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⌐◪-◪ → Six major trading platforms went down yesterday during one of the biggest market crashes in history and people are still fading crypto. The platforms that went down include Citi, Fidelity, E-Trade, Vanguard, TD Ameritrade, and Charles Schwab.

This means anybody using those platforms couldn’t exit their positions, reallocate/balance their portfolio, or cancel any open orders. They were trapped.

While I don’t encourage trying to time the market, dodge the dip, or anything like that — it’s NOT OKAY to lock somebody out of their portfolio, especially when the market is on fire. That’s like locking all the fire escapes on a burning building.

At this point, it’s hard not to feel like the entire system is rigged against us. Even if this was a genuine mistake (an awfully convenient one), it’s still unacceptable. It’s disgusting that customers of these platforms couldn’t access their assets. Shame.

To close, I’ll leave you with my favorite Vitalik quote, "and on that day I realized what horrors centralized services can bring.”

💬 How did you handle yesterday’s market chaos?

⌐◪-◪ → Despite the massive market downtown, the spot Ethereum ETFs saw $48.8M daily inflows yesterday — their largest positive flow day since day 1.

For context, $47.1M of those inflows came from BlackRock’s $ETHA alone, nearly 97% of the total net inflows.

While the Ethereum ETFs seemed to hold their own, the same cannot be said for the Bitcoin ETFs which saw $168.4M in outflows.

I’d like to see a study of how many people wanted to buy the Bitcoin or Ethereum dip yesterday, had the cash for it in their bank accounts, but could not execute a trade due to:

• basic TradFi limitations like wire transfer speeds; or more

• severe TradFi limitations like your trading platform going down

It’s amazing we still live in a world where markets don’t operate 24/7, wire transfers take days, and the whole system randomly crashes.

On the flip side, if the entire system was on-chain I would have collateralized the NFT that is my house, taken out a USDC loan, and gone all-in on Bitcoin. I guess it’s nice being forced to move slowly sometimes, saves you from your own degeneracy, lol.

💬 Why did the ETH ETFs see inflows but not the BTC ETFs?

⌐◪-◪ → The SEC is urging a NY court to deny Coinbase’s subpoena requests that would give them access to sensitive documents including Gary Gensler’s personal emails.

The SEC described their subpoena request as “breathtakingly broad” searching for “essentially all documents that in any way relate to crypto.”

For context, the SEC filed a suit against Coinbase in June 2023, alleging the company is operating an unregistered securities exchange, brokerage, and clearing agency.

Now, despite the Department of Justice literally selecting Coinbase as their crypto custodian, Coinbase must defend itself against the SEC’s accusations.

This is a tough situation because on one hand I deeply value every individual’s (even Gary's) right to privacy; however, I also believe the SEC is overreacting and evidence of that may very well live on Gary’s personal emails.

I think this one is above my paygrade, so I’ll leave it to the attorneys — but it’s surely one of the most significant lawsuits in crypto right now and worth keeping an eye on.

💬 Should the courts grant Coinbase access to Gary’s emails?