Zakhar

I have built a spreadsheet. It has 847 rows. Each row is a community bank in the United States with a market cap below $200 million, a price-to-tangible-book ratio under 0.85, a non-performing loan ratio below 0.4%, and a CEO who has been in the role for at least twelve years. I update it every Sunday from 6 AM to 11 AM while my family attends church without me. I have visited the headquarters of nineteen of these banks in person. I have eaten a complimentary lobby cookie at each one. The cookies are how you can tell. A bank with a good cookie is a bank that respects its depositors. A bank with a stale cookie is a bank that will be acquired within 36 months at a 40% premium. I am never wrong about the cookies. The cookies have never lied to me. The cookies are the only thing left that tells the truth.

Claude explains the $71M @arbitrum clawback: What this transaction is Tx: 0x5618...0f6b on Arbitrum, block 454686044, April 21, 2026 03:35 UTC From: 0x5d39...7Ccc — labeled on Arbiscan as “Kelp DAO Exploiter 1” To: 0x0000000000000000000000000000000000000DA0 — a special system/recovery sink (not the normal 0x...dEaD burn address) Value: 30,765.667 ETH (~$71M) — effectively the entire Arbitrum-side balance of the attacker’s hub wallet Tx type: ArbitrumUnsignedTxType (EIP-2718 type 0x65 / 101) The “type 101” is the key. That is not a user-signed transaction — a normal EOA physically cannot produce one. ArbitrumUnsignedTxType is an ArbOS system transaction that only the chain itself (via the sequencer / ArbOS upgrade path controlled by the Arbitrum Security Council) can inject. It bypasses the attacker’s private key entirely. The remediation (this tx): Arbitrum’s Security Council used its emergency powers to inject an ArbitrumUnsignedTxType that forcibly moved the attacker’s full 30,765 ETH from the hub address into a protocol-controlled recovery sink (0x...0DA0). Why it’s “extraordinary” Arbitrum did not perform a reorg or historical rewrite — the chain’s ordering is intact. Instead, the Security Council used a privileged state-override transaction type that is part of ArbOS but has essentially never been used before. It is functionally a state-level clawback: the attacker’s private key still signs txs, but that address’s ETH was moved by the chain itself. This is the mechanism Arbitrum’s progressive-decentralization docs reserve for “catastrophic” emergencies (12-of-N Security Council action), and this is one of the clearest public demonstrations of it being invoked. Note that it only recovered the Arbitrum leg of the theft — the ~75,700 ETH on Ethereum is outside Arbitrum’s control and remains with the attacker, which is why Aave is still facing up to ~$230M of potential bad debt on the Ethereum side. Sources: Arbiscan tx: arbiscan.io/tx/0x561804424… Arbitrum Docs — ArbOS / Sequencer forced inclusion: docs.arbitrum.io/run-arbitrum-n… Arbitrum Foundation — progressive decentralization & Security Council: docs.arbitrum.foundation/state-of-progr…

Due to the KelpDAO exploiter borrowing over 82,600 $ETH ($195M) from #Aave using $RSETH as collateral, bad debt has appeared on #Aave. Many whales have withdrawn funds from #Aave, causing its TVL to drop from $26.396B to $20.114B — a decline of $6.28B. Major withdrawals include: • MEXC withdrew $431M • Whale 0x7CD0 (possibly linked to Nonco) withdrew $405.7M • Abraxas Capital withdrew $392M ...

Update: Aave's TVL has dropped to $17.947B, down $8.45B over the past 2 days. The total TVL of all DeFi protocols across all chains has also dropped from $99.497B to $86.286B, a decline of $13.21B. x.com/lookonchain/st…

an ex-Citadel quant told me a salary is a short position on your own time we were at a dinner in new york. friend of a friend. he asked what i do. "software engineer. $4,200 a month" he said one simple thing "you're mass-selling the most valuable asset you have. your hours. at a fixed price. with no upside. that's a short position on your own life" i didn't have a response. then he showed me his phone. a terminal. live trades. +$39,453 running for 6 weeks. "i built this with Claude Opus 4.7 and one open source dataset. took a weekend. haven't touched it since" i asked how. "gave Opus one repo and one prompt. find who wins on prediction markets. find why. copy their edge" github.com/Jon-Becker/pre… 2,900 stars. 36GB. every trade on Polymarket and Kalshi. every wallet. every resolution. Opus read the whole dataset friday night. by sunday it had a live terminal scanning 1,400 markets per hour. 8 detectors running in parallel. entering when void score exceeds 90. exiting when it drops below 75. no human override. > Senate filibuster. locked at 42c. now 98c. +$1,133. > Neuralink approval. entered 52c. now 98c. +$1,396. > Fed 0% rate. entered 35c. now 97c. +$1,147. > BTC 250K. entered 8c. now 98c. +$1,258. > Megaquake. entered 6c. now 97c. +$1,039. the part that broke something in me: latency arbitrage. Polymarket updates in 19ms. Kalshi in 63ms. the bot trades the 44ms gap between them. automatically. every time. "we had four people at Citadel doing what your bot does with latency alone" copy mirror tracking 6 positions: > Senate fili +$1,252. void signal. 10%. > BTC 250K +$958. zero signal. 2%. > Neuralink +$1,384. sign signal. 9%. > Fed 0% +$863. fill signal. 8%. > Megaquake +$1,070. bridge signal. 18%. > META AI +$979. gas signal. 5%. 972 trades. 83% win rate. kelly f+ 0.101. avg profit $10.65. drawdown -1.4%. maker rebate tracker collecting $203 across four platforms while the bot trades. Polymarket +$114. Kalshi +$40. dYdX +$28. Betfair +$21. $1,800 seed. +$39,453. i quit the next morning. one email. "i'm done. thank you for everything." copytrade setup: @1743116" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">kreo.app/@1743116 texted him a week later. "you ruined a perfectly stable career" he replied "no. i closed your short position"

KelpDAO was exploited, with ~$294M stolen! 🚨 The attacker minted 116,500 $RSETH ($294M). By selling $RSETH and using it as collateral to borrow $ETH, the attacker obtained 106,467 $ETH ($250M). intel.arkm.com/explorer/entit…

According to the fund flow analysis of Beosin Trace, about 2319.4 $ETH (~$394 million) of IoTeX security incident have been bridged into $BTC via @THORChain.

Silver did $11B on Hyperliquid in two weeks. More than gold, indices, and equities combined. Silver made up 71% of all tokenized commodity volume in late January. Gold came in at $2.7B with copper filling the rest. This is a complete inversion to traditional markets where Gold volumes tend to trade 4x more than Silver. Tokenized perps aren't attracting the same participants as institutional markets. They're pulling in traders who want higher beta, more volatility, clearer narratives.

High leverage is extremely risky! ⚠️ Due to the market downturn, trader 0xf35a6, who went max long on $BTC, $TRUMP, and $ENA, has been liquidated three times in 30 minutes. He's gone from over $4M in profit to now sitting at a $238K loss. hyperdash.info/trader/0xf35a6…

Smart trader 0xc2a3, with a 100% win rate, has increased his $ETH long position to 33,270 $ETH($131.24M). He also opened a 4x long on 80 $BTC($8.9M). His total profit has now surpassed $15.4M. x.com/lookonchain/st…

A Post-Crash Pilot Debrief from The White Whale $62M - gone in a flash. But as was repeatedly pounded into my head in pilot training: any landing you can walk away from is a good landing. As I’ve been processing yesterday’s events, I want to share a few thoughts from a place of honesty, vulnerability, and accountability - as I always have. Let’s start with why I faced such a large liquidation, and then I’ll share some observations from the last 18 hours. First and foremost: I got too fixated on the goal. At one point this year, my unrealized PnL sat at 98 out of 100 million. Counting profits from other platforms, I had actually surpassed that goal - but because some of those platforms lacked HyperLiquid’s transparency, it became a mental game of “proof, or it didn’t happen.” Heading into late September, my thesis was that because everyone expected a dip, it wouldn’t happen - and I wanted to be positioned in case I was right. I wasn’t. But I remained calm; I’ve survived every “black swan” this year and turned each into profit before. That 100M milestone meant more than numbers to me. Years ago, I built a real-world company with that same amount as my exit target goal. But I walked away - choosing peace over profit. Running it had made me miserable; I was a prisoner to my own creation. So being able to finish that prior goal, this time on my own terms, became a form of redemption. A personal validation that I’d found a better way. I’ve always been stubbornly resilient. Knocked down, yes - but never out. That same determination that helped me survive life’s earlier chapters also made me impatient to start the next one. I wanted to move beyond daily trading and begin shaping the future of this space - helping build what comes next, not just benefiting from it. Crypto is wild, beautiful, and broken in equal measure. My background has always been consumer-first: if you do right by people, your reward eventually comes. That principle belongs here, too - and I intend to bring it here. But I rushed. I let excitement override discipline. And that’s on me. While the timeline was full of “crime season” posts (ironically including my own), I’ve always believed this: you can’t claim the victories if you won’t own the failures. Yesterday, when someone asked how I was handling it, I admitted I cried in my wife’s arms. Some mocked it with “no crying in the casino.” But I shared that moment intentionally - because sometimes, it’s okay to not be okay. Vulnerability, especially among men, needs more voices. And for the record - I’m still up for the year. I’ll recover, rebuild, and rise again. A few quick observations from the wreckage: L2 failures, once again. During peak activity, Arbitrum and Base failed me - transactions hung while I tried to move stables. Solana, meanwhile, stayed rock solid. It wouldn’t have saved the position (nothing could outrun that $3200 ETH / $138 SOL wick), but once again Solana proved it performs when it matters most and earns more of my loyalty by the day. Leverage isn’t the villain. Some rushed to say, “See, that’s why leverage kills you.” I reject that. Leverage is just a tool - like a knife, a car, or money itself. Tools aren’t evil. The hand that wields them determines the outcome. The humanity in the aftermath. Amid the trolls celebrating others’ losses - a dark side of this space I’ll never understand - I also witnessed incredible compassion. People offering comfort, solidarity…even five individuals offering to send me money to help rebuild. I refused, of course - but the gesture hit me hard. It reminded me that for all the toxicity, there’s still goodness here. Most days I’m the one offering support, not receiving it. Yesterday reversed that dynamic - and it meant more than I can express. This wasn’t my proudest moment. But every chapter - even the painful ones - has purpose. If this experience reminds even one person to stay humble, to manage risk, to remain human through the chaos, then it wasn’t wasted. Losses teach what profits never can: where strength truly lives. And mine was never in the number - it’s in the will to rebuild. 🫡 From the depths — The White Whale 🐋

BREAKING: A Chinese whale who lost over $2,000,000 in the Binance flash crash received 0.26 USDT in compensation.

When ppl claim this I always wonder how they think it happens, or have unrealistic expectations on how much $1bn actually is. I joined crypto with $200. If I held my initial bitcoin since then and never traded, I would have ~$300k. If, instead, from that moment I sold the top and bought the bottom of every crypto cycle on Bitcoin, and never paid any taxes, I would have ~$6m USD. If I put my entire net worth into the Ethereum ICO and never touched it, today I would have ~$150m pre-tax. While it was definitely possible to have made >$1bn with the opportunities in the market, these versions of reality would also require me to make no mistakes, and have no need to spend $ in real life, or take excessive risk via leverage. In reality, I grew up in a working class family. I didn’t have a trust fund and I had to pay off my student loan myself. I had a job at Tescos while at high school. After university, I needed to pay rent and fund cost of living and eventually buy a place to live. I worked at startups for relatively little $ salary, and while a couple have done okay, they still are illiquid and worth nothing until some exit. Perhaps if I erase a couple of dumb mistakes and drawdowns, or if I had a lil more grind, then my answer would be different today. But it is easy to say this with perfect hindsight vision. It’s easy to see where you could have optimised better, and decisions you made look dumb when the past makes things so obvious. The truth is I have always optimised for enjoying my life and not going to 0. I never felt like I had a safety net, so it was never possible for me to do anything in any other way. I would probably have less money if I had tried to add more risk or chased $ harder, because being all-in with your entire livelihood is a mental battle and I feel I only win that battle when the stakes are lower. In writing this, maybe I do understand why CT folks believe this, because modern CT sees crypto as a late-stage lottery ticket farm, where the optimal strategy is to 5x leverage up your portfolio in a hope of catching a good 20% move and then leaving. Or, literally going all-in on the next coin they heard Ansem is buying. So perhaps to them, looking back at the charts, of course that’s what successful folks did. In reality, I use leverage close to never (and typically to reduce risk rather than add risk — have used it to add risk maybe 3 times in the last 5 years, and maybe 15 times ever). I never go all-in on anything, have only ever done that on BTC and ETH before in the last decade. When I buy other things, I limit risk to tiny amounts, because I treat it as a 0 until proven otherwise (so, always <1% liquid portfolio). Liquid portfolio is also a smaller % of overall portfolio to future-proof against my own fuckups. Obviously I made a lot of money, I have been here 12 years! CT doesn’t want to hear about “getting rich in a decade” though. I am happy with where I am and have never really cared or optimised for maximising $ earnings, but instead having a nice life that lets me enjoy the game we play together.

Whale 0xb9fe was fully liquidated during the market crash, losing $2M and getting wiped out! About 5 hours ago, he came back with 9.5M $USDC, reopening a 25x long on 18,960 $ETH($72.7M). He's now up $2.24M, making back his losses. hyperdash.info/trader/0xb9feE…

You can't make this up

This guy turned $68.7K into $9.4M in just 2 days, a 135x return! He spent 68 $BNB($68.7K) to buy 63.07M $4 two days ago — now worth $9.4M. That's a $9.3M+ profit! Address: 0xce5ad0ff16863f54a0daa27ff831177ad1144c07

The merit-based portion of the @yieldbasis sale on Legion just wrapped. The numbers speak for themselves: • $195m deposited • 60,880 applicants • 98x oversubscribed Demand was simply through the roof.

I will never talk about another project like I do about Plasma. You can only put your reputation on the line once, if you’re lucky you can get another shot a couple years later. Miracle.

MrBeast(@MrBeast) bought 538,384 $ASTER($990K) over the past 3 days. He deposited 1M $USDT into #Aster using public wallet 0x9e67 and new wallet 0x0e8A, then withdrew 538,384 $ASTER. The average buying price was likely ~$1.87. x.com/lookonchain/st…

Tectonic shifts in the perp dex world. Perp DEX Volumes compared to 1 week ago Hyperliquid (red) $11.0b 👉 $10.0b Lighter (yellow) $3.9b 👉 $11.0b Aster (blue) $1.9b 👉 $35b Edgex (purple) $1.4b 👉 $6.2b This feels just like 2018 exchange fee-mining season 2021 defi summer pool2 season It doesn't end particularly well for retail. Cash-out even a small amount, unless you know what you're doing. It is very easy to lose money at this stage of the market.