Thoughts

Short thoughts, notes, links, and musings by Molly White. RSS

Bill Ackman suggests Eric Adams place Polymarket bet and then drop out of mayoral race

Billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman suggests Eric Adams drop out of the New York mayoral race, but first "place a large bet on Andrew Cuomo and then announce your withdrawal from the race" to "fund [his] future".

He writes: "There is no insider trading on Polymarket." Americans are currently prohibited from trading on Polymarket (though Polymarket makes only perfunctory attempts to block it, which are widely circumvented.)

By "no insider trading on Polymarket" he likely is referring to the fact that the SEC can't bring insider trading charges because Polymarket contracts are not securities. That doesn't mean trading on insider information would be legal (or ethical), though.

Screenshot of the end of a long tweet: The mirror does not lie. Eric, please take a close and hard look.

And to fund your future, you could place a large bet on Andrew Cuomo and then announce your withdrawal from the race. There is no insider trading on Polymarket. [Screenshot of Polymarket showing Zohran Mamdani with a large lead of 82% in a bet on the outcome of the NYC mayoral election, with Andrew Cuomo behind at around 15%]

This long read in The Verge does a remarkable job of describing how Wikipedia's editing community works, the project's strengths and weaknesses, and the threats it faces.

In a time of misinformation, in a time of suppression, having this place where people can come and bring knowledge and share knowledge, that is a statement.

The Trumps' World Liberty Financial project has frozen WLFI tokens in wallet addresses belonging to Justin Sun that contain ~$100 million (on paper) in unlocked WLFI. Sun is a major backer of the project, which the Trumps say they founded to stop "debanking".

The freeze apparently came after Sun transferred around ~$9M of his holdings to Binance.

The World Liberty team has been desperately trying to prevent the WLFI price from sinking, including by burning tokens to boost the price. They may be concerned that whales like Sun could further depress the token price by cashing out.

Sun is claiming he was merely testing exchange deposits (?) and not buying or selling. He seems to be responding to suggestions that he was the one tanking the token price, though it's not clear if this blame is coming from WLF directly.

Tweet by Justin Sun: Our address only conducted a few generic exchange deposit tests, with very low amounts, and then created address dispersion, without involving any buying or selling, which could not possibly have any impact on the market.

(Autotranslated from Chinese by Twitter)

Prior to this, Justin Sun's HTX exchange was running a "high-yield event", offering people 20% APY if they deposited their WLFI tokens on his exchange.

Sun has in the past snapped at people questioning his high-yield products, admonishing them to "stop asking me questions like 'where does the yield come from'" and claiming it's fully subsidized by the company. As I wrote then:

Speaking of Justin Sun, remember last issue when I wrote about the Terra fraud: “Side note: If someone promises you a risk-free 20% annual yield if you just let them hold on to your dollars for you, the risk that you never see those dollars again is in fact very high”? Well, an hour after retweeting with the 👀 emoji a Reuters bulletin about the SEC enforcement “freeze” (a headline which did not make mention of the carve-out for cases, like Sun’s, alleging fraud), Sun fired off one of the most spectacular tweets I’ve seen out of the industry in a while:

H.E. Justin Sun @justinsuntron USDD 2.0 is about to launch with a 20% APY, fully subsidized by @trondao. All interest will be sent in advance to a transparent address. There’s no other reason—it’s simply because we have plenty of money. So, stop asking me questions like “where does the yield come from.”
(Tweet, archive)
Stop asking questions! Why can’t you understand that we just have so much money that we want you to send us your money so that we can give you our money!

this is the company in charge of custody for crypto assets held by the US government 🙂

Tweet by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong: ~40% of daily code written at Coinbase is AI-generated. I want to get it to >50% by October.

Obviously it needs to be reviewed and understood, and not all areas of the business can use AI-generated code. But we should be using it responsibly as much as we possibly can.

The betting platforms can't open markets on Trump's death for obvious reasons, but Kalshi just so happened to open up a "Trump out as President" market on Saturday

Kalshi prediction market for "Trump out as President this year?". It opened at around 5% on August 30, raising to around 10% by September 1

Polymarket opened their own on September 1.

Polymarket prediction market for "Trump out as President this year?". It opened at around 10% on September 1, hovering between 7 and ~11.5% since

Unlike Polymarket, on Kalshi these markets do not resolve to "yes" if the person in question dies (they settle at the last traded price). I suspect many bettors don't read the fine print, though.

Donald Trump Jr. is an adviser to both Kalshi and Polymarket, btw. (This is deeply weird for all of the many reasons having Don Jr. as an adviser is deeply weird, and also because the companies are the two major competitors in the prediction markets space)

i never realized that "getting lit", as in getting drunk, dates back at least to the 1930s

“You could have phoned him last night.”
“I could not. I got lit last night. This is the first job I’ve had in a month.”
“Got any expense money left?”
“Enough for a couple of days. I’ve learned self-control.”

“How drunk are you?”
“Hell, how do I know?”
Wolfe’s brow lifted. “Gentlemen?”
Farrell said, “Mike’s all right. Forget him. He’s all right.” Julius Adler the lawyer, about the build of a lead-pencil stub, looking like a necktie clerk except for his eyes and the way he was dressed, put in, “I would say yes. We realize that this is your house, Mr. Wolfe, and that Mr. Ayers is lit, but after all we don’t suppose that you invited us here to censor our private habits. You have something to say to us?”

(via The League of Frightened Men by Rex Stout, first published 1935)

This month's fiction: very gay, very outer space.

Highlights included Of Monsters and Mainframes by Barbara Truelove, The Alliance series by Elaine U. Cho, and Charlie Jane Anders' Lessons in Magic and Disaster.

@molly0xfff August reading wrap-up, reviewing the 16 books I read this month (no spoilers) #readingwrapup #augustreadingwrapup #booktok #bookrecommendations #scifibooks ♬ original sound - Molly White

Storygraph August 2025 wrap-up page. Books: 16; pages: 5,756; av. rating 3.34. Highest rated reads: Of Monsters and Mainframes (4 stars), Lessons in Magic and Disaster (4 stars), Teo's Durumi (4 stars). Average book length: 352 pages; average time to finish: 4 days. 100% fiction. 56% digital, 44% audio.

The essay I mention in the video is "On the Joy of Building a Sci-Fi World with a Korean Inflection".

I’ve spent the better part of two decades dealing with people trying to dox and harass the volunteers who make Wikipedia the incredible resource it is today.

I liked it better when they weren’t in Congress.

Letter from House Oversight Committee Chairs James Comer and Nancy Mace

I also spent six years on the same (volunteer!) Arbitration Committee from which Oversight is now demanding private communications. Even just threats like this one, regardless of followthrough, will it so much harder for them to do their thankless work.

it feels deeply weird to be Going Through It with my lifelong anxiety disorder as an american in 2025

like yeah i'm grappling with crushing feelings of impending doom but who isn't?

i would like to go back to being anxious about irrational, or at least highly implausible, things

Justin Sun v. Bloomberg

Justin Sun has just filed a lawsuit against Bloomberg, claiming they plan to “recklessly and improperly disclos[e] his highly confidential, sensitive, private, and proprietary financial information,” which he gave to them while they were verifying his assets for inclusion in the Bloomberg “Billionaires Index”.

Sun claims this will cause him “significant and irreparable harm—both financially and physically.” He says they plan to use the information in an article unrelated to the Billionaires Index. He also claims they plan to publish “granular details about his cryptocurrency assets, including a breakdown of his cryptocurrency holdings,” in the Billionaires Index, and that he wouldn’t have agreed to share the information had he known.

Sun sent a cease and desist to Bloomberg, and was informed they still intend to publish. He now seeks an injunction against the company.

The “agreement” Justin Sun says should prevent Bloomberg from publishing the amounts and types of crypto assets he holds seems extremely shaky to me (caveat: I’m not a lawyer, some images are missing).

It looks like Justin Sun and his team sent the information he now claims is confidential on or around February 28.

A month later, on March 27, Justin Sun posted terms including: “The data is solely for verification and may not be used for any other purpose (including reporting) ... Bloomberg must also agree to use the data strictly in accordance with our requirements — for example, to provide only a general assessment or overall valuation based on the data, without making any specific references or detailed reporting on the figures.”

Bloomberg’s Tom Maloney: “Nobody at Bloomberg agreed to the terms sent by Justin, weeks after the data was shared with us.”

Bloomberg says they will oppose a temporary restraining order, but also that a TRO is moot because Bloomberg already published.

It seems Sun is objecting to VERY rough estimates of his crypto holdings (~60 billion TRX, heavily discounted; 17k BTC; 224K ETH; 700K Tether).

Confidence rating: 1 star
The majority of Sun's net worth comes from cryptocurrency he owns.
Sun owns more than 60 billion Tronix (also referred to as TRON or TRX), the cryptocurrency native to Tron, according to an analysis of financial information provided by representatives of Sun in February 2025. A 75% liquidity discount is applied to the value of the token because Sun controls the majority of its supply. Tron has more than 300 million user accounts as of June 2025, according to the Tronscan website.
Sun also owns about 17,000 Bitcoin, 224,000 Ether, and 700,000 Tether, according to the same analysis. No discount is applied to these because his holdings represent less than 1% of the total supply.
The analysis only includes tokens that are on-chain. Tokens that are held on exchanges such as HTX and Binance are not included in the analysis because the holdings could not be verified.
Sun owns the cryptocurrency exchange HTX. It's calculated to have had revenue of about $1.3 billion in 2024, based on its spot and derivative trading volumes and fee schedules. It's valued using the average price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase Global Inc., Galaxy Digital Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. Sun is credited with about 90% of the company, based on information provided by his representatives in May 2025. A 50% liquidity discount is applied.
Confidence rating: 1 star
The majority of Sun's net worth comes from cryptocurrency he owns.
Sun owns more than 60 billion Tronix (also referred to as TRON or TRX), the cryptocurrency native to Tron, according to an analysis of financial information provided by representatives of Sun in February 2025. A 75% liquidity discount is applied to the value of the token because Sun controls the majority of its supply. Tron has more than 300 million user accounts as of June 2025, according to the Tronscan website.
Sun also owns about 17,000 Bitcoin, 224,000 Ether, and 700,000 Tether, according to the same analysis. No discount is applied to these because his holdings represent less than 1% of the total supply.
The analysis only includes tokens that are on-chain. Tokens that are held on exchanges such as HTX and Binance are not included in the analysis because the holdings could not be verified.
Sun owns the cryptocurrency exchange HTX. It's calculated to have had revenue of about $1.3 billion in 2024, based on its spot and derivative trading volumes and fee schedules. It's valued using the average price-to-sales multiple of Coinbase Global Inc., Galaxy Digital Inc. and Riot Platforms Inc. Sun is credited with about 90% of the company, based on information provided by his representatives in May 2025. A 50% liquidity discount is applied.

My guess is that his fury here is at the revelation that he controls 60 billion TRX (63% of the total supply, and it’s not clear to what extent they’re counting TRX held by companies he owns). It’s always been known he owns a lot, but estimates I’ve seen are lower than that.

The other explanations that I’ve brainstormed don’t really make sense. The estimates likely aren’t specific enough to be identifying, as he claims. And I doubt it’s an ego thing at having his net worth shown to be lower than he wants — Bloomberg puts him at $12.4B, higher than Forbes’ $8.5B. (Though maybe he wants them to say his 60B TRX are worth $21.6B, idk)

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