Why My Faith in Terra Increased AFTER the Attack on Luna

[yd19]

For over a year now, I posited that if there is actually an anti-establishment crypto project, it will come under attack by the establishment to destroy competition and make people beg for regulation. This was laughed off then but is exactly what occurred with Terra. It was also the main reason I did not go all-in investing in Terra. Despite the fact it was my favorite L1 project, I felt the Terra and the overall crypto community had a massive blindspot in thinking they would not come under attack from TradFi if they were able to successfully create decentralized projects free from TradFi. Hopefully, everyone is awake now.

Previously, I had also questioned Terra and UST’s success story knowing full well that the World Economic Forum has for years considered Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLT) as an essential component of its “4th Industrial Revolution” in forcing everyone around the globe into a cashless society with Digital IDs, Social Credit Scores, CBDCs, and UBIs tied to CBDCs, whose every single interaction and transaction could be tracked on the blockchain and who also could easily be censored. Of course this would be for little people, while the establishment would still conduct their activity in secret and anonymously. All the push for decentralization really a clever guise for further centralization deployed using decentralized tech that would be harder to penetrate (think of one large spider web vs 1,000 smaller spider webs making up a larger spider web). I considered that if a project was that successful and did not come under attack, it could be part of the plan. Now we have our answer.

The World Economic Forum’s partners in the crypto space include Aave, Algorand, Chainlink, Circle (USDC), FTX, Hedera, Maker, Ripple, and Stellar. Players from the crypto space attending the World Economic Forum’s meeting in Davos from May 22-26 include:
Sam Bankman-Fried - FTX
Michael Casey - CoinDesk
Dante Disparte - Circle Internet Financial, LLC
Brad Garlinghouse - Ripple
Brett Harrison - FTX
Esteban Ordano - Decentraland Foundation
Faryar Shirzad - Coinbase

Names I have not seen tied to the World Economic Forum’s 2030 “You will own nothing, have no privacy, and be happy” initiative are Do Kwon and Terra. This attack on Terra confirms to me that the establishment considered Terra such a legitimate threat to its global money monopoly and future plans for a cashless society, not only did they launch an attack that required over $1 billion and inside info regarding 3pool and 4pool liquidity but also an intense smear campaign by their mainstream media and Twitter trolls and bots that have also made their way to these boards to make it appear that no attack occurred and that it was just a faulty mechanism that was exploited.

This was an attack on the entire crypto community by powerful criminals who have built up a global money monopoly over a period of centuries. While the battle may have been lost, the war is on. Due to their cowardice, they wage undeclared wars in secret on the general populace and these are the same criminals behind the imprisonment and torture of people like Julian Assange. I would encourage everyone to do what you can to break free from TradFi and end its centuries-long money monopoly, but also to be vigilant against crypto projects by TradFi like the ones mentioned above posing as decentralized crypto. I will continue to stand by legitimate crypto projects that challenge the establishment, no matter how often they come under attack and are vilified by the establishment. Though I believe truly decentralized crypto projects will need to give TradFi the boot or at least implement their own KYC and regulations onto them that they are trying to force onto retail so they can dominate the space. If anyone needs to be regulated, it is the establishment VCs that need to be regulated by retail.

Before the establishment shills come onto this post to call it a “conspiracy theory,” I would like to point everyone’s attention to a document titled National Economy and Banking System of the United States by Robert Latham Owen that was presented before the US Senate in 1939, one of the Senators who originally co-sponsored the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. After seeing the Federal Reserve at work for a period of 26 years, he called out its corruption explaining how they were promised how it would work vs how it actually worked. What is really interesting though is the selection of quotes at the end of this document by famous figures regarding the financial system since the 1800s. This is what we are still dealing with today.

Some quotes from the document included below (beginning on Page 98 of the document):

[lk86]

yes! someone with a brain good job

[vixasi7192]

you are delusional. do kwon and buddies made billions out of this project. so who are the attackers?

[yd19]

Yeah, he had already made many billions more, then nuked his own project to make less and get negative publicity, excellent logic there. Binance and Gemini KYCed the attacker(s) and know who it is.

[vixasi7192]

@yd19

Yeah, he had already made many billions more, then nuked his own project to make less and get negative publicity, excellent logic there

they were minting 100m ust per day in april. i don’t think he wanted it to end of course but he also didn’t know it was so unsustainable

[yd19]

Yes laws of supply and demand. Demand for UST high due to high APY on Anchor = most UST minted = LUNA burned = price appreciation in LUNA, some of which was used to buy BTC.

While the Anchor APY was not sustainable long term, the issue was being addressed and the APY lower.

The fact of the matter is it took a very sophisticated attack that leveraged over a billion $, violating the Terms of Service on two major exchanges, inside info on Curve liquidity pools, and violating Twitters ToS with spam bots to cause Fud.

If Binance, Gemini, and Twitter enforced their own ToS and froze user accounts for suspicious activity, the attack would have been nipped in the bud. However since this attack most likely came from TradFi and its government and intelligence dupes, they were allowed to violate all Terms of Service without issue in order to cause a depeg and bank run.

[Hyperion]

@yd19

For over a year now, I posited that if there is actually an anti-establishment crypto project, it will come under attack by the establishment to destroy competition and make people beg for regulation. This was laughed off then but is exactly what occurred with Terra.

Nice theory. I thought somewhat similarly, in broad outlines. (I do not comment either way on the remainder of your post.) Now, I must ask: If you think that way, where were you during the crash?

This is where I was, when Terra was going down, down, down:

Terra is important. That’s why I just nearly spent my last dollar on LUNA

Hello, Lunatics! At a moment when I am personally in dire financial distress, I just bought some LUNA. It wasn’t much. A paltry handful. I am almost bled dry. But I had to buy some LUNA. Then, I spent a few hours searching for more money that I can afford to risk on a binary “great opportunity, or goes to zero—either/or” basis: You are now under severe attack, and you may not survive. Then, I realized that moral support is just as important, and I should stop by your forum. This isn’t a…

I was 1000% pro-Terra. When they were collapsing, I wanted to support what I perceived as “an anti-establishment crypto project… under attack by the establishment”. I put my money where my mouth is.

On May 11, I wrote:

@Hyperion

And this attack on you decisively confirms my instincts: Terra/Luna is important. If you are not being attacked on a grand scale, then you are not doing anything important—you are not doing anything that could make a real difference in the world. On the flipside, I will set this as a benchmark for myself: If I am ever attacked with the same resources as now being brought to bear against Terra, then I will declare my life a resounding success. It will have meant I did something truly important.

With my personal resources almost totally drained by the market crash, I rode LUNA down from around $8 all the way down to $0.000003. At a moment when I was financially desperate, I took on new debt that I could not afford—I borrowed money to throw it into LUNA, as almost everyone else was fleeing.

I knew full well that it could go to zero. I did it anyway. And I got my friends to invest, too—Bitcoin maximalists who despised Terra, I persuaded to buy LUNA! Because I put my money where my mouth is. (And theirs, unfortunately.)

Did you?

I have spoken here to some old LUNA holders, who DCAed down in the crash—pushing in more money, as the LUNA they already had was losing >99.9999% of its value. So, if you’ve been holding LUNA for a long time, the same question still applies as for you.

You talk big now. But if you had matched those words with your money during the worst of the crash, then you soon discovered that, among other things:

1. You are widely maligned here as a predatory opportunist gambler—because you paid good money for LUNA at fair market price in honest transactions, at a time when it looked like LUNA was going to [the word “zero” is CENSORED when it follows the words “going to”; see below].

2. Terra is a centralized project, which Do Kwon rules by fiat. You want to fight “the establishment”? The Terra establishment consists of DK, TFL, and corrupted stake operators.

3. The UST peg that you wanted to support with your money on the LUNA side can be merrily broken by the Terra establishment. UST holders get a handful of volatile altcoins as a booby prize—largely locked, as an extra slap in the face.

4. Stealing from new investors is acceptable, so that the Terra establishment can prioritize its and its insiders’ investments.

5. A disturbing proportion of the Terra community lacks the principles of blockchain immutability that guide Bitcoin, Ethereum, and every other major coin. Not all of them: The community is now split between the principled opponents of the hardfork, and the greed-blinded Twitter-buyers for whom “crypto” means “get rich quick”.

6. The Terra establishment believes that it can hide the nature of its project, by removing doubleplusungood crimethink words from its official edition of the Terra Forum Newspeak Dictionary.

(Among many others. Those are only three four choice examples. That last was added when trying to make this post! The moderation staff here are spoiled children playing a game, not adults moderating a rational discussion.)

That list could be continued. I believe it suffices to make my point.

---

Now you, @yd19, signed up May 15—after May 13, when Do Kwon had first announced his initial plan to are-you-gee UST holders and new LUNA investors. You’re carrying water for Terra, painting some false heroic portrait of them when they are violating every blockchain principle to do a centralized money-grab.

Cui bono?

Not to spin a conspiracy theory here, but one might be reasonably suspicious of your motives.

---

Coda:

For someone who talks the “anti-establishment” talk, you seem awfully focused on CEX KYC, CEX TOS, and what you think those who attacked the peg should not have been allowed to do. What would you say if they had done it all anonymously on DEXes?

Do you believe in permissionless money, or not? I came here for decentralized, permissionless money which, in principle, cannot be controlled by CEX nonsense.

(Yes, I bought all of my LUNA on DEXes—even though I was paying 50–70% above CoinGecko’s listed rate due to lack of LUNA liquidity.)

[yd19]

“Now, I must ask: If you think that way, where were you during the crash?”

Right here, and I exposed attacks on Mirror Protocol many months ago as well.

put my money where my mouth is. (And theirs, unfortunately.)

Did you?

I had nothing invested, I’m just here for fun and games. As stated in my initial post, the fact that people did not take my warnings against a TradFi attack on Terra seriously for a year, even despite the attacks on Mirror deterred me from going all in Luna. Why would I go all in on a project that I know is going to get nuked by the usual suspects and people won’t even put up a defense, and not even bother to find the suspects, calling it a “conspiracy?” I bought some on the way down and got burned as well. Telling people to invest in a coin under obvious attack without proper defenses is like sending soldiers into a losing battle to meet a certain death. I’m not into making myself or others out to be martyrs and would rather live to fight another day.

Now onto your bullets:

1. Yup already saw that.
2. The real establishment is City of London, DC, NYC - Terra are just tiny fish in a huge sea of sharks that challenged their international money monopoly with the crypto version of fractional reserve banking.
3. Anything can be broken with enough resources thrown at it, even Bitcoin.
4. Stealing from the Terra community via a sophisticated attack is acceptable, so that the City of London Establishment can prioritize its and its insiders’ investments - see how that works?
5. To me it does not matter whether the project forks or not so long as the attackers remain at large.
6. The City of London establishment believes that it can hide the nature of its attack, by hiring a network of trolls to push their narrative.

Again, I was on Mirror long before this attack, but nice try.

Regarding the CEXs and Twitter, I am pointing out how they have two sets of rules. If you’re establishment, you can violate all their terms and conditions, but if you’re small you’re restricted by them. This is how it works in the real world as well. I think it should be the reverse, that the establishment are the ones who need to be watched and regulated, not average retail. I said as much in my original post and I am targeting CEX’s because they are the establishment and they know full well who attacked.

But let’s suppose the attack did originate from an anonymous attacker DEX though, I would still want an inquiry into who attacked. It would be ridiculous not to unless you think every project should just accept attacks because they come from anonymous attackers, as if somehow, this makes it better. If you commit a crime (in this case, stealing people’s money via market manipulation), then I don’t respect your “right to privacy” just like if an anonymous attacker robbed a bank, he should be pursued, not be left alone to “respect his privacy.”