Thoughts tagged "crypto"

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

Crypto executive order establishes a digital assets working group to recommend regulatory changes and "evaluate the potential creation" of a digital asset stockpile, prohibits the development of a central bank digital currency (CBDC), and revokes Biden's crypto EO.

My immediate thoughts: this is mostly symbolic. The revocation of the previous EO doesn't do much (because the prev EO didn't do much), and although a lot of people have blustered about banning the creation of a CBDC, no US entity ever really pursued creating one.

Regarding the stockpile, I suspect bitcoiners are going to be upset that it is now a "digital asset" stockpile and not a bitcoin stockpile. Furthermore, echoes Trump's original idea of establishing such a stockpile by merely not selling off cryptos seized by law enforcement.

The people who were most excited about a bitcoin stockpile were mostly looking at the proposals by RFK Jr., Sen. Lummis, etc. who had proposed going out and buying a bunch of BTC for a "strategic reserve" (thus pumping the BTC price), and this does not look like that.

The most meaningful portion of this will likely be the regulatory changes to come, though those were pretty clearly coming regardless of any EO.

In the last issue of my newsletter, I wrote: “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 that you never see those dollars again is in fact very high.”

Anyway, here’s a post from Justin Sun today:

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.”

apparently preventing fraud is “anti-crypto”.

according to this Fortune headline, the SEC going after fraud and deceptive business practices after a company publicly announced they were going to breach a previous agreement with the agency is an “anti-crypto campaign”

According to the Wells Notice, viewed by Fortune, the SEC plans to formally accuse Unicoin of violations related to fraud, deceptive practices, and the offering and sale of unregistered securities, although the letter did not specify the exact violations.
Still, because of its novel approach, Konanykhin toldFortunethat the company has been subject to several SEC investigations, though the latest is the first to result in a Wells Notice. He said that the company had entered into a so-called standstill agreement with the SEC earlier this year not to conduct an ICO or go public, but Konanykhin said he decided to breach the agreement after Trump won the recent election. Unicoin had previously filed paperwork with the agency announcing its intent to go public through a reverse merger.

This is particularly hilarious given that Fortune has skewered Gary Gensler for failing to go after the FTX, Celsius, and Terra frauds.

Gary Gensler blew it again. After his agency failed to warn investors about Terra and Celsius—whose collapses this spring sparked a trillion-dollar investor wipeout—the Securities and Exchange Commission chair allowed an even bigger debacle to unfold right under his nose. I’m talking, of course, about the revelation this week that the $30 billion FTX empire was a house of cards and that its golden boy founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is the crypto equivalent of Theranos’s Elizabeth Holmes.

Schrödinger’s regulator can’t go after fraud before the company collapses, but if it collapses and the SEC didn’t warn us, they failed.

taking psychic damage reading the lawsuit by Justin Sun’s Bit Global against Coinbase

COINBASE’S NONEXISTENT LISTING “STANDARDS” 62. While Coinbase claims to have made the decision to delist wBTC to adhere to the company’s “listing standards,” the truth is that Coinbase has virtually no standards for what can be listed at all. Around the same time that it was delisting wBTC, Coinbase has onboarded various “memecoins” which unlike wBTC have no inherent value other than demand created by their memetic potential as jokes. The decision to allow users to trade these memecoins makes clear that Coinbase did not delist wBTC because of any listing standard, but because Coinbase coveted wBTC’s market share and wanted it for itself. 63. On November 13, 2024, Coinbase announced that it was listing a memecoin called PEPE, named after a controversial picture of a cartoon frog which has been identified as a hate symbol and/or a “racist frog.” The coin is promoted to “Dank Meme Enjoyoors” with an official website that purports to perform an “Autism Test” on their computers to ensure that the user’s autism is over 9,000 before proceeding.17

i have to respect the argument that “memecoins... unlike wBTC have no inherent value other than demand created by their memetic potential as jokes”. your honor, wBTC’s lack of inherent value is for a different reason entirely

i do have to give Haliey Welch some credit for comedic timing. intentional or not, she perfectly timed her Hawk Tuah rugpull to steal the spotlight from bitcoin hitting $100K, a moment coiners have been awaiting for years. masterful stuff