December 14, 2021: The Perjurer π€₯ππΊπΈ
Will the Senate accept Alexis Goldstein's Lies?
After last weekβs positive development in the House of Representatives hearing on cryptocurrency, the Senate looks poised to take a major step backwards.
Last night one βexpertβ released an advance copy of her testimony, a sloppily assembled hodgepodge of misinformation, errors, bias, and basic grammatical mistakes. If anybody tried submitting such shoddy work as a homework assignment, the teacher would recommend repeating a grade or psychological counseling.
Instead, we find ourselves in a position where easily disprovable lies may soon be entered into the Congressional record and used to formulate policy. If so, our country is in serious trouble.
Hence the critical question β does this qualify as perjury?
Here weβve collected and summarized all the reports weβve found of factual errors to circulate ahead of the testimony. If you submit others weβll append to this document.
Of course, we always hope for the best β we fervently hope she is simply unaware of the many egregious factual errors she is committing. Bringing these mistakes to her attention, perhaps she can make appropriate corrections before embarrassing herself publicly and risking legal jeopardy.
If the optimistic scenario does not pan out, then make sure to contact your Senator. Urge them to strike her brazenly fraudulent testimony from the record.
Your Senators in particular may be interested to know that stablecoins actually reinforce US Dollar hegemony, as some House members astutely noted last week. Inappropriately attacking stablecoins would only surrender our lead and hasten Americaβs decline.
Without further ado, letβs chronicle the lies. The documents in their entirety are chalk-full of horrendous bias and slant, but here we try to explicitly detail the items that may rise to the level of perjury (verifiable lies).
Curve
Curve Finance is listed as a βlending and borrowing protocol.β Curve be neither a borrower nor a lender.
Goldstein commits multiple factual errors in her mischaracterization of the Mochi saga. For starters, Goldstein cites Mochi as a βcompetitor.β Not even Mochiβs advocates ever claimed they were competing with Curve.
The source testimony claims Curve βcalled a meeting of what they called its Emergency DAO.β Misleading tone notwithstanding, her claim lacks evidentiary basis. There is no evidence Curve βcalledβ any meeting. She appears to be attempting to insinuate coordination, but by all indications the fully independent and very well defined Emergency DAO acted on its own accord.
Goldstein is very wrong about the actions taken by the DAO. Goldstein claims the aftermath was to βshut down Mochiβs liquidity pool entirely.β In truth, itβs not even possible to shut down any Curve liquidity pool. The article she listed as a citation does not reference her claim.
Itβs extraordinarily misleading not to disclose the blatantly fraudulent nature of Mochi, such as its infinite mint. If somebody sued a bank because they got attacked by an employee, it would be relevant to disclose if the person was committing armed robbery at the time.
@alexisgoldstein @SenateBanking You haven't done your homework! Mochi was not a "competitor," but a scam with loopholes that would have allowed it to infinite-mint its own USDM stablecoin. Curve gov. only shut off the $CRV rewards to the pool to prevent abuse, not the pool itself!
Wow, @alexisgoldstein is feeding blatant misinformation about major #DeFi projects to the @SenateBanking Committee! Mochi wasn't a "competitor," it was a scam that misappropriated funds! The loopholes came from Mochi, and were a direct threat to Curve! Lady, do you homework! https://t.co/ABmbHWmAwE https://t.co/xuIgLdna7O
DefiMoon π¦π @DefiMoon
Olympus DAO
OHM is not a stablecoin. It has no business being included in testimony about stablecoins. It has a vision to become, as the testimony acknowledges, βan algorithmic reserve currency backed by other decentralized assets.β If this vision were fulfilled, it would still not be a stablecoin. Including it in testimony on stablecoins is irrelevant and fraudulent.
@OlympusDAO is not a stablecoin Unfortunate that our government is still run by people writing legislation on things they don't understand to back policies that are asymmetrically beneficial to archaic incumbent systems that are clearly broken banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/β¦Iβll be testifying before the @SenateBanking Committee tomorrow on stablecoins. You can read my written testimony here: https://t.co/H8ydMU2Ord https://t.co/vrtyvimnEM
Alexis Goldstein @alexisgoldstein
Goldstein falsely claims coins are locked within OHM.
Goldstein accuses Olympus of advertising a six-figure APY. Iβve seen plenty of Olympusβs advertisements. Advertising implies a deliberate expenditure of time or effort to promote a claim. They have never advertised quite so high a figure. It would be more accurate to claim she selectively screenshotted the website showing some funky numbers, but clearly no human ever deliberately pushed such claims.
Ethereum + Blockchains
9. The section on Ethereumβs energy footprint is completely in bad faith, though it arguably rises to perjury within this sentence:
βIt is unclear how stablecoin issuers plan to mitigate the increasing carbon footprint that follows the ongoing growth of their tokens.β
In fact, it is 100% clear. Stablecoin issuers will simply sit tight for a few months as Ethereum transitions to proof of stake, at which point this ridiculous point is moot.
Cripes! If a coal plant announced its plans to shut itself down in the next year, no sane person would continue decrying its pollution for the duration. Learn to take a W!
Claiming Western Union as the cheapest form of remittance is false.
Basic Writing Comprehension
Ordinarily we wouldnβt get so petty. But if Goldstein is going to be utterly pedantic in her critiques, weβll treat her the same courtesy.
Blockchain did not exist in the year 202. Rating: 10 Pinocchios on Fire.
βDaniele Sestaβ is not a person associated with DeFi.
APR and APY are not interchangeable terms.
Bad punctuation is a form of lying. Source: Eats, Shoots, and Leaves.
Bias
Altogether weβve mostly stuck to instances where the witness may be perjuring herself. Even outside of the straight-up lies, all Senators should be aware of the heavy slant. The entire document is selectively edited and heavily edited to present a woefully inaccurate picture. Senators should call out the bias and point to the positive aspects of stablecoins for our country.
Her entire paper is shockingly amateurish. She clearly had an agenda and sought to piece together anything that supported this agenda, however loosely. Hence the sloppy outcome.
For example, a credible paper on stablecoins would have a representative sampling that put equal weight on stablecoins by their usage. Here, she picks an unusual selection of stablecoins (and things that arenβt even stablecoins) just because she thinks she can cherry-pick a narrative.
In the end, itβs clear sheβs arguing in bad faith. Put this document in the recycle bin.
This whole hearing reeks of an ambush. By passing this off as testimony, she is insulting Senatorsβ intelligence. Call your Senators and request they hold her in contempt of Congress.
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