99.9% of Crypto Is Worthless, Barry Silbert Says

Altcoin bloodbath? XRP tanks as leading cryptocurrency Bitcoin (BTC) breaks out

Fresh from successfully convincing game retailer GameStop to add Bitcoin to its balance sheet, Strive Asset Management CEO Matt Cole has now set his sights on fintech firm Intuit to do the same.Cole said in an April 14 open letter to Intuit CEO Sasan Goodarzi that Intuit’s growth is admirable, but Bitcoin (BTC) is the best way to ensure the company’s long-term success and hedge against any potential disruption caused by artificial intelligence.Intuit’s flagship products are its tax preparation app TurboTax and the small business accounting software Quickbooks. The company laid off 10% of its staff in July to pursue its AI endeavors, but Cole said the firm needs an additional hedge because TurboTax is at risk of being automated away by AI. “While we appreciate Intuit’s own investments and internal implementation of AI, we believe an additional hedge is warranted, and that a Bitcoin war chest is the best option available,” Cole said. An excerpt from Matt Cole’s letter urging Intuit to consider adding Bitcoin to its balance sheets, among other suggestions. Source: Strive Asset Management That Bitcoin war chest, he added, will ensure Intuit has “enough strategic capital to weather the AI storm and act from a position of strength through the turbulence of the AI revolution.” Cole sent a similar letter to GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen in February to advise the gaming retailer to use its $4.6 billion in cash to buy Bitcoin. GameStop’s Cohen acknowledged the letter in an April 1 regulatory filing and revealed his company had finished a convertible debt offering that raised $1.5 billion, with some proceeds earmarked for buying Bitcoin.Strive urges Intuit change crypto policyIn his letter to Intuit, Cole said the firm should reconsider the acceptable use policy for its marketing platform Mailchimp, which he claims has continued to suspend crypto-related accounts over policy violations.Source: Strive Asset ManagementCole said he “remains concerned that Intuit’s censorship and de-platforming policies discriminate against Bitcoin enthusiasts, which may harm long-term shareholder value.”Mailchimp has said that crypto-related content isn’t necessarily banned under its policy, and crypto content can be sent provided the sender isn’t involved in the sale, exchange, or marketing of crypto. Related: Saylor signals Strategy is buying the dip amid macroeconomic turmoilIts current acceptable use policy states that the platform might not allow accounts that offer “cryptocurrencies, virtual currencies, and any digital assets related to an initial coin offering.” According to Cole, Mailchimp likely adopted its policies when the legal status of crypto and related businesses was uncertain, but said with the crypto-friendly Trump administration, it’s time to “amend the acceptable use policy to end the blanket ban on crypto-related businesses.”Intuit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Magazine: Bitcoin eyes $100K by June, Shaq to settle NFT lawsuit, and more: Hodler’s Digest, April 6–12

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said privacy should be a top priority for developers, warning that assumptions about transparency and good intentions in global politics are overly optimistic.In an April 14 blog post, Buterin argued that privacy is essential to maintain individual freedom and protect against the growing power of governments and corporations. He criticized the idea that increased transparency is inherently beneficial, saying it relies on assumptions about human nature that are no longer valid.These assumptions include believing that global political leadership is “generally well-intentioned and sane,” and that social culture continues to progress in a positive direction.” Both are proving to be increasingly untrue, Buterin argued.Buterin claimed there was “no single major country for which the first assumption is broadly agreed to be true.” Furthermore, he wrote that cultural tolerance is “rapidly regressing,” which is reportedly demonstrable by an X post search for “bullying is good.” Buterin’s personal privacy issuesButerin said that he found his lack of privacy unsettling at times. He added:“Every single action I take outside has some nonzero chance of unexpectedly becoming a public media story.”Covertly taken photos of Vitalik Buterin. Source: Vitalik.ethWhile this may appear as a suggestion that privacy is an advantage only for those who venture outside the social norms, he highlighted that “you never know when you will become one of them.”Buterin only expects the need for privacy to increase as technology develops further, with brain-computer interfaces potentially allowing automated systems to peer directly into our brains. Another issue is automated price gouging, with companies charging individuals as much as they expect them to be able to pay.Related: Messaging apps are spying on you — Here’s how to stay safe in 2025There is no privacy with government backdoorsButerin also argued strongly against the idea of adding government backdoors to systems designed to protect privacy. He said such positions are common but inherently unstable.He highlighted how, in the case of Know Your Customer data, “it’s not just the government, it’s also all kinds of corporate entities, of varying levels of quality” that can access private data. Instead, the information is handled and held by payment processors, banks, and other intermediaries.Similarly, telecommunication companies can locate their users and have been found to illegally sell this data. Buterin also raised concerns that individuals with access will always be incentivized to abuse it, and data banks can always be hacked. Lastly, a trustworthy government can change and become untrustworthy in the future, inheriting all the sensitive data. He concluded:“From the perspective of an individual, if data is taken from them, they have no way to tell if and how it will be abused in the future. By far the safest approach to handling large-scale data is to centrally collect as little of it as possible in the first place.“Related: Privacy will unlock blockchain’s business potentialAuthorities have more data than everButerin raised the issue of governments being able to access anything with a warrant “because that‘s the way that things have always worked.” He noted that this point of view fails to consider that historically, the amount of data available for obtaining through a warrant was far lower.He said the traditionally available data would still be available even “if the strongest proposed forms of internet privacy were universally adopted.” He wrote that “in the 19ᵗʰ century, the average conversation happened once, via voice, and was never recorded by anyone.”Buterin’s proposed solutionsButerin suggested solutions based mainly on zero-knowledge proofs (ZK-proofs) because they allow for “fine-grained control of who can see what information.” ZK-proofs are cryptographic protocols that allow one party to prove a statement is true without revealing any additional information.One such system is a ZK-proof-based proof of personhood that proves you are unique without revealing who you are. These systems rely on documents like passports or biometric data paired with decentralized systems.Another solution suggested is the recently launched privacy pools, which allow for regulatory-compliant Ether (ETH) anonymization. Buterin also cited on-device anti-fraud scanning, checking incoming messages and identifying potential misinformation and scams.These systems are proof of provenance services for physical items using a combination of blockchain and ZK-proof technology. They track various properties of an item throughout its manufacturing cycle, ensuring the user of its authenticity.The post follows Buterin’s recent privacy roadmap for Ethereum. In it, he highlighted the short-term changes to the base protocol and ecosystem needed to ensure better user privacy.Magazine: Cypherpunk AI: Guide to uncensored, unbiased, anonymous AI in 2025