letting the whole big world know that i'm now at
@FortuneMagazine
on the crypto desk and open for any leads on any blockchain stories, big or small! email me ideas at benjamin.weiss
@fortune
.com
ryan selkis, one of crypto’s more vocal influencers, lives a charmed life.
he owns a house near Baltimore. he’s well-educated. he has a large family.
why, then, does
@twobitidiot
seem so pissed off?
i dug into the source of his rage for
@dlnewsinfo
:
hello!
starting today, i'm covering crypto for
@DLNewsInfo
from brooklyn. BUT, in a month, i'm moving to dubai to cover the crypto scene from there.
please send tips, juicy gossip, and cool story ideas to bweiss
@dlnews
.com.
and... if you live in dubai, let me know!
lil’ data story:
@joanna_focus
and i decided to count up the number of female-presenting speakers at the Bitcoin conference from 2019 to 2024.
the results? surprise surprise... bad.
he’s always online.
just for fun, i downloaded his most recent posting history on X and found that he posts, including retweets, on average 117 times a day — often between 3 and 5 am.
and that’s not to mention that three out of the seven headliners at Bitcoin 2024 have allegedly committed serious sexual misconduct.
h/t
@molly0xFFF
but… there is a “Women’s Brunch” scheduled for today!!
scoop: got shown first page of a subpoena the SEC issued to a crypto VC. at least two other crypto VCs received similar subpoenas, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
in 2019, about 17% of the speakers at the conference were identifiably female.
in 2024, that number’s shrunk to 13%. in other words, men outnumber women speakers almost 9 - 1.
fact check: have seen conflicting reports about how much fairshake, crypto's largest super PAC, has raised.
dug into the data and found numbers that were basically the same as those from
@molly0xFFF
these stats are worse than data we compiled for Consensus 2024, where 26% of the publicly listed speakers were women.
it’s also worse than the baselines for industry conferences writ large.
hello! i'm now in dubai, and i am bored.
if you live in the city/know people who work from the UAE, please let me know! i'd love to grab coffees/drinks with anyone to avoid the heat!
Scoop: got more details on OpenSea 2.0 and how the company is mourning its recently laid-off employees—at a mansion once owned by Katy Perry and Russell Brand
HOWEVER, im still planning on doing some intermittent reporting on crypto for fortune and other outlets for the next few months, so continue to direct bigger interview offers/story ideas my way
former employees are divided on his rhetoric.
He is trying to force his own agenda in his attempts to promote the industry, said one. “His delivery is destructive.”
proud to say
@FortuneMagazine
's inaugural list ranking the best companies in crypto went live.
i not only wrote a good number of blurbs for these but helped out on the backend, writing a bunch of code to parse through public data.
i am convening a ben weisses of crypto roundtable on 8/17 at 2 p.m. ET. if you meet the following criteria, you may join:
1. your name is ben weiss
2. you do something with crypto
we have three confirmed ben weisses, and we are looking for more!
@GaryGensler
“i have no idea what his deal is,”
@mcuban
told me in an email re: selkis, who has challenged him to duke it out.
“he knows exactly what my deal is,”
@twobitidiot
told me.
spoke with
@JDonoghueAuthor
about his crypto tell-all he released yesterday.
got into an interesting conversation on pseudonymity and when it's accepted/criticized in crypto:
On Chub AI, for as little as $5 a month, users can visit a virtual brothel staffed by girls under 15 and chat with whomever they like. And who helps power these chats? Meta,
@iamsternlicht
and I found in my most recent story for
@FortuneMagazine
Caroline Ellison was part of a boys’ club. Barely any equity, no slush fund. She’s got the biggest share of the spotlight, but, like, barely any actual shares…
@FortuneMagazine
fun lil' FOIA: i saw a rumor spread on X that CFTC staffers were gathering evidence at Consensus.
texts, docs, and emails show that there was no coordinated sting, it was mainly feds having fun...
said another:
“I think his antics have been pretty consistent for the last seven or so years,” they said, later qualifying that his online chatter has recently become a bit more aggressive.
I actually feel nothing but total contempt for the people who are piling on right now when they know that this is a ridiculous overreaction.
We should have legal and skilled immigration (as I’ve said many times in the past), and limit the cultural suicide of imported socialism.
first(ish) story with
@DLNewsInfo
: salame may serve 5.5 years or less because of potential discounts for good behavior and entrance into a substance abuse program
some highlights from my profile, in no particular order:
i made an incomplete list of the names he’s called
@garygensler
: rat, snake, liar, fraud, loser, beta, toady, sociopath, and the Grinch.
OpenSea has received a Wells notice from the SEC threatening to sue us because they believe NFTs on our platform are securities.
We're shocked the SEC would make such a sweeping move against creators and artists. But we're ready to stand up and fight.
Cryptocurrencies have long
Could the $1T coin happen? And does it have to be platinum or could it be crypto?
@bdanweiss
digs deep to find out. Congrats on your first
@FortuneMagazine
story Ben!
i was traveling, so i didn't get around to publicizing this piece.
HOWEVER, here's a lil something i wrote for the guardian about AI porn companies that emphasize consent and boundaries more than existing products:
Hot take, but the star of the SBF trial is not Caroline Ellison or SBF himself but Grant Bianco, the guy who’s pulling all of the evidence up on the screen for the jury and doing the red circles and highlights. LONG LIVE BIANCO
Scoop with
@leomschwartz
: Monad Labs in talks to raise more than $200 million round led by Paradigm, valuing the Jump Crypto-linked startup at $3 billion
no response yet from kathy hochul PR team about whether she met sbf at the capital grille on sept. 16, 2022. we have cell data and a calendar invite, but we are still looking for info on alleged venue and potential menu choices, including filet mignon
ok, there are a bunch of big names here, but some of my favs are and a trend of moon-named entities: moon pod, moon overlord, mooncolony, and moonstone
read the lil' write up
@FortuneMagazine
and
@FortuneCrypto
I profiled Gary Gensler for the new print issue of
@FortuneMagazine
.
We dug into staff burnout, agency turf wars, and Gensler's trajectory from Goldman banker to Dodd-Frank steward at the CFTC to divisive SEC chair.
W/
@jeffjohnroberts
:
The NYT finally discovered Worldcoin. Description is reallllly similar to Fortune's account from March.
Also, unlike his NYT counterpart, our reporter took one for the team and got his iris scanned. (Thanks and hope you don't get enslaved
@leomschwartz
)
looked into SEC filings to see how some top crypto VCs did in 2023 and Multicoin's assets under management almost tripled, jumping from about $1.36 billion in 2022 to $3.81 billion in 2023
Yesterday, the prolific crypto scammer Monkey announced his departure on Telegram.
Luckily,
@bdanweiss
and I have been tracking Monkey for weeks, so we have the full account of how he changed the draining game.
h/t
@zachxbt
for all his work on this:
Remember Debt Box, the infamous SEC crypto lawsuit where a federal judge sanctioned the agency for misleading the court?
The story gets even stranger, including an alleged kidnapping in Dubai and $400 million of disputed funds:
I just spent almost two hours wrangling with my health insurance and pharmacy to get a medication that my health insurance, from the get-go, told me was covered. How much unpaid labor do we perform to smooth over all the administrative inconsistencies of the healthcare industry?
did a vibe check with legal experts, developers, and investors for
@FortuneMagazine
on the effects the Binance and Coinbase lawsuits may have on Solana:
silly item for the week: talked to two of the least deep-pocketed donors to Fairshake, a pro-crypto super PAC that gets the vast majority of its money from incredibly wealthy execs like Brian Armstrong and Marc Andreessen
conveniently, one day after returning responses to a list of assertions we sent them, opensea said it received a wells notice from the SEC.
here’s what else i found out:
zero-knowledge proofs are in the weeds for a layperson, but for some, the stakes of this piece of tech could be quite huge, i.e. it's going to be an important tool to hold A.I. accountable. read what i wrote for
@FortuneMagazine
:
up until june 2022, opensea kept most of its cash reserves in ether. as a result, the company saw the value of its cash reserves plummet along with the broader crypto market.
NEW: In June, Kanav Kariya stepped down as president of Jump Crypto, the blockchain arm of the famed Chicago trading firm.
The move marked a staggering few years for the 28-year-old wunderkind, from overseeing billions to becoming enmeshed in one of crypto's worst scandals
it’s a scoop-laden piece that i wrote as a narrative — it’s a tale as old as silicon valley: a company rides a wave of hype for tech’s newest, shiniest innovation, and then, as the hype dissipates, it becomes a shadow of its former self.
Scooplet from
@bdanweiss
and me:
Scott Purcell, founder and CEO of the embattled crypto custodian Fortress, stepped down after its failed Ripple acquisition, a ~$15 million hacking incident, and previously unreported staff layoffs
Crypto tokens have changed the game for venture capital, so
@AnneSraders
and I delved into the deep impacts of the bear market in this feature for
@FortuneMagazine
.
With lots of scoopy details about Tiger, Paradigm, Braintrust, and more:
@lordkeklol
Hey! My name is Ben Weiss, and I'm a reporter on the crypto desk at Fortune. We're doing a story on the meteoric rise of Pepecoin, and I was wondering if you'd be willing to speak about it, since it looks like you're (potentially) the creator?
as the AI zeitgeist continues to dominate headlines, perhaps it’s helpful to think about one of silicon valley’s former favorite startups and what happens after the hype hollows out.