Do Kwon in more trouble
Duetsche Bank was fined $700 million for helping launder $10 billion out of Russia. This is an astronomical sum and is merely one of innumerable cases of our largest government regulated banks assisting enormous crime at monumental scale.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;prosecutors-search-deutsche-bank-hq-in-money-laundering-investigation.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.cnbc.com&#x2F;amp&#x2F;2022&#x2F;04&#x2F;29&#x2F;prosecutors-search-deuts...</a><p>Yet crypto, a very small industry in comparison to other sectors, is despised and singled out as if technology by itself is suspect.<p>Do Kwon may be a scammer and those that believed in a 20% guaranteed return may have been rubes. But crypto is a technology and financial crime existed well before the advent of crypto and will continue to exist whether crypto keeps existing or not.<p>I think there is a certain myopia among technologists because crypto intersects so openly with economic activity whereas the traditional financial sector is opaque and wrapped in credentialed white collar employees wearing suits. Human nature - greed, ambition, desire, and all - exists regardless of the time and technology.<p>One reason I am so intrigued by crypto is that for the first time engineers can hack on finance without any permission, licenses, approvals, regulations, borders, etc. This may turn out to be a bad thing. But I believe technology is neutral and overall I want to see how this experiment turns out.<p>And as you are seeing with Do Kwon, and hundreds of other cases brought by the SEC and other regulators, criminals can be discovered and brought to prosecution even in the crypto space. This is not an industry that is immune to prosecution.<p>So I’m apt to let the space develop. As engineers you are not required to work in the space just as you are not required to work in any other. Crypto has incentivized the research and improvement in decentralized systems, consensus, decentralized governance, advanced crypto specifically zero knowledge proofs and new curves not corrupted by government cryptographers. I am intrigued by what is happening and am not afraid by the negative events.