I can't believe I'm reposting @FmrRepMTG. Must read:
Dear Democrats,
You won your historic victory on Tuesday with the help of our America First coalition on 4 key basic issues.
1. End foreign wars, war in Iran, and funding for Israel.
2. Reduce cost of living and gas/diesel (economy)
3. End corruption in Gov
4. Reduce cost of healthcare/health insurance
Which were also key components of the mandate delivered to Trump and Republicans, which they betrayed and failed to deliver.
Your party has two factions, older establishment Dems and younger populists Dems.
If the New Democrat majority returns to issues that lost your majority and presidency in 2024 and doesn’t stay focused on those 4 main issues, then the American populists movement that swung it big for you this cycle will not vote for you in 2028.
For example, bringing back 2020-2024 issues like woke, identity politics, forcing trans issues, gun control, Covid vaccine mandates, and open borders are not the issues that drove this massive blue tsunami.
Allowing the older establishment Democrats to run back to those issues that were defeated in the 2024 election would be a very grave mistake, tone deaf, and would completely undermine the opportunity you have before you.
The country didn’t suddenly join the Democrat Party with a sworn allegiance to always vote Democrat.
The country voted to end Trump and to refocus back to the main kitchen table issues that are hurting their lives.
And most of the younger generations of voters could care less about team party politics and just beating the other side.
The future is all about, “deliver results for Americans” and whoever can get it done.
To be very clear, I’m conservative and have voted Republican my entire life, but went into open rebellion and war against Trump and Republicans, the man I worked tirelessly to put in office because he betrayed his promises and the Republican Party turned back to it’s repulsive neocon elite donor focused ways and refused to deliver for the American people.
Our entire coalition did, we ended the Trump era and burned our party down, but we didn’t turn into Democrats.
For both parties need to realize that most Americans want the same basic things and the future belongs to an independent minded left/right powerful coalition that will force our elected and tax payer funded government to deliver for Americans or face punishment at the polls.
Focus on the issues that won on Tuesday, November 3, 2026, not issues the American people defeated in the past.
The ball is in your court.
Good luck!
1
0
4
995
Michael del Castillo retweeted
This is a pivotal moment for greater adoption of crypto. But if we are going to get there, we as an industry need to be better, and we need to clean house.
What does that mean? It means actively calling out the grifts, scams, pump and dumps, and insider trading
It means disavowing the KOL industrial complex whose only purpose is to enable grift, scams, and pump and dumps.
It means grappling with both the benefits and costs of how crypto works. So yes, it's good that native crypto is censorship resistant, but it's unfortunately when criminals use it.
It means restraint. You can be pro prediction markets, while also admitting that the sports gambling that now makes up the majority of volumes has no economic benefit.
It means nuance. You can believe that memecoins are legal and should not be regulated as securities, while also calling out the obvious fact that 90% of the activity is extraction by organized crime syndicates.
Lastly, it means spending more time learning and educating and less time boasting and promoting.
What does that mean? It means actively calling out the grifts, scams, pump and dumps, and insider trading
It means disavowing the KOL industrial complex whose only purpose is to enable grift, scams, and pump and dumps.
It means grappling with both the benefits and costs of how crypto works. So yes, it's good that native crypto is censorship resistant, but it's unfortunately when criminals use it.
It means restraint. You can be pro prediction markets, while also admitting that the sports gambling that now makes up the majority of volumes has no economic benefit.
It means nuance. You can believe that memecoins are legal and should not be regulated as securities, while also calling out the obvious fact that 90% of the activity is extraction by organized crime syndicates.
Lastly, it means spending more time learning and educating and less time boasting and promoting.
10
13
92
3,555
Michael del Castillo retweeted
New episode of @GSR_io’s The Crypto Tape.
I sat down with Monaco co-founder and CEO @0xturbanurban at TOKEN2049 to talk about why tokenization only matters once you can borrow against it, where crypto native market makers still have an edge, and why traders should be able to ts.
Plus, what traders lose when markets never close, and why 24/7 trading needs circuit breakers and better risk management.
Episode drops tomorrow.
I sat down with Monaco co-founder and CEO @0xturbanurban at TOKEN2049 to talk about why tokenization only matters once you can borrow against it, where crypto native market makers still have an edge, and why traders should be able to ts.
Plus, what traders lose when markets never close, and why 24/7 trading needs circuit breakers and better risk management.
Episode drops tomorrow.
6
6
55
5,986
Michael del Castillo retweeted
I don't share much about our relationship but this one's an appreciation post. I'm proud of my husband for always speaking his mind, and staying true to his values no matter what. He says nothing is worth losing your conscience or soul over. And that we're all going to be answerable for our actions in this world.
Few people know the hardships he's gone through or how early he had to take on family responsibility. I've seen him go through the hardest shit (from when we were just friends) and get through it with strong belief that everything will be okay. That's faith.
He's also one of the best entrepreneurs I know. He's competing with giants who've raised multiple rounds of funding - hundreds of millions of dollars more - and yet he still making miracles happen with not even an ounce of the resources VCs have thrown at others in the same space. Traction and results. Azeem makes magic happen, and makes it look easy.
On a personal front though, he's been my unwavering support system. We've seen disgusting Islamophobia and bigotry over the last few years, sadly from some of the most prominent faces and names in our space. It's made me want to cry at times and even has many times. Of course it's fucking sick to read shit from people who don't even see you as a human. Who talk about the faith you peacefully practice in such a dehumanizing, sickening, hateful way.
Through it all, Azeem's been my pillar of strength and also why I feel so NY at heart. He's reminded me this country was built by immigrants. Opportunity and growing IS the American dream. That we belong here, and that we can be forces of positive change. Even if we're taking it one day at a time. 💝💝💝
Few people know the hardships he's gone through or how early he had to take on family responsibility. I've seen him go through the hardest shit (from when we were just friends) and get through it with strong belief that everything will be okay. That's faith.
He's also one of the best entrepreneurs I know. He's competing with giants who've raised multiple rounds of funding - hundreds of millions of dollars more - and yet he still making miracles happen with not even an ounce of the resources VCs have thrown at others in the same space. Traction and results. Azeem makes magic happen, and makes it look easy.
On a personal front though, he's been my unwavering support system. We've seen disgusting Islamophobia and bigotry over the last few years, sadly from some of the most prominent faces and names in our space. It's made me want to cry at times and even has many times. Of course it's fucking sick to read shit from people who don't even see you as a human. Who talk about the faith you peacefully practice in such a dehumanizing, sickening, hateful way.
Through it all, Azeem's been my pillar of strength and also why I feel so NY at heart. He's reminded me this country was built by immigrants. Opportunity and growing IS the American dream. That we belong here, and that we can be forces of positive change. Even if we're taking it one day at a time. 💝💝💝
A few months back, Mashal and I sat down with Junaid Akram, a prominent Pakistani YouTuber, to talk about blockchain and digital assets. We even did parts of the interview in Urdu.
But this post is about the shirt I wore.
Anyone who knows me knows how much being a New Yorker ys, I feel like a New Yorker before I feel like an American. If you’re from New York, you probably understand.
So wearing my “Mamdanistan” tee on that platform was intentional.
When Zohran Mamdani won last year, I felt a sense of hope that reached well beyond New York. I believe that hope helped build the momentum we saw in yesterday’s elections. It certainly stayed with me.
I’m the child of immigrants who came to this country looking for a better future. My parents achieved the American Dream, and I’ve spent my life benefiting from the opportunities their courage and this country gave me.
I want that same possibility to remain real for the people who come after us.
That’s what this hope means to me. And yesterday’s results strengthened my belief in the future of a country I love deeply.
Proud New Yorker. Proud child of immigrants. And still convinced the United States is the best country in the world.
17
3
167
4,003
Beautiful: "My parents achieved the American Dream, and I’ve spent my life benefiting from the opportunities their courage and this country gave me. I want that same possibility to remain real for the people who come after us. That’s what this hope means to me."
A few months back, Mashal and I sat down with Junaid Akram, a prominent Pakistani YouTuber, to talk about blockchain and digital assets. We even did parts of the interview in Urdu.
But this post is about the shirt I wore.
Anyone who knows me knows how much being a New Yorker ys, I feel like a New Yorker before I feel like an American. If you’re from New York, you probably understand.
So wearing my “Mamdanistan” tee on that platform was intentional.
When Zohran Mamdani won last year, I felt a sense of hope that reached well beyond New York. I believe that hope helped build the momentum we saw in yesterday’s elections. It certainly stayed with me.
I’m the child of immigrants who came to this country looking for a better future. My parents achieved the American Dream, and I’ve spent my life benefiting from the opportunities their courage and this country gave me.
I want that same possibility to remain real for the people who come after us.
That’s what this hope means to me. And yesterday’s results strengthened my belief in the future of a country I love deeply.
Proud New Yorker. Proud child of immigrants. And still convinced the United States is the best country in the world.
3
2
16
781
Michael del Castillo retweeted
A few months back, Mashal and I sat down with Junaid Akram, a prominent Pakistani YouTuber, to talk about blockchain and digital assets. We even did parts of the interview in Urdu.
But this post is about the shirt I wore.
Anyone who knows me knows how much being a New Yorker ys, I feel like a New Yorker before I feel like an American. If you’re from New York, you probably understand.
So wearing my “Mamdanistan” tee on that platform was intentional.
When Zohran Mamdani won last year, I felt a sense of hope that reached well beyond New York. I believe that hope helped build the momentum we saw in yesterday’s elections. It certainly stayed with me.
I’m the child of immigrants who came to this country looking for a better future. My parents achieved the American Dream, and I’ve spent my life benefiting from the opportunities their courage and this country gave me.
I want that same possibility to remain real for the people who come after us.
That’s what this hope means to me. And yesterday’s results strengthened my belief in the future of a country I love deeply.
Proud New Yorker. Proud child of immigrants. And still convinced the United States is the best country in the world.
But this post is about the shirt I wore.
Anyone who knows me knows how much being a New Yorker ys, I feel like a New Yorker before I feel like an American. If you’re from New York, you probably understand.
So wearing my “Mamdanistan” tee on that platform was intentional.
When Zohran Mamdani won last year, I felt a sense of hope that reached well beyond New York. I believe that hope helped build the momentum we saw in yesterday’s elections. It certainly stayed with me.
I’m the child of immigrants who came to this country looking for a better future. My parents achieved the American Dream, and I’ve spent my life benefiting from the opportunities their courage and this country gave me.
I want that same possibility to remain real for the people who come after us.
That’s what this hope means to me. And yesterday’s results strengthened my belief in the future of a country I love deeply.
Proud New Yorker. Proud child of immigrants. And still convinced the United States is the best country in the world.
11
7
117
8,595
Michael del Castillo retweeted
After being one of the few crypto-aligned people willing to go on mainstream media (@60Minutes) and criticize World Liberty and the corruption around the project, I was yelled at by most of the policy people in the crypto space, told I didn't know what I was doing, that pissing off Trump and working with the Democrats was a mistake, lost consulting business from some of the more extreme folks, and was bluntly told I didn't get it.
Oddly, those people are now very quiet today.
( Other than perhaps @justinsuntron, who continues to wage his own one-man war against this. Politics makes for strange bedfellows indeed. )
By the way, if your policy or strategy people were telling you the things they were telling me? Fire them. And maybe call me. You're going to need some help.
The bad news is much of the crypto industry will now be a target for the new Congress, in many cases deservedly so for never taking risk or compliance seriously. The good news is big tech and AI are bigger targets, so at least crypto is less relevant and headline grabbing than ever.
Oddly, those people are now very quiet today.
( Other than perhaps @justinsuntron, who continues to wage his own one-man war against this. Politics makes for strange bedfellows indeed. )
By the way, if your policy or strategy people were telling you the things they were telling me? Fire them. And maybe call me. You're going to need some help.
The bad news is much of the crypto industry will now be a target for the new Congress, in many cases deservedly so for never taking risk or compliance seriously. The good news is big tech and AI are bigger targets, so at least crypto is less relevant and headline grabbing than ever.
18
18
196
12,400
"I can make the model more elegant. That doesn't necessarily make it more true.
Perhaps scientific humility begins when we're willing to hear: “That's not what we meant.”
Perhaps scientific humility begins when we're willing to hear: “That's not what we meant.”
“The scientific method” might be one of science's most successful myths.
Not because science doesn't work. But because the idea of ONE universal recipe for discovering truth seems rather unscientific.
Dr Iain McGilchristist argues that great discoveries don't come from c method.
My reaction: Who exactly is he arguing with?
Richard Feynman famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.”
I love this!
Carl Sagan warned that skepticism itself could become dogma. Edmund Husserl questioned how our methods acquire meaning in the first place.
In my own investigations into economics, I've tried representing rotating labor associations in Kenya as protocols. It's wonderfully satisfying to turn human cooperation into diagrams, rules, and equations.
Until someone asks: Whose memory counts? Who gets to refuse? What did we leave out?
I can make the model more elegant. That doesn't necessarily make it more true.
Perhaps scientific humility begins when we're willing to hear: “That's not what we meant.”
A slightly irreverent reflection on science, certainty, four great thinkers, and why I keep making diagrams anyway.
Read More: willruddick.substack.com/p/science-is-t…
0
0
1
304
Michael del Castillo retweeted
I’m launching “With All Due,” a Substack focused on the frontier of finance. I’ll be writing about the myriad products disrupting the current market structure, the rules for them & where this all goes next. Subscribe: withalldue.substack.com/p/start-here.
30
19
329
32,784
Michael del Castillo retweeted
Wrote about the corporate freakout over stock tokenization for today's @Forbes cover.
TLDR and a few thoughts:
- The opt-outs show that crypto still has plenty of work to do explaining tokenization to the world outside its own bubble.
- Many of the executives saying no still seem to be scratching their heads over what it is in the first place.
- Kudos to OKXICE for going first, but it’s clearly paying a steep price for it. As @austincampbell pointed out, giving issuers a free veto seems like an awkward move on the SEC's part. With the benefits of tokenization still poorly understood, the incentive to say no is much stronger
- Necessity is the ultimate product-market fit. As with stablecoins, offshore demand will likely remain the key driver of growth for the near future.
forbes.com/sites/ninabamb…
TLDR and a few thoughts:
- The opt-outs show that crypto still has plenty of work to do explaining tokenization to the world outside its own bubble.
- Many of the executives saying no still seem to be scratching their heads over what it is in the first place.
- Kudos to OKXICE for going first, but it’s clearly paying a steep price for it. As @austincampbell pointed out, giving issuers a free veto seems like an awkward move on the SEC's part. With the benefits of tokenization still poorly understood, the incentive to say no is much stronger
- Necessity is the ultimate product-market fit. As with stablecoins, offshore demand will likely remain the key driver of growth for the near future.
forbes.com/sites/ninabamb…
0
3
22
1,311
Michael del Castillo retweeted
It’s an idea, btw, hatched together with @perkinscr97 here: cointelegraph.com/opinion/crypto…
Awesome response to the Binance hack by @giancarloMKTS THIS IS THE WAY!👇👇👇
"It's Time To Give Them A Punch In The Nose"
@realDonaldTrump @SecScottBessent @FBIDirectorKash
1
9
48
6,319
A new BIS report makes me even more worried about AI monopolies. The report says 28.7% of AI firms' investment deals (by value) targeted another AI firm, and a whopping 46.4% involved investors with commercial supply-chain ties to the target: bis.org/publications/b… via @BIS_org
4
0
2
346
The BIS offers plenty of smart reasons why this might be so, but the increasingly huge bubbles in that image give reason to re-evaluate the report's own statement: "What makes AI exceptional is that the industry combines, to an unusual degree, the conditions under which theory predicts overlapping commercial and financing relationships."
1
0
0
120
Among those conditions are a number that read like a textbook warning about the risks of monopolies:
1) Information asymmetries between firms and their trading partners
2) Uncertainty about the commercial prospects of young firms
3) Very large financing needs, so external capital may be costly or unavailable at the required scale
1) Information asymmetries between firms and their trading partners
2) Uncertainty about the commercial prospects of young firms
3) Very large financing needs, so external capital may be costly or unavailable at the required scale
0
0
0
68
Michael del Castillo retweeted
What do you listen to when you write? James Baldwin listened to Bessie Smith. Joan Didion listens to nothing. Great read: lithub.com/how-to-find-th… by @marissalevien via @lithub
2
1
4
479
Michael del Castillo retweeted
In 2014 I went nearly a week without sleep. I was running PayPal and attackers were inside our corporate network. They'd compromised an eBay employee's laptop, got onto the VPN, taken over a domain controller and made themselves domain admins. eBay and PayPal were one company then, on one Windows network. They stole 145M eBay user records, then came for the segregated vault holding PayPal's card credentials. We fought them off. They never got in, but they got close. Too close.
Yesterday Binance lost ~$6.3B in what looks like the same way. A DevOps engineer's laptop, then a service inside the withdrawal stack, then withdrawals the signer approved because they came from a trusted source. Hot wallets emptied in under four hours. No key was stolen.
Nobody broke cryptography or a ledger. They found someone with access and used the trust that came with it. Banks get hit exactly the same way.
2016: attackers inside Bangladesh Bank used its own SWIFT access to send $951M of payment orders to the NY Fed. $81M was lost. The rest was held because an unrelated sanctions filter tripped on the word "Jupiter". That was luck, and it only worked because wires took days to settle.
June 2025: an IT employee at C&M Software, which connects Brazilian banks to Pix, sold his credentials for about $2,700. Attackers used them to send fake Pix transfers out of six institutions' reserve accounts at the central bank. ~$140M in under three hours.
August 2025: stolen vendor credentials at Sinqia, another Pix connector. ~R$710M out of HSBC and one other institution in a single afternoon. The central bank froze most of it, after it had already moved.
Same attack every time. Speed is what changed. When settlement took days, a filter, a correspondent bank or someone in ops could catch a bad payment. Pix, FedNow, SEPA Instant and blockchains settle in seconds. Payment security was mostly built for the slow world.
PayPal's card and user data survived 2014 because domain admin on the corp network couldn't unlock it quickly enough, and our alerting caught the unusual activity on the network. That's the model. Approval policy no laptop or vendor login can reach. Velocity and anomaly limits enforced outside the system that sends. Dynamic caps on what any one wallet, account or service can move per hour. All of it in real time.
About $3B of what left Binance has been frozen, almost all of it stablecoins. The $1.4B in bitcoin is sitting in 19 wallets and nobody can touch it. I don't think that's the problem. For decades the ability to reverse a wire or a card charge let a lot of weak security slide. You either stop the transfer before it's signed or you eat the loss.
Nothing about the technology failed here. The chains processed exactly the transactions they were handed. Binance's own systems handed them the wrong ones because an engineer's laptop was compromised. That's operational security. eBay in 2014, Bangladesh Bank and two Pix connectors all failed at it on their own rails.
In 2014 the attackers never reached the vault. If they had, the fraud losses would have been the small part. PayPal existed so people could pay without handing their card details to every merchant on the internet. We held those details so they didn't have to. Losing them would have broken the one thing the company was built on, and I'm not sure we would have recovered.
I expect blockchains and digital assets to become the standard way money moves. Every custodian of digital assets, or of fiat on a real-time rail, is in that position now. The controls have to adapt to settlement in seconds, crypto or not.
Yesterday Binance lost ~$6.3B in what looks like the same way. A DevOps engineer's laptop, then a service inside the withdrawal stack, then withdrawals the signer approved because they came from a trusted source. Hot wallets emptied in under four hours. No key was stolen.
Nobody broke cryptography or a ledger. They found someone with access and used the trust that came with it. Banks get hit exactly the same way.
2016: attackers inside Bangladesh Bank used its own SWIFT access to send $951M of payment orders to the NY Fed. $81M was lost. The rest was held because an unrelated sanctions filter tripped on the word "Jupiter". That was luck, and it only worked because wires took days to settle.
June 2025: an IT employee at C&M Software, which connects Brazilian banks to Pix, sold his credentials for about $2,700. Attackers used them to send fake Pix transfers out of six institutions' reserve accounts at the central bank. ~$140M in under three hours.
August 2025: stolen vendor credentials at Sinqia, another Pix connector. ~R$710M out of HSBC and one other institution in a single afternoon. The central bank froze most of it, after it had already moved.
Same attack every time. Speed is what changed. When settlement took days, a filter, a correspondent bank or someone in ops could catch a bad payment. Pix, FedNow, SEPA Instant and blockchains settle in seconds. Payment security was mostly built for the slow world.
PayPal's card and user data survived 2014 because domain admin on the corp network couldn't unlock it quickly enough, and our alerting caught the unusual activity on the network. That's the model. Approval policy no laptop or vendor login can reach. Velocity and anomaly limits enforced outside the system that sends. Dynamic caps on what any one wallet, account or service can move per hour. All of it in real time.
About $3B of what left Binance has been frozen, almost all of it stablecoins. The $1.4B in bitcoin is sitting in 19 wallets and nobody can touch it. I don't think that's the problem. For decades the ability to reverse a wire or a card charge let a lot of weak security slide. You either stop the transfer before it's signed or you eat the loss.
Nothing about the technology failed here. The chains processed exactly the transactions they were handed. Binance's own systems handed them the wrong ones because an engineer's laptop was compromised. That's operational security. eBay in 2014, Bangladesh Bank and two Pix connectors all failed at it on their own rails.
In 2014 the attackers never reached the vault. If they had, the fraud losses would have been the small part. PayPal existed so people could pay without handing their card details to every merchant on the internet. We held those details so they didn't have to. Losing them would have broken the one thing the company was built on, and I'm not sure we would have recovered.
I expect blockchains and digital assets to become the standard way money moves. Every custodian of digital assets, or of fiat on a real-time rail, is in that position now. The controls have to adapt to settlement in seconds, crypto or not.
80
262
1,938
316,828
What do you listen to when you write? James Baldwin listened to Bessie Smith. Joan Didion listens to nothing. Great read: lithub.com/how-to-find-th… by @marissalevien via @lithub
2
1
4
479
This is about more than just reading. Be careful of what you let others incentivise you to do: lithub.com/what-we-lose-w… by @marissalevien via @lithub
1
0
2
413