HOW Web3 & THE #ETHER FREE PASS WAS BORN:
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) December 27, 2021
Recently, @jack was blocked by @pmarca over Jack’s observation regarding the inherent interests of VCs related to Web3. What is Web3?
“Web3, much like other buzzwords you hear - Bitcoin, NFTs etc. - is based on blockchain technology.”
To support his position, Deaton published a thread on December 27, in which he set out a number of facts. According to him, on December 13, 2017, William Hinman, who was then the head of the corporate finance department of the department, and Joseph Lubin, CEO of ConsenSys, held a meeting that “did not concern the Ethereum ICO”, but became “the beginning of a very mutually beneficial 'union'”.
The initial meeting between Hinman & Lubin occurred at the height of the ICO craze, following #Ether’s successful crowd-sale model. But Hinman and the Lubin / Consensys meeting wasn’t about #Ethereum’s ICO. Instead, it was the beginning of a very mutually beneficial “alliance”.
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) December 27, 2021
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“On January 25, 2018, SEC Chairman [Jay] Clayton met with Chris Dixon of Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to gather select industry players and submit a paper on how the regulator should deal with digital assets,” wrote the founder of Deaton Law Firm.
Deaton recalled that in January 2018, XRP "was the second-largest crypto asset by market capitalization." According to the web archive, as of December 31, 2017, the token was ranked right behind bitcoin (CoinGecko), but on January 2, 2018, it was replaced by ETH. However, as noted by the author of the thread, Ripple representatives were not invited to the industry group.
Certainly, the second largest crypto asset would be represented in this industry group. But according to @CGasparino and @EleanorTerrett’s reporting, @Ripple was not invited by Dixon to be a part of this industry group. We know Lowell Ness was the lead attorney writing the memo📝
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) December 27, 2021
According to Deaton, it includes representatives of the crypto industry, to one degree or another connected with the Ethereum ecosystem. The lawyer also cited a previously announced statement that Hinman received $15 million from Simpson Thacher - its leaders were on the board of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. The interests of ConsenSys, according to him, were represented by the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell associated with Clayton.
Sullivan Cromwell brokered the deal of Consensys buying JP Morgan’s Quorum - a direct competitor of Ripple. The Quorum /JP Morgan Coin deal was announced 4 months before the lawsuit against Ripple and XRP was filed - as most senior SEC officials behind the lawsuit left the SEC.
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) December 27, 2021
"Sullivan & Cromwell brokered ConsenSys's deal to buy Quorum [JPMorgan's blockchain platform], a direct competitor to Ripple," Deaton said.
He added that information about this appeared four months before the filing of a lawsuit against Ripple. Deaton also mentioned hedge fund One River Asset Management, which has invested in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and on whose advisory board Clayton joined after leaving the SEC.
Hinman, according to the Deaton Law Firm, allegedly became Dixon's partner in a $2.2 billion crypto fund.A16z launched a fund with this size of assets in June 2021.
We learned that Hinman’s Ether Free Pass Speech closely followed the Lowell Ness Perkins Coie memo 📝. And after collecting $15m from Simpson Thacher, Hinman became a partner with Chris Dixon at Andreesen’s $2.2B Crypto Fund which is heavily invested in #BTC and #Ether.
— John E Deaton (@JohnEDeaton1) December 27, 2021
Earlier, Fox Business TV channel published a large-scale investigation of the SEC case against Ripple. The journalists came to the conclusion that the employees of the department behind the filing of the lawsuit could be affiliated with Ethereum.
In August, Ripple succeeded in getting Hinman to testify in court, despite attempts by the regulator to reject the motion.
While speaking at the DC Fintech Week virtual conference on Thursday, October 21, Ripple chief executive Brad Garlinghouse declared that Ethereum had been granted a regulatory green light that enabled it to surpass his company’s XRP token.
“Within the last few years, XRP was the second most valuable digital asset. As it became clear the SEC had given a hall pass to ETH, ETH obviously has kind of exploded and that clarity has helped.”
XRP was the second largest crypto asset by market capitalization in late December 2017. At the time of writing, it has slipped to seventh place while Ethereum has held the second spot ever since.
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