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⌐◪-◪ → Trump’s DeFi project, World Liberty Financial, is almost open for business as the team enables the KYC verification process on their website.

Unfortunately, due to SEC regulations, you can only participate (in the U.S.) if you're an accredited investor — the very rules crypto sought to disrupt.

Furthermore, additional information on WLFI will only be made available to persons who have pre-qualified via the KYC process. So, while I’d certainly love to take a peek behind the curtains, there is no way I’m KYC’ing.

Looking forward, the company wants to “bring financial freedom to everyone, no matter their background or bank balance,” suggesting they will push to remove the accredited investor check — but that is yet to be seen.

Crazy seeing a former president run what is essentially a whitelist process on a global stage. Feels bullish, but I’m still not sure.

💬 The real question is, what is World Liberty Financial actually building?

⌐◪-◪ → One of our favorite builders just got a promotion! Jesse Pollak, the man who incepted, launched, and built Coinbase’s L2 network Base, is officially on the Coinbase executive team as VP of Engineering.

Don’t worry, Base-boys (and girls), he’s still at the helm of Base but will take on new responsibilities leading the Coinbase Wallet team as well — a very complementary product to their L2.

Jesse has done a tremendous job balancing Coinbase’s needs as a centralized exchange with true web3 values in a way that drives real adoption on both the builder and consumer side. This is NOT an easy job, which I’m sure anybody who’s held a corporate innovation role can relate to — lots of bureaucracy, committees, and red tape.

Crazy seeing a CryptoPunk up there on Coinbase’s c-suite page! Anyway, on behalf of the Specs community, please join me in congratulating Jesse on Twitter!

Separately (and NFA), but I’m considering making Coinbase my primary bank for the small amount of fiat I choose to keep on hand, off-chain. Is this a bad idea chat?

⌐◪-◪ → Yesterday, Legendary criticized Polymarket for having a Hezbollah betting section — saying it “makes war look like a football game to bet on.”

While I certainly agree with the sentiment, Vitalik replied in support of these markets existing. His argument, in a nutshell, is that prediction markets add value by holding public predictions accountable without needing government or corporate censorship — mitigating the effect of inaccurate/harmful predictions.

More interestingly, in a separate tweet, he disavowed assassination markets — which in many ways doesn’t feel much different from these “war markets,” but life isn’t always black and white.

Obviously, I do not endorse assassination markets, but I have discussed how many prediction markets are simply indirect assassination markets in a previous post.

So where is the line then? Well, life isn’t black and white, but in Vitalik’s words (not mine), the dividing line is: is the market acting as a primary incentive for people to do bad things so they can insider-trade on them?

Can we reconcile allowing prediction markets for things like “Will Iran strike Israel before November” whilst banning assassination markets? What do you think chat?

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