Is the Short Team Lockup for STRK ‘Misaligned’? No, Says Starkware CEO - Ep. 609
16 Feb 2024 · 42:13
Starkware CEO Eli Ben-Sasson joins Unchained to respond to criticism of Starknet's STRK airdrop, the largest by number of eligible addresses to date. He explains the eligibility criteria, why Ethereum solo stakers received a large share of the distribution, and why he does not see the two-year gap between the token generation event and unlock as a sign of misaligned incentives.
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we knew that um whenever you announce criteria um those who feel that they received something that they you know deserve or maybe more than they expected they're happy but generally speaking they're relatively quiet about it and that's fine and those who feel wronged are going to be very very vocal about it and that also is fine so we knew from the start that by announcing the criteria we will mostly be seeing uh the people who feel wronged and we are listening to that we respect the users of the community hi everyone welcome to
Unchained you're no hype resource for all things crypto I'm your host Laura Shin author of The cryptops I started coming crypto eight years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first M Meer reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time this is the February 16th 2024 episode of Unchained with it trust Capital you can buy and sell crypto in a tax advantage retirement account enjoy significant tax advantages 24/7 access and the industry's lowest fees Vault craft is your no code defi toolkit for customizing non-custodial automated yield products on any evm chain join the referral program today and start earning rewards learn more at vulcraft doio polka dot is a leading layer zero
blockchain with over 2,000 Developers and the polka dot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem join the community at polad dot. Network ecosystem Community today's guest is Ellie vensa Sun co-founder and CEO of starkware Welcome Ellie hi Laura thanks for having me thanks for joining the show on Wednesday the starnet foundation announced its plans for the February 20th airdrop of Str strk tokens but the reaction from the community was less than favorable before we get to that response why don't we just start with what the airdrop plan is what are the criteria to qualify and how will you aird drop these tokens so the the the
starnet foundation has um um released a number of different criteria um some of the some of those involve being a user of Stark net um some of those are being an ethereum Staker it is actually the first um such program to involve ethereum stakers some of them have to do with users of the Stark technology prior to Stark net through the Stark X systems some of them have to do with being an ethereum contributor like uh being on the protocol Guild and another very interesting class of recipients are
GitHub code developer is uh that not that are not necessarily uh web 3 native and it's the first of its kind to invite such people from the web to World influential coders to participate in starnet ecosystem and what was the reasoning for choosing these different um you know community members and you know deciding how much to allocate to them we are looking for individuals who either through their actions or through their disposition are well suited to care about advancing operating maintaining and securing a decentralized network like Stark net so
some of them um have shown this through their actions by you know transacting and participating on such Technologies others have done so through contributing to code most of it open source that has has advanced IT others have uh shown it through their action of uh staking and putting at risk their tokens in order to operate and maintain and others have just Advanced the general public good that is code on which all of this is based and we would like all of them to participate in uh operating maintaining advancing you know opining on the governance of Stark net
so one of the groups ethereum solo stakers received almost 22% of the airdrop and some people praised that but then others were a little bit less happy because the solo stakers had two pretty rare qualities one was they had enough money to become solo stakers and they also had a high level of technical capability so why did you decide to allocate so much to people that some would perceive as if not exactly whales at least on the much wealthier and um yeah just like a much harder category to qualify I I think that's a terrific question and you know we deliberated so much um when I say we I mean the ecosystem
and you know and the staron foundation and others deliberated very hard about you know if you're gonna embark on a journey of decentralization and you want to find entities who are willing to participate in you know operating a network um that has these characteristics where will you find them and what is the right balance and um that's where we ended I think actually the solo stakers you know these are people who have taken tremendous risk and decided that they care and are passionate about you know securing ethereum which is the greatest uh uh proof of stake based um protocol so they're very natural candidates now
whether it it should be uh you know 22% or something a little bit lower a little bit higher um I guess you know you have to make some call that is AR arbitrary but I think uh you know that's that's where we landed and think it's a reasonable choice for that situation where people probably put up about you know $100,000 you know had had that extra $100,000 lying around to become a solo Staker you feel like that still fits with this notion of decentralizing the airdrop look ultimately I think that uh where I'd like to head at you know when when all is said and done is something proof of humanity based but right now we pretty much have to choose I mean that
technology isn't ripe yet so right now the two leading Technologies for securing you know decentralized blockchains are proof of work or proof of stake right and um if you're going to distribute according to something that is available today it's going to be either proof of stake or proof of work now each one of them has its pros and cons but I would say that in each one of them if you are already giving to that class you will be giving to people who might be predisposed with uh funds although in many cases these are people who came to have that stake because they were early adopters of the technology and there's High correlation with that
as well you know of course you know vital Joe Luben a lot of the early ethereum folks yes they have a lot of ethereum but they're also Visionaries who took huge risks early on and I think they are actually very natural candidates to participate um in uh maintaining the security of something like Stark net okay okay so I guess you just have a I I think a lot of community members view an airdrop as something that you know is a little bit more um democratized and less rare um one other criteria that was um pretty controversial was that there were a number of active Stark community
members who received little or no allocation um and the reason for that was because um there was a requirement that they have 0.005 eth in their Wallets on November 15 2023 and so even some users or many users who had been active for months were disqualified so why did you make that one of the criteria first of all uh let me pause and say that the Stark net Provisions is the largest programs in terms of the number of recipients 1.3 million addresses it is roughly or nearly twice larger than the largest so far which was the amazing arbitrum airdrop so when you
go and distribute to a large number of recipients and you want to have um the recipients receive uh you know meaningful um sums and you want to have some criteria that that looks at what is Meaningful activity you're going to have to set up some criteria and whenever you set up criteria and you do so in an automated manner that will cater to you know hundreds of thousands of recipients um there going to be some people who are nearly by the criteria or just uh you know don't make it now the important thing for me to say to the community is that we are listening very intely as we have listened in the past H
this was the first round of Provisions the foundation has already stated um that it's not going to be the last one and the foundation is stating that it is listening so I you know I'm not in I am not in a position to speak on behalf of the starkin foundation which is the body behind this uh um Provisions program but I know that they will be listening very intely and trying to fix whatever can be fixed in future programs and did you all realize that you know having that criteria for the 0.005 eth on November 15th that that would eliminate a large number of people who had been very active we realized that uh we realized
that any criteria that you set any criteria especially when you're dealing with a massive number of recipients will be you know automated and hence uh some people will feel that is unfair there will be people that really might have been even wronged by it this is unavoidable whenever you do some massive automated uh you know numerical criteria um so the foundation is listening and I know they do have plans to try and in future installments of such programs or similar ones try to address it but any project trying to do any sort of criteria to deal with
massive recip ients will have people feeling rightly or wrongly disgruntled because you know they you know they were on the wrong side of something so I think this is unfortunately to some extent unavoidable but we are listening and want to we care about the community and want to make sure that uh it is uh dealt with properly all right so in a moment we're going to talk a little bit more about some of the other criteria but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible polka dot is the original and largest layer zero block chain with over 2,000 plus developers the anticipated polka dot 2.0 upgrade will be a massive accelerator for the ecosystem upgrading the infrastructure with eight times higher transaction throughput and twice as fast block times
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accessibility start now and maximize your retirement savings with I trust Capital so as we mentioned there was the um criteria on November 15th that eliminated a a number of people um but then there were others who felt that they had been active for quite a while like let's say a year but then because the criteria pretty much rewarded just based on the threshold of three months that the fact that they had put in the extra time or they had generated more volume was not rewarded so can you address those criticisms yeah it it is it is roughly the same I mean my addressing of those is similar to the previous answer which is when we said about criteria first of all I can assure
you that the foundation has put into it a tremendous amount of effort and again reminding the listeners that this is the largest um um such program ever to have been you know done and it involves some very interesting novel uh classes of recipients that have never been addressed before for so whenever you undertake such a immense project uh there will be some people who um you know are left out of the criteria of the choices and I want to repeat the message the reason I came on is to say to the dear uh community that um we are listening the foundation is listening and uh things will be will be addressed
in future programs to the extent possible Right but I I like um if you're allocating to people that don't have any association with Stark net and then people who've actually put in quite a bit of time and effort on Stark net don't get reward do you see why there's like it it seems like there's a disconnect it's like somehow these people who didn't do anything at all for Stark net are getting rewarded but then people who put in a lot of time and effort they are not and paid high gas fees at different times that somehow they they're not being and so it just sort of it doesn't seem I think commensurate to them um again I'm saying we are
listening and attentive and we'll try in future programs to address these things I do want to speak a little bit and very proudly about trying to bring over uh more people and invite them to web 3 I think in particular the class of uh you know GitHub contributors to open source projects even if they are not yet web3 native I think this is an amazing Innovation one that I am very proud the foundation has undertaken one I am sure that many other projects are going to follow suit on just like you know a bunch of other things that we innovated on and have now become standard and I'm very proud of it and I think anyone in crypto should be proud of it look I mean
the state of crypto today is that um you know it's not yet in common usage by everyone and there are many many classes of of people who could be naturally early adopters and you want to invite them and that's exactly what what we're doing in Stark net and it's part of our vision we want to be you know the Integrity web to run a global Society it's not a cliche this is our mission this is where we're heading and for that to happen you want to invite folks who aren't yet on blockchains and I think it will also help those those who are already users and community members of starnet and I think many in the
community see that now you know this does not mean that we should not listen to those who feel wronged we are intentially listening to them and my message to them is that the foundation the best of my knowledge is listening and to the extent possible we will try to uh make things uh right yeah I mean I think I I don't know if it's so much that people in principle are against allocating to people who haven't participated in starkware it's more that if the people who have participated in starware aren't being rewarded by the way St yeah sorry Stark then then why why is it that you know these other outside groups that didn't um contribute
are being rewarded like for instance you know somebody tweeted at me um you know why did Argent wallet do an 8-week campaign in May 2023 when Stark net fees were $5 in conference informations were 15 minutes minutes and not award any of the strk airdrop to those campaign users so you know this is like I think people felt like there were certain things that happened in the past that indicated they were going to be rewarded in some fashion and then you know they were surprised when they weren't um I do want to ask also about one of the other criteria that SP controversy was which is the exclusion of US citizens and residents um why did you decide to exclude them when other l2s did not I I for this we need the foundation the
starnet foundation to aine on because this is a decision that has been made by by the Stark Foundation based on you know their considerations with the um with their Council and I just you know I'm not the right person to answer that question but um I think I mean I'm speculating but I think it's not related to you know any sort of animosity towards the US citizens but there must be other considerations I'm speculating that it has to do more with uh you know regulatory uncertainty um but again I'm not the right authority to speak on this matter so this mere speculation um the other big issue that
people were upset about is that the token generation event took place in 2022 but the unlock date for the team and investors will be on April 15th and Loom Dart tweeted quote I don't think people realize how insanely up having the tge be almost two years before the actual tge so investors and the team can unlock in two months actually is it isn't even regulatory Arbitrage lockups aren't for Regulators they're to align the incentives of the team and investors with everyone else I think it may be one of the worst cases of just trying to actively over retail I've ever seen so what's your response to that yeah and my response is that I want to be very transparent and let people know how this came about and what's behind it okay the starnet token
has three utilities three important utilities it is a governance token it is a token that is used to pay for fees on Stark net and it is a token for staking in order to operate the decentralized network it is innovative in many aspects one of them is we are proudly you know one of the first l2s to um demand that fees or go towards fees being paid only in the native token and there's a whole toonomic theory behind that in order to have tokens flow towards developers and people who are advancing the protocols so they can participate in staking in
governance and this is something we already started through devics and there's a lot of theory behind this uh that we spoke about from you know Inception of the token I urg the Curious listeners to go and read more about the starkit token and its utility so but going back so in the summer of 22 when all of these plans were made including the design of the token we said that we want to use the token as soon as possible in each one of its capabilities and back in the day we made the decision to start using it for governments already early in Fall of 22 and we were also back in the day expecting the payment in the token which
is the second utility of the three to be initiated a small number of months afterwards and the whole setup was done in this way so the intention back in the day was that governance starts immediately around November 22 which is when the ERC 20 of the Stark token was uh basically launched on chain shortly after that we planned for the payment to transfer to the starkit token and the whole locking for investors in the team was based on this now what actually happened was that building the best and first Stark based um Layer Two
took us a bit longer than we thought and the initiation of payments in the token got delayed up until now and as soon as possible we uh you know we we unlock we are unlocking the tokens for um the uh users which is the provisions event and the consequence of this delay is that the team and the investors their unlocking is indeed two months out um so I want to be very transparent about this this is the situation and it's very important that uh you know the the listeners and the users they they know know this and I mean did you anticipate
that there would be this reaction because like you could have potentially done something to just push it out a little further to you know help make it make the community at least feel that your incentives were aligned with theirs um well it's two questions like did we anticipate it not really or or certainly not the extent and then um but but like on alignment I think that um I don't think that this is about uh alignment I think uh uh it may be nonstandard but it's not about alignment I mean you know there's so many people look at all the luminaries of uh of blockchain you know the Bitcoin uh ogs you know I know many
of the early team um from the early days I've been in crypto since 2013 you know vitalik and Joe Luben and ethereum and many others their alignment with ethereum is not not related to the fact uh that their tokens are unlocked for a very long time so it may be nonstandard but I don't think it speaks of uh misalignment okay well it's definitely the community's perception I saw a lot of Notions that um the team and investors would be dumping on retail you know I'm very passionate about the space especially of L2 and especially validity rollups to a large extent um all the teams out there are using my technology so you know I'm
co-inventor of zcash and of uh Starks which are basically the technology used by all of the teams out there who are building scalability projects for ethereum and I know all of them and care deeply for all of them you know I left Academia to uh co-found starkware and I really really care about this thing so I think that people who devote their best years unfortunately I'm not young enough to say that the years I'm devoting now are my best years those were probably the years that I devoted to the research I did which you know led to things like Starks and snarks but people who are devoting their years to advancing these
validity rollups which are the endgame for scaling ethereum I wouldn't say anyone of them you know I wouldn't accuse anyone of them of being misaligned or not wanting to stick around and Advance the technology now I I'm not arguing with the perception that is out there on social media I respect it I you know I consume social media myself but it's important for me to come out and speak transparently about you know let's say represent the point of view of you know cryptographers researchers entrepreneurs who are devoting their years to advancing Integrity webs ZK technology and validity
rollups um it's important for me that people hear that angle as well so meaning that you feel that this is how to reward them and even if it means that the lockup ends two months after this airdrop that like you think that's that it's as it should be others will judge you know me and my team I will speak of about others all of the other amazing rollups out there l2s and again I know all of the leading ones I have no doubt that they are in this for the long term and um their vesting and
unlocking is not something I would even consider when I think about the quality that they are delivering to Integrity webs and blockchains I think the two things are completely separate just as I know that you know vital Joe Luben you know Justin Drake all of the etherium leadership and many others their tokens have uh vested to best of my knowledge long time ago you know Zuko uh um at zcash and so on their tokens AV vested long time ago and I have no doubt that they are in it for the right thing um I I can say this is a CEO of starkware we've been at it for six years and I you know we're now a team of 150 very smart
cryptographers Engineers researchers as far as the IE can see we're totally committed to one main thing which is making Stark net the uh rails on which uh the global Society can run with Integrity okay and um you told the defiant that you and your team will not sell at the time that the lockup ends and so do you have a sense of when you guys will I did not make that statement to the defiant and I certainly will you know whoever receives a I I will not speak on behalf of someone who receives tokens so I don't know what quote there is in the defiant but uh it's not something that I remember
making hold on I'm just pulling this up um yeah in a call with the defiant Ellie Benes and the co- founder and CEO of starkware said that the team has no intentions of cashing out once token unlocks hit so okay so they misinterpreted your this was a Mis communication or a misquote I will certainly not speak on behalf of my teammates once they have or anyone who has uh you know tokens what they're going to do so there must have been some misunderstanding with respect to that okay does that mean that you will sell at that time or it means that I respect the freedom of people who receive the darket token to make their own decisions uh at the time being and I will not
speak on their behalf um by the way of any other token recipient uh otherwise and what about what about you personally I am I have left I was a professor of computer science for many years and very happy at it and I left Academia because the math that I invented I realized uh before anyone else that this is the endgame to scale blockchains and when I left Academia it was six years ago it was the height of the Ico season everyone was telling us my dear friend and co-founder UI and myself you got to raise an Ico you got
to do it you know people were trying to enter Through the Windows to throw money at us and we said that doesn't fit with uh our vision we ended up raising you know when tesos raised $250 million filecoin raised $400 million doar all of these folk folks a lot of them came to the seminar that I organized back then at the techon where I was a professor you know Vitaly Zuko Arthur Brightman many many others VC's were very gungho on us doing an Ico to the tune of you know triple digit probably right we ended up raising $6 million so and I left Academia for
starkware just as I spent the past six years with this being my passion I'm not going anywhere this is where I want to be and I you know this is my life you know this is where what I'm passionate about and I again the 150 employees of Stark were in growing and the probably thousand or more people of starkit ecosystem they have a big vision and Big Dreams so it's important to be transparent as that as well okay so it sounds like you feel like the unlock is you know that that uh was planned in a way that you feel is aligned and um you know isn't
controversial or shouldn't have been controversial um but you know obviously youve said in this interview that you're listening you know we did see there was a big Firestorm once the announcement came out so what did you learn from the airdrop you know what parts do you think were successful what parts do you think you should have done differently oh it's just too early to to answer because the listeners should know that the airdrop is not I mean the provisions has not really happened yet it's been announced but um the claiming starts uh this coming Tuesday on February 20th by the way beware scams you know beware scams the the token is provisioned on February 20 so it's just
way too early to answer that but I will be elated to come again to your show in a couple of months to discuss it and share you know if you're willing to have me hopefully alongside the CEO of the starkit foundation we'd be happy to discuss what we've learned in future plans well I'm sure we'll have a lot to share okay I'm just talking about the announce the reaction to the announcement but I mean because one thing that you know people have noted is the telegram channel for Stark net is now gone so I'm not sure what happened there yeah I can check on that I don't know like we can get back um I will say this I mean the reality is something like this and I want to be transparent about it because we did anticipate something
so what did we anticipate we knew that um whenever you announce criteria um those who feel that they received something that they you know deserve or maybe more than they expected they're happy but generally speaking they're relatively quiet about it and that's fine and those who feel feel wronged are going to be very very vocal about it and that also is fine so we knew from the start that by announcing the criteria we will mostly be seeing um the people who feel wronged and we are listening to that we respect the users of the community and as I said multiple times I know that the intention of the
starkin foundation is to try and listen and address those things in future programs but so we didn't ipate that we'll we'll be seeing a little bit more of the negative uh stuff and it's it's natural we embrace it we respect it this is part of what being a community means and um um now regarding the exact nature uh we we knew that we didn't know what exactly would would make people uncomfortable now we know some of the things and as I said there will be future installments and hopefully some of those things heard will be addressed I I'm very optimistic on it all right well thank you so much for addressing
all these concerns on Unchained Laura thank you so much for having me here and having the chance to also present uh you know our view of the matters great don't forget next up is the Weekly News recap today presented by Unchained contributor Megan Christensen stick around for this weekend crypto after this short break defi just got way easier with vulcraft your no Cod toolkit for building deploying and monetizing automated yield strategies in a few clicks forget spending months of R&D and capital when you can instantly launch your crypto fund with Vault Craft on any evm chain from wallets and institutional service providers to a non defg anyone
can use Vault craft to supercharge their crypto join Vault Craft's referral program Unite with the community and supercharge your crypto details on vault craft. thanks for tuning in to the Weekly News recap I'm Megan Christensen from Unchained staxx hits all-time high in total value locked bolstered by defi growth it's been an extremely positive week for bitcoin's Price action and the general crypto markets with the price of Bitcoin and ethereum surpassing 52,000 and 2800 respectively on Thursday notably Bitcoin regained the level of1 trillion market capitalization also this week Stacks a layer two protocol enabling smart contracts on bitcoin has
achieved a new Milestone with an all-time high total value locked tvl of 85 million signifying a more than 400% increase in the past 4 months data from defi Lama reveals that the surge is primarily driven by Alex an open- Source decentralized exchange protocol and stacks contributing over 80% to the tvl Alex's growth is notable with its tvl jumping nearly 58% since October 1st to 68 million the native tokens for STA and Alex have also witnessed significant appreciation with STX increasing over 300% and Alex by about 520 in the same period the forthcoming Nakamoto hard Fork upgrade for saxs coinciding with
the Bitcoin having event expected in April aims to improve transaction throughput and enhance finality guarantees further solidifying Stack's position in the Bitcoin landscape this week the blockchain association representing the cryptocurrency industry voiced its opposition to Senator Elizabeth Warren's digital asset anti-money laundering act their open letter endorsed by 80 former military and National Security Professionals warns that the acts could inadvertently weaken US National Security and drive the crypto industry overseas this public stance reflects a broader trend of strategic communication and policy debates although Capital Hill insiders suggest such efforts might have limited impact on actual policy changes in a contrasting scenario blockchain
technology was spotlighted for its potential to protect data privacy at the state of the net 2024 conference Congressman Dan berer co-chair of the Congressional AI caucus proposed leveraging blockchain for data privacy admiss public concerns about data collection and misuse buyer suggestion supported by representative Bill Foster's advocacy for National digital signature linked to blockchain signifies a growing interest in blockchain's non-financial applications New York attorney general Leticia James expanded a lawsuit against digital currency Group D CG its subsidiary Genesis and crypto exchange Gemini the lawsuit originally citing 1.1 billion in alleged fraud now asserts a staggering $3 billion figure
this escalation follows additional investor claims of being misled and defrauded particularly by Genesis one Genesis creditor identified as BJ expressed relief at the lawsuits expansion acknowledging the New York attorney general support for crypto creditors they told Unchained quote we're very very happy about today's complaint because it finally recognizes officially that we were victims of fraud by Genesis and dcg directly end quote Attorney General James emphasized the need for stringent cryptocurrency regulations in light of these alleged fraudulent activities while dcg denounced the charges as baseless and vowed to contest them vigorously in
contrast to these legal Wes dcg showcased robust Financial Health in its recent shareholder letter the recorded 210 million in Q4 revenue and its valuation soared to $4.4 billion in 2023 a significant jump from the previous year bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX has agreed to sell its custody unit digital custody Incorporated DCI to coin list for a mere $500,000 the sale price starkly contrasts with the 10 million FTX paid for DCI just months before its collapse in 2022 highlighting the dramatic downfall of Sam bankman free Empire DCI was initially intended to provide custodial services for FTX us and ledgerx however following FTX is
bankruptcy filing on November 11th 2022 these plans never materialized leaving DCI with limited operations this sale forms part of FTX is broader strategy to repay creditors as the company offloads its subsidiaries during the bankruptcy process the filing noted the sales urgency citing the need to avoid additional operating expenses the sentencing of Chang Pang CZ Zoo the founder and former CEO of binance has been postponed to April 30th originally scheduled for February 23rd this delay was announced in the Seattle federal court with no immediate explanation from us prosecutors for the postponement Zhao out on $175 million bail bond had his travel requests to the United Arab
Emirates denied due to concerns over potential Flight Risk he faces charges of money laundering and violations of the bank secrecy act BSA follow in his guilty plea in November Zhao stepped down from his role at binance the exchange itself settled with us Department of Justice for 4.3 billion resolving criminal investigations Zhao has already paid 50 million in individual fines and is facing a sentence of up to 18 months although prosecutors have indicated that they could seek to extend the sentence up to 10 years Franklin tlan has joined the competitive landscape of the firm seeking to launch a spot ether ETF as indicated in their recent SEC filing this move follows their successful spot
Bitcoin ETF launch and demonstrates an interest in potentially staking ether for the fund differentiating their approach from other contenders like Arc 21 shares and black rock ey shares a decision from the SEC regarding spot ether ETFs is expected to happen in May in a startling breach of security the South Korean based crypto gaming platform Play app fell victim to a major exploit resulting in a loss of $290 Million worth of tokens this incident unfolds in separate attacks within a span of 4 days Security Experts at PC Shield identified the compromise of a private key as the likely cause the initial attack occurred on February 9th with an unauthorized wallet creating 200 million play tokens valued at $36
million subsequently despite play app's offer of a $1 million quote white hat reward end quote for the return of the stolen assets the attacker minted an additional 1.59 billion play tokens on February 12th inflating the supply Beyond its pre-attack level of 577 million playb swiftly responded pausing the play smart contract and urging users to haul transactions play up also announced plans for a contract migration time for fun bits in a humorous twist that caught the crypto Community off guard President Joe Biden's social media team posted an image of him with laser eyes a well-known symbol of support in the Bitcoin world this unexpected foray into meme culture left Bitcoin coin
enthusiasts both thrilled and puzzled the lasery Biden which first appeared in a Tik Tok video joking about rigging the NFL season resurfaced following the Kansas City Chief's Super Bowl victory while some bitcoiners interpret it as an unlikely nod to cryptocurrencies the image actually stemmed from the quote dark Brandon end quote meme a tongue-and-cheek portrayal of the president as a superhero and that's all thanks so much for joining us today if you enjoy this recap go to unchain crypto.com that is unchain crypto dos subs.com and sign up for our free newsletter so you can stay up to date with the latest in crypto unchain is produced by Laura Shen with help from Nelson Wang Matt pilard
wanovich Megan gavis Shashank and margara Korea this recap was written by wanovich and edited by jeie Kim thanks so much for listening see you next [Music] week Unchained is now a part of the coindesk podcast Network for the latest in digital assets check out markets daily 5 days a week with host Noel Ates follow the coindesk podcast Network for some of the best shows in crypto