Investigations + Data @WSJ || sam.kessler(at)wsj.com || Signal available on request || @Skesslr on TG || (Tips 👍, PR 👎)
Brooklyn, NY
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SCOOP: Days before the inauguration, the Trump family secretly signed away 49% of World Liberty Financial, their crypto company, in a deal with a U.A.E. royal, acc. to documents and people familiar.
The $500M investment came months before the U.A.E. won access to U.S. AI chips🧵
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SCOOP: My latest investigation exposes how DPRK IT workers have embedded themselves deep into the fabric of the crypto industry.
More than a dozen projects confirmed that they inadvertently hired workers from the DPRK – exposing themselves to massive security and legal risks.
🧵
coindesk.com/tech/2024/10/02…
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NEW: @movementfdn signed a deal loaning ~50% of its circulating ecosystem supply to @Web3Port_Labs.
The day after MOVE debuted on exchanges, accounts linked to @Web3Port_Labs dumped 66M tokens, leading @binance to ban it.
🧵@CoinDesk obtained the contracts and much more:
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if you’re in Williamsburg eating ramen and talking about how my parent company might be dead please stop i’m just trying to eat
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NEW: Movement Labs — the crypto startup backed by Trump’s World Liberty Financial — quietly promised early insiders access to up to 10% of its token supply, according to new documents obtained by @CoinDesk.
None of it was disclosed to investors.
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North Korean IT workers with fake identities got jobs at @cosmos, @SushiSwap, @yearnfi, @FantomFDN, @zerolendxyz and several other big-name blockchain protocols.
This investigation marks the first time any of these projects have publicly disclosed that they unknowingly hired the workers.
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Scoop: @polychain accused its ex-GP, Niraj Pant, of breaking its policies.
Pant made a deal with Neel Somani of Eclipse, a Polychain portco, to receive 5% of the project's tokens (later lowered to 1.3%, worth $13M ).
The kicker: Polychain also invests in Pant's AI startup, Ritual.
SCOOP: Giant VC firm @polychain says an ex-general partner broke its policies by secretly striking a personal token deal with a crypto startup the fund invested in.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/jIngEMj
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SCOOP: We got our hands on the white paper for Trump's new crypto project.
It looks a whole lot like a platform that was hacked over the summer, and it shares some of the same team.
SCOOP: CoinDesk got details on the upcoming Trump crypto venture. Barron is listed as its "Defi Visionary."
Team members built a platform that was hacked for $2m in July. One founded Date Hotter Girls LLC.
By @skesslr, @realDannyNelson, @cheyenneligon
trib.al/FSknujU
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Movement, backed by Trump’s World Liberty Financial, had raised $38M and was rumored to be closing a $100M series B round.
Instead, the layer-2 blockchain is now at the center of an insider-dealing scandal that has exposed a seedy corner of crypto deal-making.
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22 y/o Movement co-founder @rushimanche circulated a Rentech deal internally and was briefly placed on admin leave. He says he was duped by someone at the Movement Fdn.
Sam Thapaliya — described by insiders as a “shadow co-founder” — was cc’d on key emails. He denies involvement.
ALT Email from Web3Port to Rentech (aka Movement)
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The leading rollups (Optimism and Arbitrum) – while impressive/important – are still WAY more centralized than people realize.
Here's how 🧵
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#Ethereum layer 2 rollups tackle a huge problem for the blockchain by cutting transaction fees, but the potential for trouble hasn't gotten a close enough look.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/TcAUk0G
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Speaking with @GabrielShipton, brother of Julian Assange, at 3:30 at the DAO House.
We’ll cover @AssangeDAO and Gabriel’s activism in support of his brother.
Should be an interesting talk — please join if you’re in Austin and interested!
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This reporting project would not have been possible without the help of my incredible editors @Liqquidity and @MarcHochstein.
Thanks also to @chainalysis and @tayvano_ for the expert insights.
And lastly, massive thanks to @zachxbt for setting this train in motion. ZachXBT was the first person to expose several of the DPRK IT workers I traced for this story, and I'm not sure people would've been willing to speak to me on record if his original investigation hadn’t already brought light to this issue.
(PS: @ArkhamIntel please sponsor me. I am now your #1 power user.)
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In 2021, .@zmanian, the CEO of Iqlusion, hired two developers to help develop the @cosmoshub blockchain: "Jun Kai" and "Sarawut Sanit."
"I talked to them almost every day for a year," said Manian. "They did the work. And I was, frankly, pretty pleased."
Eventually, Manian got a call from the FBI about suspicious transfers stemming from Iqlusion's blockchain wallets.
It turned out that Kai and Sanit had been funneling all of their wages from Iqlusion to the DPRK. CoinDesk traced the funds to two DPRK nationals sanctioned by OFAC in 2023.
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Over the years, Manian learned to recognize certain telltale signs that developers are North Korean. DPRK developers are vastly more prevalent than people realize.
"The percentage of your incoming resumes, or people asking for jobs, or wanting to contribute – any of that stuff – that are probably from North Korea is greater than 50% across the entire crypto industry," he told me.
His assessment was echoed by others I spoke to over the course of my reporting.
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First, some background:
According to U.S. and UN authorities, North Korean IT workers funnel their earnings to Pyongyang and help fund North Korea's WMD program.
The UN has proposed heavy sanctions on North Korean IT workers, and hiring them – even by accident – is illegal in the U.S. and many other countries.
Even if you're "decentralized," the sanctions can still apply if you wish to do business in most major economies.
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home.treasury.gov/news/press…
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Feeling super gratified this week to have been named alongside some of my incredible @CoinDesk colleagues as a 2023 @LoebAwards winner!! 🥇 🏆
Journalists at @CoinDesk won prestigious Gerald Loeb Award, widely considered the top prize in financial and business journalism, for exposing Sam Bankman-Fried’s cryptocurrency empire.
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The crypto company @truflation hired 5 employees who said they were based in Tokyo, Montreal, Vancouver, Houston and Singapore.
They presented real-looking IDs, had genuine references, and had active Github profiles.
Stefan Rust, the founder of Truflation, noticed one day that his Japanese employee had suddenly dropped his accent.
Rust eventually learned that all five of his new hires were North Korean.
Last week, as I was wrapping up my reporting for this story, Truflation was hacked for $7 million.
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My latest investigation with @realDannyNelson reveals how the team behind EigenLayer quietly worked to earn employees big paydays from airdrops — raising conflict of interest concerns.
At least one team felt pressured to pay up or risk consequences.
SCOOP: @eigenlabs, the company behind @eigencloud, circulated a list of its employees' wallet addresses to ecosystem projects that were preparing to airdrop tokens.
Some teams asked for the list.
At least one didn't.
@skesslr & @realdannynelson report
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After an investor lost access to its Terra wallet in 2019, a chain fork quietly moved its funds — 9M $LUNA — from one wallet to another.
The excellent @laurashin asked @stablekwon why this was swept under the rug.
Here’s how my sources and I uncovered what happened 🧵
.@stablekwon joins Unchained for the first time since Terra's collapse.
🌎Where is he?
🪙Where's the money?
🧑⚖️What does he say to allegations of business irregularities?
💭 What does he think about the direction his life took?
📺Don’t miss this episode. unchainedpodcast.com/do-kwon…
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Movement is now investigating whether it was misled into the deal.
But the paper trail is clear: it made a deal that — intentionally or not — may have helped insiders dump tokens on day one.
In crypto, deals like this are often whispered about. Rarely do we see the receipts.
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Proud of my colleagues @CoinDesk 😎😎
cnn.com/2022/11/24/media/coi…
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However, at least in the U.S., no companies have been prosecuted for the hiring of DPRK workers. The bigger risk might be on the security front.
@chainalysis told me that out of all the DPRK heists they've tracked in 2024, "approximately half" involved DPRK IT workers.
Over the course of my reporting, I uncovered some hacks that appear linked to DPRK IT workers (e.g. at @SushiSwap)
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Some truth here but u lost me at “what engineer wouldn’t want to work for the genius behind Tesla?” (Answer: plenty)
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Now, for a few key anecdotes from the piece.
There's a ton I'm leaving out, so please read the full article if you are curious to learn more. 👇
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coindesk.com/tech/2024/10/02…
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MISO, a project from @SushiSwap, lost $3 million in a 2021 heist.
Two of the project developers, "Sava Grujic" and "Anthony Keller," were blamed for the exploit.
They claimed they were from the U.S. and Serbia, respectively.
They had impressive-seeming backgrounds. Keller even had a stint working on @coordinape, an app built by @yearnfi.
CoinDesk discovered blockchain data linking both developers (and another Sushi employee from the same period) to North Korea.
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The full contracts are available on CoinDesk.
Experts pointed out plenty of other surprising features that I don’t have time to list here.
Insiders have presented a range of theories to explain Rentech’s purpose as a middleman.
coindesk.com/tech/2025/04/30…
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Movement’s general counsel YK Pek, aka @wassielawyer, slammed the initial deal proposal from Rentech as “the worst deal I have ever seen.”
He drafted the final version signed by Movement Foundation.
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A key provision in Web3Port’s contract allowed it to liquidate tokens.
If (and only if) MOVE hit a $5B valuation, W3P was allowed to split sale profits 50/50 with Rentech.
According to one expert, this provided a clear incentive for the market maker to pump and dump tokens.
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Web3Port and @movementfdn both entered separate deals with a third-party middleman called “Rentech.”
Movement Foundation, in internal messages, says it thought Rentech was a Web3Port subsidiary and is investigating whether it was somehow duped into the agreement.
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My latest piece is a deep-dive on where @Cosmos stands as it reckons with post-Terra fallout, and with new competition from Ethereum L2s, and EigenLayer
The next 12 months could make or break @Cosmos.
As it reckons with Ethereum-based competitors and the fallout from Terra, Cosmos may have "a year at most to find a way to create something unique and distinctive,” says @zmanian.
Deep dive by @skesslr
trib.al/8yIYqOt
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Rentech was created by Galen Law-Kun, a Singapore-based financier who says it’s a subsidiary of his company Autonomy.
He says Rentech didn’t deceive anyone — it’s a real financial services vehicle meant to connect crypto projects with Asian family offices.
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Crazy reporting from @blockworks 👀
Crypto is so frequently just smoke and mirrors. It’s refreshing to see more of these stories coming to light.
SCOOP: @whosknave and I spoke to a dozen current and former employees at Morph who shed some light on internal strife between cofounders, a ‘shadow CEO’ and lots of spending without a clear direction
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Ultimately, Web3Port did end up receiving 5% of MOVE’s supply via the agreements with Rentech.
The tokens came with terms that experts called extremely unusual.
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Binance banned the market maker behind the day-one MOVE dump.
Movement launched a token buyback plan. It also hired a third-party auditor.
But internally, people are still asking: How did this happen — and who actually benefited?
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This clip is about FTX-related clawbacks but it’s cut to sound like it’s about customer withdraws.
You’re directionally correct @Bitfinexed but why spread misinfo?
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Law-Kun says Movement’s general counsel, YK Pek, helped structure Rentech and served as Autonomy’s general counsel.
Pek flatly denies this, calling the claim “confused and disturbing.” He said Law-Kun used his directorship services business and asked for legal help a few times.
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If a news outlet is still just referring to Caroline Ellison as SBF's "ex-girlfriend," I'm not sure I trust their coverage on FTX/Alameda.
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In closing, the point of this reporting project is not to bash on Movement.
Shadow allocations, dodgy market makers and secret advisers are present throughout this industry.
The mess at Movement just means that we're finally able to see some of the receipts.
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A few ppl saying "Juno put out a bug fix right away, what's the problem?"
This 100% misses the point.
Fact is that $36 million went to the wrong place 100+ validators failed to notice. What if a dev fed the tokens to a personal wallet and then quickly cashed out?
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Hey Matan, we were reporting on this for about four months and asked many restaking projects (like yours) if they could corroborate details we heard from other sources. As you mention, I outlined some of the allegations to you but you asked not to speak on-record, which I respected.
I’m 100% confident in our reporting and wouldn’t have published this piece — or those other allegations — if I had any doubt that we were capturing things accurately. It took a while to make sure that we were telling the right story.
We prefer to put things on-record when we can, but sometimes — for something sensitive like the “pressure” element of this story — sources chose to speak “on background.”
We provided extensive evidence of airdrops to Eigen Labs employees, and when people stated on record that they hadn’t been pressured, which some did, we said so explicitly in the piece — often with a direct quote. I think that the response to the article proves that this was still a story worth telling.
I’ve been reporting on EigenLayer/restaking for a while now and this article wasn’t the only focus of our conversation, as you mentioned. Am sure we’ll cross paths again, so hope there’s no hard feelings!
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So what happens to the $400M stolen tokens that are still on BSC?
Can BSC just claw them back? Do they freeze the attacker and mint new $BNB tokens to compensate?
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fair enough. if that’s the case that it’s all unpaid, then i apologize and will leave this up for posterity…
we get tagged in spam daily and this combined w the blue check set off the bs detector
1:1 DM/email/telegram all work for story pitches!
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There are *many* more details — including links to the full contracts — on CoinDesk.
Please give it a read 🙏
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NEW: 70% of tokens for the Trump-backed crypto project will go to insiders, according to a draft whitepaper.
The other 30% of $WLFI tokens will be sold to the public, with some of those proceeds *also* reserved for insiders.
SCOOP: The Trump-backed DeFi project World Liberty Financial advertises itself as a solution to the rigged financial system.
Insiders plan to scoop up an unusually generous 70% of the project's $WLFI tokens.
@skesslr and @cheyenneligon report
trib.al/uDqDTwx
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Did my best to summarize the very long very detailed very interesting @nansen_ai report released today.
The report was the most thorough accounting I’ve seen of how all the pieces of this crypto collapse fit together.
Here’s a summary of my summary 🧵👇
What caused the crypto crash? A new report from @nansen_ai draws a straight line from the implosion of Terra to the stETH 'de-peg' and the troubles at @CelsiusNetwork and 3AC.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/brTVG2p
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For my first long-form piece with CoinDesk, I’ve chronicled a couple of the companies working to bring carbon credits onto blockchains
Give it a read if you’re skeptical! “Green crypto” is definitely not without controversy…
LONG READ: Crypto carbon projects like @ToucanProtocol and @KlimaDAO say they can keep carbon out of the atmosphere by locking it on a blockchain. Is it all hype, or can they succeed? @skesslr reports for #MiningWeek, presented by @FoundryServices. trib.al/jpKYTjC
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Original @CoinDesk reporter here -- good to see this all coming out now.
Just to clarify, we only published what we had permission to share at the time. We take protecting our sources very seriously and included plenty of evidence proving Do was behind Basis Cash.
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the level of hubris/hypocrisy in this industry is pretty difficult to comprehend…
who are these tweets even for?
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The agreements show Movement Labs allocated huge amounts of MOVE tokens to a pair of shadow advisers — including Zebec CEO Sam Thapaliya — in the early days of its founding.
Some documents — which Movement Labs called "non-binding" — promised nearly $2M/year in compensation.
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We learned the info last night and pulled an all-nighter confirming it
Lots of people reading into the timing of this...
Explanation is simple IMO: Terra's "death spiral" has given a lot of ex-TFL people freedom to speak up now that they perceive Do as less powerful
CoinDesk wrote that their " default position is to respect the privacy of pseudonymous actors", but they chose to unmask "Rick Sanchez" as Do Kwon due to "public interest as Kwon’s UST stablecoin death spirals".
It's not clear when they first learned this information.
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I had the opportunity to dissect the $MOVE scandal on @Unchained_pod.
Take a listen if you want to hear some more about our @CoinDesk investigation.
Thanks for having me on @laurashin !!
How MOVE’s Contracts Put a Pump and Dump Into a Legal Agreement
🕵️♂️ A contract allowing insiders to dump tokens at peak price.
A “shadow co-founder.”
Lawyers pointing the finger at each other.
@skesslr joins @Unchained_pod to dissect the MOVE scandal. And why it matters for all of crypto.
Timestamps:
🕵️♀️ 1:52 Initial details of the scandal
⚖️ 6:20 Conflicts of interest at Movement Labs and who knew what
💥 8:42 Why 5% of tokens = 50% of supply and why that’s wild
🧾 13:14 How a lawyer called the deal “the worst agreement I’ve ever seen”
🚫 18:41 Why Binance banned Web3Port after suspicious trading
🧩 20:38 The web of key players: founders, shadow advisors, and middlemen
🧠 25:51 A theory on treasury selling and token price manipulation
🔍 27:49 Can Movement Labs investigate itself, and will anyone trust the outcome?
📉 29:39 Why Coinbase is suspending MOVE and what that signals
🇺🇸 30:47 How Trump’s crypto arm is tangled up in the MOVE ecosystem
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Here are some screening best practices I’ve picked up from talking to companies:
- Pay for professional background checking services. Don’t do your KYC in-house. (MOST IMPORTANT)
- Encourage remote workers to keep cameras on, especially during interviews.
- Meet candidates in person.
- Check references, and don’t reach out solely to the contacts provided by a candidate. (References can be faked)
- Don’t assume reference-checks suffice on their own. (Some references are real!)
- Look out for cookie-cutter GitHub profiles:
> > Generic usernames like “HappyHacker123”
>> Cartoon/generic PFPs
- Look out for fluffed up GitHub histories:
>> Popular protocols like Uniswap randomly pinned to the profile
>> Random forks of popular repos
>> Trivial open source contributions to popular repos (e.g. upgrade a library version, fix a typo)
>> Lots of repos added all at once
>> Artificial (overactive, weirdly-consistent) activity graphs
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NEW: See the messages where Libra co-creator Hayden Davis brags about paying off Argentine president Javier Milei’s sister.
Davis ultimately bagged $100m+ from the Milei-endorsed Libra memecoin, which crashed in price and set off a massive political crisis (“criptogate”) in Argentina.
Insane reporting from @realDannyNelson @CoinDesk
SCOOP: Libra co-creator Hayden Davis bragged of sending money to Javier Milei's sister months before the memecoin scandal, saying of the Argentine president: "I control that n****."
@realDannyNelson reports
trib.al/12BTRp4
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SCOOP: Galaxy invested into a crypto casino founded by a former employee, but weeks later they and other investors reported him to the authorities, stating that he gambled away their funds.
The founder, Richard Kim, spoke to me for this story and explained what went wrong.
Crypto VC @galaxyhq invested in a crypto casino founded by Richard Kim, a former employee.
Now, Galaxy and other investors have reported Kim to the authorities, accusing him of gambling away investor funds in a series of bad crypto bets.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/fj1NbWA
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Published a deeper-dive into what EigenLayer *actually* is, at present.
There’s no slashing, so validators have no economic incentive to be honest.
There’s no fee mechanism, so people are still just farming points.
TLDR: Virtually all of the core mechanics that comprise “pooled security” are still missing.
.@eigencloud "launched" yesterday with more than $12B in deposits, but it's still missing crucial functionality, including slashing and restaking rewards.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/DbRHkuB
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I wrote about this last month for @CoinDesk.
A growing community of 3commas users say the platform was exploited, but 3commas claims users were phished.
This story is similar to others I heard over the course of my reporting: coindesk.com/tech/2022/11/23…
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ARS: What did you tell your law professor parents?
SBF: "I called them up and said hey guys, I think there might be a problem. Looks like Alameda's position might be imploding here... I'll tell you more when I know more."
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Internally, some at Movement called Thapaliya a “shadow co-founder.” One memo gave him another 2.5% of the token supply — now worth >$50M.
Thapaliya insists those deals remain active: “I plan on pursuing legally.”
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Warning: CoinDesk journalists and contributors are being impersonated a ton by scammers.
Generally, they offer to interview you for an article and then send a 'Calendly' phishing link.
Make sure you're interacting with real CoinDesk journalists, and double-check URLs before clicking on them.
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@JunoNetwork voted last week to remove tokens from a whale accused of gaming a community airdrop, but a copy/paste error sent the funds ($36M) to the wrong address
“We f**ked up big time.”
Millions of dollars worth of seized $JUNO tokens were supposed to be sent to a community wallet Wednesday, but a copy/paste error slipped past validators and sent the funds to the wrong wallet.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/wBlKAbR
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SBF says he has "no hidden funds" and he was reinvesting the loans he took out back into the business
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This piece from @sndr_krisztian is worth reading!
After the Curve hack, a Coinbase validator netted $1M in fees from an MEV-bot.
Should it return the funds?
SCOOP: @coinbase earned $1 million processing a trade tied to July’s big Curve hack. Victims say the crypto exchange has declined to turn over this inadvertent windfall.
@sndr_krisztian reports
trib.al/HocsKLi
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Our new reporting also reveals that Movement co-founder Rushi Manche helped connect Kaito — another crypto firm — to Rentech, the mysterious third party at the center of the MOVE market-making scandal.
Kaito eventually made — and then scrapped — a market-making agreement with Web3Port.
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For those looking to learn more, I consulted this victim group for my @CoinDesk article on 3Commas in November.
It's still unclear exactly what happened, but the facts haven't really changed since then.
coindesk.com/tech/2022/11/23…
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Thapaliya was given access to 5% of MOVE for marketing and market making — the same amount that later went to Web3Port, a Chinese firm accused of dumping $38M worth of tokens after launch.
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The revelations come as Movement unravels:
– Founders are at war
– One was ousted
– The other stepped back
– MOVE got delisted by Coinbase
– The token is down 50%
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Another early adviser, Vinit Parekh, signed MOUs giving him control of 2.5% of tokens + $50K for every $1M raised by Movement Labs.
He played a behind-the-scenes role in recruiting, marketing, and go-to-market strategy.
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A PR person from a buzzy crypto company emailed me recently in all lowercase. (All lowercase — in a cold email!)
I can’t explain why it bothered me so much but it was cringey enough that I turned my auto-caps back on. Never looking back
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Some very general op-sec tips:
- Audit your code
- Rigorously vet contributions from contractors, new hires, and open source contributors.
- Strictly limit access to core tooling, code, and keys.
- Practice good wallet/key hygiene.
- Be extremely wary of suspicious links — even internally.
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SBF: There was "one unbelievably important area that we completely failed on, and that was risk."
And that includes "conflict of interest risk"
There was "no one person" who was completely in charge of managing risk.
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NYT: What should people think about "Binance and other places" based on what you know?
SBF says he doesn't know much, but if he was a customer, he would "look for things like proof of reserves ... regulatory reporting"
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SBF says he was thinking about animal welfare, malaria, etc. "Those things matter"
"Separately from that, there's a bunch of bullshit that regulated companies do to try and look good"
"These are not things that are making a large impact on the world."
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Had an awesome time chatting with @laurashin and @tayvano_ about North Korean devs in crypto.
Check out our @Unchained_pod episode for some wild anecdotes and hiring tips:
🚨 North Korean hackers are infiltrating crypto companies, posing as blockchain devs, and siphoning millions to fund the regime.
@skesslr and @tayvano_ expose:
🧑💻 How North Koreans are getting hired in crypto
💸 The shocking hacks that followed
unchainedcrypto.com/podcast/…
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I told the AI to write my newsletter today because I thought it would be cool and also because I am lazy.
We have the inside scoop on what @OpenAI’s #ChatGPT “thinks” about the future of AI and DeFi. @skesslr co-writes this week’s edition of Valid Points.
trib.al/8nXCXnu
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today the @JunoNetwork community officially voted to revoke millions of dollars worth of tokens from a single whale
it’s a pretty unprecedented test case for token-based governance, and watching it all unfold in real time has been pretty wild
🧵
In an unprecedented use of on-chain governance, the $JUNO community officially voted to confiscate millions of dollars worth of tokens from a single user's wallet.
@skesslr reports
trib.al/NdDHAvA
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And some flags to look out for:
- Sudden changes in voice or behavior
- Accents that don’t seem to match a person’s supposed background or work location
- Abrupt changes in technical aptitude
- IPs in wrong location/DPRK hotspots (e.g. China, Serbia, Russia, Laos)
- Premature (or excessive) requests for credentials/tooling/systems access
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My latest @WSJ article with @juliejargon is about a recent murder-suicide in Greenwich, CT — and the ChatGPT conversations that led up to it.
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People talk about how crypto gets hacked more than normal banking but my Citizens Bank account just got locked.
How am I supposed to get my money out?? I don't even have a Citizens Bank account! This is crazy
DeFi fixes this.
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Movement Labs says these were “non-binding” memoranda of understanding.
But the agreements reviewed by CoinDesk say they can only be terminated with both parties’ consent.
Thapaliya says they weren’t voided, Movement Labs and Parekh say they were.
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I spoke to over a dozen people and reviewed internal docs, chats, and contracts for this report.
Read it here: coindesk.com/tech/2025/05/15…
If you have more tips, my DMs are open.
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Similar attacks also hit users on Coinbase and other exchanges.
The common link thus far has been the use of users’ 3Commas API keys to carry out the attacks.
@coinmamba pls DM if you are free to walk through what happened.
coindesk.com/tech/2022/11/23…
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Special thanks (in no particular order) goes to my editors @Liqquidity @inkbacker @MarcHochstein @cryptowords @zackseward @Aoyon_A for helping me sharpen my ideas (and words!) into readable copy.
Thanks also to talented colleagues including @cryptauxmargaux @nikhileshde @cheyenneligon for making CoinDesk such a great place to work.
Also, major shoutout to @KReyofCoinDesk for building a first-rate newsroom full of great colleagues and mentors.
And finally, thanks to @realDannyNelson for drafting me onto the team and for helping me tell some of my favorite investigative stories — from shadow co-founders to insider kickbacks.
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SBF insists that his political donations were "on both sides" and came from his profits (not users)
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Working at @CoinDesk has been the opportunity of a lifetime, and it set me on course to pursue a career in journalism.
I’m thankful to have learned from so many incredible reporters and editors, and I cannot think of a better place to have spent the last 3.5 years.
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Excited to moderate this stacked panel at 5pm ET.
Join us for a level-headed discussion on FTX and where we go from here.
In addition to @ErikVoorhees, @sunnya97, @chjango and @hosseeb, I’ll be joined by @CoinDesk reporters that have been breaking this story from day 1.
How will #FTX’s collapse fuel the case for decentralized finance?
CoinDesk speaks with @ErikVoorhees, @sunnya97, @chjango and @hosseeb to discuss DeFi, regulation and decentralized exchanges in the wake of @FTX_Official’s collapse.
Set your reminder: nitter.app/i/spaces/1PlKQpgOREXxE
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(Side note: the full PDFs and much more context are in the story, please give it a read on @CoinDesk)
coindesk.com/tech/2025/05/15…
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Thanks also to the many, many sources (you know who you are!) who helped me tell stories and uncover wrongdoing in the crypto industry — even when it came at direct personal cost.
My time at CoinDesk coincided with a wild period for crypto
— from Terra and FTX to DPRK hacks, presidential entanglements and VC shenanigans.
My personal site contains some of the work I’m proudest of: Sam-Kessler.com
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