The day that crypto almost died 🪦

If you enjoy these newsletters and think a colleague or a friend should read them, please get them to sign up on this page. 📝

If it is your first time here or you want to binge-read past letters, here are all of them. 📰

If you found this newsletter interesting, I would love it if you could share it🔗!

👉 These are the crazy things I learned last week.

1/ This week, crypto almost died. 🪦 And yes, this is the story of FTX, but with some facts, you don't know (and are highly illegal).

The story behind FTX is simple:

FTX is (was) one of the biggest cryptocurrency exchanges. Through shady dealings, they "lost" 10 Billion dollars of customer funds. Binance tried to acquire them, and after just one day, they said, "Nah, probably not a good idea".

That means if you had ANY money to FTX, well, kiss them goodbye. 🫠

But that's not why crypto almost died.

There is a loophole to withdraw your money (the same money that belongs now to creditors) if you are a resident of the Bahamas. As you can imagine, tons of people started paying $100k to $1M to people working for FTX to "update" their residency.

Smart right? 🤔

Depends if you like a prison as this is extremely illegal.

And that's the danger that could kill crypto. Pilling up criminal activity.

Do you believe that the crash of FTX happened for a good reason? 🕵🏼

2/ Guest who lost 1 Trillion? 🤯

No, it is not Elon Musk (yet). Which, by the way, has the most expensive loan in the history of tech (13 Billion dollars - 1 billion dollars in interest rate PER YEAR).

It's not Meta that had to fire 11k people.

It's Amazon.

Microsoft is not far behind with losing $889 billion.

I wonder what Apple is doing.

3/ 779 tech companies w/ layoffs ∙ 120.155 employees laid off ∙ In 2022

The technology sector is at the peak of its recession. Tech companies all over the world have done massive layoffs and hiring freezing.

• Meta: 11.000
• Twitter: 3.700
• Stripe: 1.100
• Coinbase: 1.100
• Shopify: 1.000
• Lyft: 700
• and so many more...

Layoffs.fyi is a website that has been tracking all tech layoffs since COVID-19, with data compiled from public sources.

4/ Sadly, you can't do much when a company is doing layoffs. 🤕

But you can always work harder (& smarter) and improve your skills and make yourself more competitive in the job market.

If you are in the middle of the process of looking for a new job, you know that the hiring process is ultra-competitive. But there are specific actions you can take to stand out.

Here are 16 ways to stand out in a hiring process (from Sahil Bloom)

1. Stop Fearing Rejection
2. Leverage Warm intros
3. Targeted Outreach
4. Nail the Cover letter
5. Do your research
6. Carry a notebook
7. Prepare for "Tell me about yourself."
8. Prepare for "Why us."
9. Embrace "I don't know."
10. Highlight Learning as a goal
11. Cite Real weaknesses
12. Play to your strengths
13. Show your passion
14. Pass the plane test
15. Ask unique questions
16. Personalized "thank you."

5/ If you die in the game, you die in real life. 💀

The founder of Oculus created a VR headset that, if you lose, you die in real life.

How?

🧨 Explosives. That destroys your brain when the screen flashes red at a specific frequency (during a game over - HOPEFULLY).

The "game" is mostly a piece of experimental art and won't be available for sale.

People say that it is still better than the new Oculus. 😅

That's all for now. See you next week! 🚀

-- Jon V (as in Victory)

- Fri 11 November 2022