Web3 is Going Just Great

The only evidence Hillman provided was a redacted conversation via LinkedIn, where he denies meeting with someone, and they reply: "they impersonated your hologram. This person sent me a zoom link then your hologram was in the zoom". (Again, hologram?) Amusingly, Hillman waxes poetic about the importance of security at Binance throughout the whole post, while also including a LinkedIn screenshot with a name that's blurred so poorly it remains completely legible.

Hillman goes on to claim, with no further evidence, that "a sophisticated hacking team used previous news interviews and TV appearances over the years to create a 'deep fake' of me". If so, this would be remarkable, as to date video deepfakes have mostly been limited to robotic-sounding and grainy pre-recorded Elon Musk impersonations, rather than anything that can respond naturally and quickly to alive conversation.

Another possible explanation is that Hillman is trying to cover Binance's collective ass after being caught taking listing fees for tokens they never list. But who's to say, really — maybe deepfakers have made a considerable breakthrough with startling implications, and Hillman just didn't feel it was important to elaborate on.

Several weeks earlier, major crypto exchange FTX announced that they had removed HUSD from their USD basket, meaning they would not be able to be used as collateral.

Huobi worked to distance itself from HUSD as the coin de-pegged, emphasizing that the token is maintained by a different entity and claiming to have exited their stake in that entity in April. However, the token was originally launched by Huobi in 2018, and Huobi has continued to run promotions involving the token as recently as July.

Ripps is a part of a group of people who have vocally criticized the Bored Apes project for being racist and antisemitic, with what they believe are intentional hat-tips to 4chan culture. Ripps also created his own NFT project, called RR/BAYC, where he clones the Bored Ape NFTs and sells them in what he says is a "critique [of the] hateful imagery". Because Yuga Labs has never brought action against any of the many Bored Ape ripoff NFT collections, he and his lawyers are arguing this lawsuit is an attempt to silence his criticism.

Some of Ripps' and others' individual claims about dogwhistles in the project are more believable than others, but in their entirety they are pretty damning. Ripps is not the only one who has been outspoken about the issue, and is joined by people in and outside of the NFT world.