebowski." Late in a busy day, Danny Nelson offered up an informative and entertaining rundown of that judge's opinion.  The news generated more questions than answers, not only about the arrest but also about the 5-year-old hack. David Z. Morris posed four big ones in his second-day follow.  Money Reimagined A newsletter from CoinDesk Were you forwarded this newsletter? Sign up here. See Previous Editions Copyright © 2021 CoinDesk, All rights reserved.  250 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10003, USA Manage your newsletter subscriptions  |  Unsubscribe from all CoinDesk email