Musings on Technology
A personal collection of notes, reflections, and essays on technology, finance, and building — written over the years as I made sense of the ideas shaping our industry.
The Contagion Spreads: Three Arrows, Celsius, Voyager
The Luna collapse was not an isolated event. It was the first domino. Three Arrows Capital, Celsius, and Voyager — firms managing billions — are now insolvent or teetering. The contagion reveals a shadow banking system built on leverage, opacity, and misplaced trust.
The Luna Collapse: $40 Billion Evaporates Overnight
Terra's UST stablecoin lost its peg and entered a death spiral with LUNA. $40 billion in value was destroyed in days. It is the largest single failure in crypto history — and a devastating indictment of algorithmic stablecoin design.
Stablecoins Are Crypto's Trojan Horse into TradFi
Stablecoins now settle more value than Visa. USDC and USDT are embedded in global commerce, remittances, and DeFi. While the market debates Bitcoin's price, stablecoins are quietly becoming the most important crypto product — and regulators are starting to notice.
The ApeCoin Airdrop and the NFT Financialisation Trap
Bored Ape Yacht Club launched ApeCoin — a governance token airdropped to NFT holders. The airdrop made millionaires overnight. It also revealed the tension at the heart of NFTs: are they cultural objects or financial instruments? The answer determines the future of the space.
Russia, Ukraine, and the Case for Neutral Money
Russia's invasion of Ukraine has triggered unprecedented financial sanctions — and an unprecedented test of crypto's role in geopolitics. Ukraine is receiving millions in crypto donations. Russia is exploring crypto to evade sanctions. The neutrality of money has never been more contested.
The Wormhole Hack and the Bridge Security Crisis
Wormhole — one of the largest cross-chain bridges — was exploited for $320 million. It is the second-largest DeFi hack in history and the latest in a pattern of bridge exploits that is becoming an existential threat to the multichain ecosystem.
The Fed Pivot and What It Means for Crypto
The Federal Reserve has signalled aggressive rate hikes to combat inflation. For crypto — which thrived in the zero-rate, unlimited-liquidity environment of 2020-2021 — the implications are severe. The easy money era is ending, and risk assets will feel it first.
2021 in Review: The Year Crypto Went Mainstream
Bitcoin hit $69,000. Tesla and MicroStrategy put it on their balance sheets. El Salvador made it legal tender. NFTs entered the cultural mainstream. Coinbase went public. And then the market corrected. A review of the most consequential year in crypto history.
Web3: The Word Everyone Uses and Nobody Agrees On
Web3 has become the dominant framing for crypto's vision of the future internet — user-owned, token-incentivised, and decentralised. The vision is compelling. The definition is vague. And the gap between the marketing and the reality is where the hard work lives.
Bitcoin Hits $69,000 — Then the Music Stops
Bitcoin reached a new all-time high of $69,000 on November 10th. Within weeks, it began a decline that would erase months of gains. The top was not marked by a single event but by the accumulation of excess that always precedes a reversal.