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Did you see the graph I dropped into the group chat showing Bitcoin activity by year and value? Nick, can you put it on the screen so we can watch it together? The most interesting thing about this graph, if you look closely, and it's pretty obvious, is that we're all, in one way or another, actually increasing the price starting in 2018, thanks to all these incentives.
Because if you look at the average price of Bitcoin around 2018, it was absolute zero. You know, we were talking about a price of a few thousand dollars, two or three thousand. Ten thousand. Three thousand, you know, and then suddenly, when all that stimulus money hit the market, look what happened.
But I think something else unique happened: people really figured out how to do these very complex over-the-counter arbitrage transactions with Bitcoin. And I think we should explain what this is, because they are the ones behind the Three Arrows Capital case. What's behind, you know, I think Sam had kind of a hint in the tweet that some of these exchanges are actually already insolvent.
They are like the "walking dead." So, the first thing to remember is that this is a completely unregulated market . Yes? There are no market makers as such who would report to any regulatory body. There are no clearing houses. We have no way to understand systemic risks while they are accumulating in the crypto market.
So what started in 2018-19 was that people realized the following. This is roughly what we talked about last week. You go and do some crazy round of investment. You know, you're overstating the value of fictitious capital in the company. This company then issues tokens. You're not issuing these tokens on the blockchain, of course, but somewhere where transactions can happen off- chain, right?
And there are a bunch of exchanges where this happens off- chain, because it's one company that has a bunch of separate sub- accounts. And when these tokens first come out, retail investors go crazy, the price goes up, and these guys just dump everything into retail. And you know, you spin this scheme as fast as you can, and you can pump out a huge amount of money.
Meanwhile, all these things like DeFi suddenly came out of nowhere, and it was like, "Hey, you can make 15, 16, 17, 18% just by depositing your Bitcoin." And people started depositing bitcoins. But then this happened: the institutions that held these deposits had to find ways to earn that 11 , 12, or 13%, of course, so they went off the blockchain to some random person who promised even higher interest rates, trying to make money on the arbitrage difference.
But it always catches up, because when something like Terra drops to zero, all the Bitcoin that was used to power this DeFi process around Terra just disappears. And suddenly you, as a lender, are asking, " Hey, can I get my bitcoin back?" And the broker replies, " Well, actually, I do n't have it. I loaned it to someone else.
Let me ask that person." And they say, "Sorry, I don't have it, but I have these Terra coins because I was arbitraging, and now they've depreciated." And this is essentially what we are seeing now. So, we have two big problems. And I think there's a third one, which is quite funny. The first big problem is that in the absence of any regulatory oversight, such things will inevitably happen.
Systemic risks will accumulate. That's what we're facing right now—a huge amount of systemic risk, mostly around Bitcoin. A lot of this money, in my opinion , simply evaporated. So all these people trying to find their deposits, especially in custodial accounts with over-the-counter brokers, could be left with nothing.
And I think it would be a complete mess if it actually happened. And, let's be clear, Chamat, they don't have the keys to their own Bitcoin. They put the money in an escrow account. They then started lending to provide them with this 15%, and now they have no legal recourse. They can't get their Bitcoin back.
Well, take a look at this article and tell me how many people keep them in their wallets and own the keys. Does anyone have a defense in the case of Three Arrows Capital and all these interconnected parties that are now, you know, completely bankrupt because of this scam? The answer is definitely no.
Um, so that's the first problem. You have a complete lack of oversight, which means that systemic risk has built up in the system . Second, Jason, you just said the right thing: people don't even understand the chain of ownership here, meaning you thought you owned these bitcoins. It turns out you actually may not own them at all .
You thought you were borrowing them correctly . Actually, no. As it turned out, there is no contract that can be enforced. So I think there are a whole bunch of other legal issues that are going to come up now, because people who were actually legally borrowing these assets... For example, if you're playing a short position and you're borrowing it from one of us, there are very strict rules, you know?
If you want to enter into a credit default swap on this, there is a central clearing house that makes sure you don't get too leveraged. You know, you need to be audited by a bank to even open an account that allows you to conduct such derivative transactions. In the crypto world, none of this was possible.
And the last thing I find quite funny is that we had to listen to every millennial and Gen Z in the crypt telling us that it's not the same as the " boomers," and it turns out it's the same, the same, the same—it's the worst. It's like... after hearing so many times how different everything is, it turns out that everything is exactly the same.
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