38 Burst results for "Brian Armstrong"
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Cathie Wood Questions Bitcoin | Ethereum Rally Incoming
"All right, so let's get into Ethereum today. Is a rally incoming? After some interesting performance over the weekend, we're going to break it all down for you. My name is Paul Barron. Welcome back in the Tech Path. Before we get started, I want to thank our sponsor, and that is iTrust Capital. If you're looking at long -term holding or maybe going into a crypto IRA, one of the best things you can do is check out iTrust Capital. And, of course, you can get into Bitcoin, Ethereum, a whole slew of altcoins, as well as precious metals. So there's a lot of options over there that you guys do have. And there's no fees monthly, you're just doing transaction fees for when you're doing something inside your account. So make sure and check it out. It is a link down below. You get a $100 funding reward if you use our link, and it works out for you guys. Let me know. All right, so let's get going here on a couple of things. I want to jump over to an article on the block. And this one is really just hitting on the whole issue around inflow. $767 million six -week streak, ETH, of course, now seeing the largest inflow since August of 2022. A couple of points within the article. Come and zoom in on that one right there. Digital asset investment products as asset managers, such as CoinShares, Bitwise, Grayscale, 21 shares, et cetera. The funds have been adding $261 million to $767 million over the past six weeks. So pretty big deal considering this passes or surpasses all of the inflows we saw in 2022. And I think you can kind of see the chart right here of the inflows. What is it that is happening that's causing this? Some people would look at a couple of things. One of course is the movement on Bitcoin as an ETF, because could that mean that Ethereum could get an ETF? Or does Ethereum move in unison like it has in the past with what Bitcoin is doing? One other thing that was in the article here is if Ether crypto funds generated the most inflows since August. One of the things here though, this of course total $17 million, a significant turnaround from $107 million in outflows that they face this year. So that's another factor I think that plays into this. I don't know, when you guys, and I know I'm a big investor in Ethereum. I get behind this project, I like the ecosystem, I like the potential of it. But I'm always questioning, are there other faster ones? Are there some other opportunities out there? There's a lot of different angles that you can go. But of course with ETH, one of the things to look at is a recent analysis on this is just looking at this potential bullish breakout. You can kind of see this downward wedge that's painted in by this analyst. And they've looked at a couple of points where it's bounced off this wedge top and has retraced down. But right now it's outperforming this, which is the point of where we've seen this $1 ,900 breakout. If it continues to fly over the $1 ,900, which is where it is right now, does this mean that maybe Ethereum is set to have its own little mini rally, much like what Bitcoin had going up to $35K? This is going to be a good one to watch. Hong Kong, of course, is now, their regulator is welcoming crypto spot ETF proposals. And a lot within this that I think is important. This is the SFC's chief executive, Julia Leung, said that the regulator will entertain proposals that boost efficiency and customer experience. And we're happy to give it a try as long as risks are addressed. Our approach is consistent regardless of the asset, she said. So basically what they're doing is they're talking about crypto ETFs. That to me is a pretty significant scenario, especially because of what's happening here, even within the United States, having so much struggle just getting a Bitcoin ETF passed, a spot ETF passed. I think this is an opportunity for Hong Kong to kind of plant a flag in the sand and maybe show that this can be done in a very responsible way. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority, HKMA, is also developing guidelines to help banks hold tokenized asset. This is another factor that I think we'll see a big ramp up on once we get an ETF underway and once the SFC starts to hopefully give some leeway on what's going to happen within the crypto markets. I think banking will be one of the next areas that will be on deck for sure. But let's not forget, there's still a lot of Ethereum FUD in the market. One of them, of course, is this article from Bitcoinist, Ethereum Insider Drops Bombshell, ETH Founders Fraud Bigger Than the FTX Fraud. Of course, we have to show this. Just to kind of show you, this is the attorney that was talking about this and I'll highlight this right here. Naroff said that the two Ethereum founders have allegedly orchestrated fraudulent activities regarding ETH blockchain and exceeded the scale of actions even by the former FTX CEO Sam Bankman -Fried. So, I don't know. These are the kind of things that I feel like within this market, there's always FUD. One way or the other, you're getting FUD on Bitcoin, you're getting FUD on Ethereum or any project out there. But I think if you're doing the research, you start to realize where these opportunities are. And when you ask the questions, it starts to reveal the answers. I want to jump over to a couple of clips here. And this is Cathie Wood asking questions and maybe revealing some answers to herself listening. Can I just ask a quick question? What would be the, what would be opposition to that? Any particular reason or is this taking off pretty quickly? For like stablecoins on Lightning or for integration into the service providers? Integration. So, I think on the integration side, well, the first thing is that there is no stablecoin on Lightning live yet. And so, hopefully you'll have like a USDC or a USDT that goes live. I think the second step is that if you're developing a predominantly for like an EVM environment, if you just do like EVM and Solana, you already have some like 90 % of the smart contract market share. And so, you really only have to do two things and they all kind of work like relatively in similar ways. Now, the clip here is of Cathie Wood and a lot of Lightning developers that are kind of addressing the issues and the questions she has in terms of expansion of the project, but also the functionality of it. And that is the thing that is interesting because it's relative to what's happening with Ethereum right now. And part of this is not only in adoption, because remember ETH, largest ecosystem out there, largest number of developers, probably the most apps, even though we've seen a lot of movement, both in Avalanche and Solana, but this next clip goes into the adoption of Lightning. Now, and this isn't about Lightning versus ETH, but it is about how Ethereum has a potential here as a payment architecture in the future. But listen in. Des, is this more of a developed world or is the developing world getting involved? I just don't know your business well enough. Yeah, I mean, I would, the majority of our users, I would say are in Latin America. So it is for us very much largely developing regions. All right. So as you can see there, they're talking about Lightning's deployment in terms of adoption. A lot of this happening in the emerging markets. We've known that even if you look back at the success that Bitcoin has had in El Salvador and also Lightning to a certain extent, because it's being used across Strike and other platforms that integrate with Lightning. But her question was pretty straightforward. Why are we not seeing these kinds of integrations on a global perspective in some of the major markets? Now, granted, we are not necessarily seeing that either within the ETH ecosystems. Now, granted within the ETH ecosystem, we're seeing a lot of dApps starting to develop and solve some of these challenges and these problems. And I think that's the thing that maybe Woods is getting to is trying to understand why we haven't seen the kind of opportunities that Ethereum has represented. So it's a very interesting situation, I think, with both Lightning and Bitcoin, along with the alternative, which really right now I would still say is Ethereum, even though Solana has a lot of potential, it still is an emerging layer one that does have a lot of use cases. But again, it's hard to match up to what's happened within the ETH ecosystem in such a long period of time. Now, granted, it doesn't mean it can't be done. There's still a lot happening there. I want to jump over to another article. Brian Armstrong says OnChain is the new online, as Coinbase beats their expectations with $674 ,000 in revenue for the quarter. And the internet was and is a game -changing technology that redefined our modes of communication. Totally agree with him there. Business and social interaction, blockchain and crypto are doing the same thing today. Totally agree with him there. Broader access to financial services and even changes how we think in identity, governance, artwork and non -financial services. All this is applicable. Here is my argument with what Coinbase and what Brian Armstrong is talking about. And actually, I think he knows this. And you know, I've talked to many of the Coinbase team and I feel like they all kind of get it in the sense that when you look at the birth and the growth of the internet, we never really addressed the monetary or the financial system. It was really more about the information system. Now what you're doing with Web3 and the evolution of blockchain is you're addressing both. You're addressing the information system and you're addressing the financial system. And that I think is going to be the challenge and it's the continuing challenge. That's why it's been so hard I think to get a regulation here in the United States is because it is messing with the one thing that most people have not messed with in the past and that is the money. And I think that's the scenario we've got to face. Last point he hits on was regulatory clarity. In the U .S. it's still a big hurdle. To my point, that is one of the biggest issues. Further in this, just to give you kind of an insight on this, SEC now is struggling to hire crypto experts because they all seem to want to hodl. I like that topic line. A couple of points from the article and kind of zoom in on this right here. Many qualified candidates hold crypto assets which the Office of Ethics and Council have determined would prohibit them from working on particular matters of effecting crypto assets. I don't know if you would get a crypto expert that wouldn't be holding crypto. So are they looking for a white elephant? I think they might be. It's very possible. And then when you don't have the crypto experts you can't really find the crypto bad guys? They're going to have to probably loosen up on those situations. Candidates are often unwilling to divest their crypto. Can you imagine that? I'm not willing to give up my Bitcoin, my Ethereum, my Solana so I can come work for the SEC. Interesting. Maybe they already know. The writing is on the wall. Let's go to another clip here. This is talking about developers also coming in from Cathie Woods. Listen in. One of the metrics we like to look at is the number of developers. Over time, the number of developers on Ethereum has really taken off. And while the number on Bitcoin generally has, it's still moving up, the slope had changed and flattened out. Have all of the developments that you're talking about on the Lightning Network changed that dynamic? Are we starting to see an inflection point with more Bitcoin developers here? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think so, especially when you think about like ordinals and all of those things. I mean, those are kind of those kind of came and they haven't went, but they're not as popular as they were. There was a hackathon recently. There was like 200 people that submitted ideas. And yeah, maybe they're not like building those out in full. But I think it's just it's I know it's nothing compared to the scale of Ethereum, but it's hard to build on Bitcoin. I think everybody knows here it's it's a little bit harder. I don't think it's ever going to have the same amount of developer interest as Ethereum because you can't experiment as much. You know, when we come to building games with rewards in them, you know, we're not messing around with like NFTs and tokens and all of this that just kind of complicate things. So I think in short, they're simply saying, yeah, this is not going to develop at the scale or at the pace in which Ethereum or other chains like it are developing on. But at the same time, I look at it and I think, well, other layer ones have been able to do this. We have Solana right here, you know, 7000 registrants, 907 submissions, participants from over 120 countries. This is what happens. I think this was the hyperdrive hackathon that they did. Tolle was talking about that in terms of the growth, but almost a thousand submissions here. This is developer, a developer ecosystem that is starting to explode, much like what you saw in the birth and the explosion of the ETH ecosystem. Those are the ones that I'm watching again, ETH is continuing to skyrocket and do these kind of things, which again gives it the opportunity to experiment, to try new things, to do things that really solve real world problems. That at the end of the day for blockchain is where it all matters, because if you don't solve real world problems, what are you doing, you know, what are you doing out there? Let's go over to another clip real quick. This is talking about Ethereum and Solana. Listen in. I think it's a little bit naive to be like, hey, everything else is a scam and this is the only thing that's not a scam. What Ethereum is trying to do is build a credibly neutral blockchain on which anybody can build whatever they want. And like even looking at something like Solana, like their values are really straightforward. They want to be the cheapest and the fastest. They just want to be an app platform. 99 % of the people in each of these things are building things that they want to build for people that they want them to use it. There's a small cohort in every community and the bigger community has it as well that talks and, nonsense you know, is scammy and misleads people. All right, so you kind of can see that there is a bit of a light bulb, I think, going off in Cathie Wood's head. Now, I know Cathie is big into Bitcoin, but I think maybe she is starting to look a lot stronger into these alternatives, including Ethereum, Solana and others that will kind of flow into that. One of the articles that kind of point to this, this is a repeat of the 2019 bull run crypto now in play amid Bitcoin and Ethereum surge. This is coming from Chris Berniski. Now, remember, Chris Berniski was on the ARK team, former head of crypto at Cathie Wood's ARK, and basically says right here, if Bitcoin ETH rip here and everything else follows, it's going to be just high enough for people to believe that maybe, just maybe all new time highs are around the corner before ending in a final wipeout. This would be Q1 2024. This will be interesting because if people are looking at this, because there are a lot of people that are kind of analyzing the current move here that's similar to 2019, to where we could see another kind of fake bull run, and then a drop in the market, and then an adjustment, obviously, post halving, to where we'd start to see some of this move. But right now, he goes on to say, predicts that Sol will continue to be the prime outperformer in the next market expansion. And he loves ETH, grew up professionally along Ethereum's rise, continues to support many Ethereum projects, so that's good. But this cycle, Sol has been and likely will continue to be the faster horse. I don't know, I'd love to give you guys' input on this. I'm still a big ETH fan, obviously Solana is surprising me daily, just with what they've been able to do. So, love to get your feedback, drop some comments down below. If you're not a subscriber of the channel, also hit the subscribe button, it's one of the best ways you guys can help kind of spread the word around what's happening in blockchain as a whole. I want to go to this last clip here.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
Fresh update on "brian armstrong" discussed on Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
"This episode is sponsored by Harpy, the most advanced on-chain security solution for monitoring and protecting your crypto wallet from theft in real time. Harpy helps you detect, block, and recover compromised assets from malicious transactions before they execute, keeping your crypto safe from the threat of attacks, hacks, and scams. Secure your wallet for free at harpy.io forward slash markets daily. That's H-A-R-P-I-E dot I-O forward slash markets daily. Welcome back. Today, I want to highlight the Coindesk most influential list. This is a list of the 50 characters that Coindesk believes have most contributed to the evolution of the crypto industry over the past year. These are not necessarily heroes. Some of them are people who actively conspired to hurt the crypto industry or who through arrogance or ignorance have hurt its reputation. For instance, SEC Chair Gary Gensler is on the list. I wonder how he feels about that. Also on the list is Caroline Ellison, former CEO of FTX's Alameda Trading, and of course the industry's arch enemy Senator Elizabeth Warren. Most on the list are positive forces for the industry, however. Some are developers that have pushed the envelope on functionality. Such as Casey Rodermore, the creator of Ordinals, which brings data inscription and digital collectibles to Bitcoin. Or Ogle, who is attempting to professionalize the business of recovering hacked funds. Some are crypto industry executives such as Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, who spent the market winter navigating regulatory rapids while helming the build-out of new services, products, and even a new blockchain. Or Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, steadfastly advocating for responsible stablecoin regulation. Some on the list come from legacy finance such as Franklin Templeton's CEO Jenny Johnson, PayPal's crypto lead José Fernández Aponte, and Blackrock's Larry Fink. Also featured are crypto natives with influential voices and tireless stamina, such as Nasari's Ryan Selkis. There's a lot to think about in this list. Of course you're not going to agree with the whole selection, and of course there are many deserving names that didn't make it this year. The underlying point of the exercise is for us all to think about what we expect from our industry and its participants, even those who are adjacent rather than directly involved. We'll put a link to the full list in the show notes, be sure to check it out, and take a look at the original artwork that CoinDesk commissioned for each entrant. And I'd love to hear which of CoinDesk's selections you most agree with. Thanks for listening. That's it for today's show. I'm Noelle Atchison for CoinDesk. We're back tomorrow with more market news and insights.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
A highlight from Crypto Update | Insights from Coinbase's Q3 Earnings Report
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by CME Group and PayPal. It's Monday, November 6th, 2023, and this is Markets Daily from Coindesk. My name is Noelle Acheson, Coindesk collaborator and author of the Cryptos Macro Now newsletter on Substat. On today's show, we're talking about trading volumes, layer 2 blockchains, business activity, and more. So you don't miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice and turn on notifications. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Now, a markets roundup. Crypto markets had a relatively quiet yet positive weekend. According to Coindesk indices, at 9am Eastern Time today, Bitcoin was trading at $35 ,066, up 0 .04 % over the past 24 hours. Ether was trading at $1 ,904, up 1 .5%. Elsewhere, Ripple's XRP token is up more than 13%, Uniswap and Stellar are up more than 7%, and Avax and Filecoin are up over 5%. A more optimistic sentiment does seem to be consolidating, and when it comes to Bitcoin, the gentle upward slope of the price trajectory over the past couple of weeks suggests that the increases are from a steady inflow of new demand. This is more organic, as opposed to the sharp moves that we have seen recently, many of which were triggered by derivatives -related repositioning. Hopefully this also means the trend is more sustainable than other upward moves we've seen so far this year. In macro indicators, we need to look at a point from Friday that was somewhat overshadowed in the excitement about the soft employment report. We need to talk about the US Purchasing Managers Index, or PMI, specifically that for services. There are a few PMI series published, but one of the main ones comes from the Institute for Supply Management, which measures business activity on a monthly basis via an index that reflects responses from purchasing managers as to whether the market conditions are expanding, staying the same, or contracting. Anything above 50 is expansion, below 50 is contraction. On Friday, we got the Institute for Supply Management's PMI for the services industry. Services PMI is especially interesting given that services contribute almost 80 % of US GDP, and it is services -related inflation that has proven particularly hard to bring down. Well, in October, according to the index, services activity in the US declined for the second consecutive month. It is still expanding, but at its weakest pace in five months and notably less than economists had forecast. It's too soon to say this deceleration will last. A separate gauge of new orders increased in October after a sizable drop in September, so we could see activity pick up again next month. The reading does highlight that the economy is looking a bit choppy, though, and it makes the next few monthly PMI readings all the more relevant. In stocks, as expected, the US indices continued their upward march on Friday, as softer -than -expected jobs data brought forward expectations of a rate cut and pushed bond yields down further. The US 10 -year yield on Friday almost touched 4 .5 % for the first time since September, having been at 5 % just a few days earlier. The S &P 500 was up almost 1%, the Nasdaq closed up 1 .4%, and the Dow Jones rose two -thirds of a percent. Futures this morning are pointing to a mixed opening. In Europe, stocks were largely mixed to flat on Friday in spite of the US enthusiasm, but they closed out a strong week with the German DAX and the broader Eurostox 600 posting their strongest weekly gains since March. The FTSE 100 showed some weakness, closing four -tenths of a percent lower but still breaking a two -week losing streak. So far this morning, sentiment is still looking mixed. In Asia, sentiment in today's trading was decidedly bullish. Japan's Nikkei index jumped 2 .4%, the Hang Seng closed up 1 .7%, and even the recently beleaguered Shanghai Composite Index rose almost 1%. In commodities, oil prices settled more than 2 % lower on Friday as supply concerns eased. This morning, the Brent crude benchmark was recovering slightly, trading up 0 .5 % at $86 .50 the barrel. Gold is again holding steady, trading at $1 ,986 an ounce. Stay with us. After the break, we're going to take a closer look at some intriguing insights in Coinbase's Q3 earnings. Introducing PayUSD, PayPal's stablecoin. Designed for digital payments and Web3 transactions, PayUSD is the only stablecoin supported by PayPal. Built on Ethereum, it's compatible with widely used wallets, exchanges, and dapps, and fully backed by US dollar deposits and cash equivalents. Eligible US PayPal customers who purchase PayPal USD are able to transfer PayPal USD between PayPal and external wallets. Send PayPal USD to friends in the US on PayPal or Venmo without fees. Shop with PayPal USD on millions of sites. Convert any of PayPal's supported cryptocurrencies to and from PayPal USD. Whether you are a crypto expert or a newcomer, PayPal provides a secure and convenient platform for your crypto transactions. Start exploring at PayPal .com slash P Y U S D. Welcome back. Crypto exchange Coinbase released its third quarter earnings last week. Now that I've had a chance to go through them, there are a few things worth highlighting. Revenue fell by almost 5 % from the previous quarter, a smaller drop than most analysts were expecting, and the net loss shrunk from almost $100 million in the second quarter to around $2 million in the third quarter. Unsurprisingly, most of the revenue drop was due to a decline in transaction fees, which of course accompanies a drop in trading volumes. According to Coinbase, global spot volumes were down 24 % in the third quarter, which is, you know, ouch. Coinbase's volumes fell by less. Retail trading volume was down by 21 % and institutional trading volume was down by 17%. Nevertheless, this obviously hurt, but less than many other crypto trading businesses since trading revenue accounts for less than half of the company's income. An interesting insight is that it's not just trading volumes that impact exchange revenues, it's also crypto asset volatility. With higher volatility, traders trade more. According to Coinbase in the third quarter, crypto asset volatility reached its lowest point since 2016. Well, if you've been following the Bitcoin price recently, you'll have noticed that it has picked up. According to data from the block, 30 -day historical volatility for Bitcoin is roughly three times what it was at August's low point. This is good news for exchanges, especially since spot volumes should follow volatility up. Together, they should increase overall liquidity, which would be very good news as that could encourage more new large investors to enter the numbers. I want to mention something Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in the earnings call. He opened with what he himself acknowledged was a provocative statement about the future of blockchain development. I quote, on chain is the new online end quote. He goes on to elaborate how blockchains are extending the impact of the internet on the way we interact by bringing back the decentralization that was the original part of the internet manifesto. But not only that, blockchains also introduced the concept of ownership, which the internet was missing. But how can blockchains become as ubiquitous and flexible as the internet? According to Armstrong, it's through layer twos, which are scalable blockchains that anchor to layer one security. Layer one in this case refers to base layer blockchains such as Bitcoin and has this to say about layer twos. I quote, the transition from layer one networks to layer two networks can be likened to the transition from dial up internet to broadband. That's an evocative comparison for sure. Some could accuse it of being somewhat commercial since Coinbase launched a layer two network this summer. Called base, it anchors to Ethereum and aims to provide a fast and reliable platform for developers to work on practically any type of application. Activity has declined since the initial hype, but base is still doing pretty well. According to DefyLama, total value locked, which is the amount stored in smart contracts on the network is around $300 million with roughly 55 ,000 daily active addresses. For context, that's slightly less than half the number of daily active addresses on Arbitrum, the largest layer two in terms of value locked. But we should remember that base has only been open to the public for a long time. However, rather than dismiss the comparison of layer twos to the advent of broadband as a self -serving framework, we can look at the investment in base as an extension of a loftier goal to rethink what we want the internet to be. Here we have an exchange focusing on more than trading volumes. And while Coinbase will earn revenue on its layer two through sequencer fees, there are no plans to issue a token as yet that could centralize the monetization of network growth. Will layer twos become the new internet only with greater decentralization and a new concept of digital ownership? Obviously, I hope so. There's a long way to go though, in terms of usability. And there's the danger we end up with what we have now, a concentration of power and dubious monetization strategies. A big difference is the transparency of layer two development. And there's a lot of us watching and rooting for it to succeed. That's it for today's show. For more crypto podcasts, check out the Coindesk Podcast Network. You can reach us at podcasts at coindesk .com, follow us, and if you like the show, please leave us a five star rating on whatever platform you're listening to us on. Markets Daily is produced and produced by Coindesk. We're back tomorrow with more market news and insights.
Tech Path Crypto
Fresh update on "brian armstrong" discussed on Tech Path Crypto
"Maybe this is going to be a critical January. And the reason that it will be critical is if Bitcoin does see a major correction pulling off of that, because that would be kind of the buy the room or sell the news scenario. Or does Bitcoin pull off a little bit and then hold a say above 35 or possibly above 30? Where would be the number for you in terms of Bitcoin's price if we did see a retracement that would cause you to kind of take pause? Or is there a number at all? Or are you just saying, hey, this is all the way to the top? Love to kind of get your input on that. Also another key indicator here is you kind of follow some of the investors are out there. This, of course, is the Franklin Templeton CEO. She holds Bitcoin, ETH and Uniswap and then SushiSwap. So understanding DeFi, a couple of points here in the article, she expressed a preference for mature investments with clear financial returns, that's ETH, stating that all NFTs make sense from a personal investment perspective. But I tend to make investments in things that are anchored in having financial returns. And obviously, Ethereum is one of the biggest ones there. Then you look at just some of the other aspects around things like Uniswap and SushiSwap, obviously DEXs and what we'll see in terms of swap protocols starting to really become a very popular part of this next cycle. We've already started to see that just with Uniswap starting to move here recently. But just the flexibility of new people coming in the market and understanding what DeFi is, that'll be another big push right here. Are institutional investors buying Bitcoin or Ethereum? Here's a little bit of the latest data. A couple of focus points right here. According to research, investors are more skeptical of ETH and other altcoins compared to Bitcoin. According to research data, institutional investors put 45% of their positions as stablecoins, 35% in Bitcoin, and then also stated that 15%, that's a lot, 15% into ETH and 5% into altcoins. What's your mix right now? How are you guys holding your portfolios in terms of your weighting? And then of that weighting, what is your mix overall against your entire portfolio as a whole? Just your investment portfolio. I'd love to know what that might be, how it lines up, because I think a lot of people are starting to take cash off the sideline. According to recent research, especially in September, half the assets portfolio of institutional investors were allocated Bitcoin. And then however, institutional investors now also saw an increase in ETH holdings also in September. And again, this has been around a little bit of positive market sentiment on ETFs news, obviously exciting the market, meaning even Ethereum ETFs possibly lining up with that as well. If you look at Ethereum right now, what is the next target for it? Here's what a lot of people are looking at. Obviously, it's the natural evolution beyond where we are right now at 2,200. Could 3,000 be in the cards right now? Couple of points within this. Average unit price for investors who want to hold ETH for a long-term broke through $2,000. A lot of people looked at that as kind of the indicator, 2,150 was the one that everybody was kind of pointing to as the upside. So this happened a couple of days over the weekend. Long-term investors have turned profit, which is likely to act as key support, meaning people just aren't going to sell now. At this point, we're at a point of no return, and I think that is where we potentially go for sure. Here's Ryan Sean Adams from Bankless. He's kind of jumping in on a couple of points saying, you know, ETH is still very undervalued. ETH now makes $2.7 billion in annualized profits. The only profitable chain PE ratio is 98, slightly more than Amazon. So that's a big deal. I mean, if you were comparing, you can't really compare these kinds of assets to traditional securities, but it's a good exercise. If it had the monetary amplifier of gold, it'd already be worth around $22K. Definitely can't do that either. Gold is $11 to $12 trillion asset. ETH right now, you know, sub $400. So that I see is a problem there. ETH is still the internet bond. I agree with that. I think ETH is kind of the catalyst of where we're going to see Web3 continue to grow just because of the powerhouse that is behind it. Obviously, there are things what we will see happen with Ethereum, which is why I always look to hedge my own bets, and that would be some other layer ones, which is, you guys know, those, Avalanche and Solana. Ethereum likely to get a spot ETF. Agree there. I think that's going to be a big factor there, and it will cause Ethereum to continue its run. Whether we see a retracement here, what would be the point of a retrace that would cause you maybe to dollar cost average back into ETH, because I know you guys probably are not chasing this up the chart right now. So what would be the point right now? Is it around $2K, or if it just responded, let's say it goes to $3K, would $2K be a new entry point for you for a dollar cost average position? And his last statement here, which I totally agree with, ETH has not had its bull run for sure. And I think all of this, Bitcoin has still not had its bull run. All the altcoins have still not seen this. Gaming has not seen this. We are in the early stages of what a lot of people believe is the next generation of the internet. Remember, old Paul hits on a couple of things right here. ETH will be burning a record amount of supply, and record amounts of ETH will be locked up for staking. That's a good thing, because it's going to continue to hold that price. This is an epic supply and demand shock in the making. Agree that to a certain point. I think the key here will be how strong some of the other layer ones become. And what I mean by that is, how will they be impacted by what could be happening in the NFT space and in the gaming space? If you've been following our Market Sentiment Index, this was just our numbers last week, showing Bitcoin's move right here ahead of the move that actually happened. So a nice little spike, and again, amplification spiked above it. If you look at Ethereum, this thing happened last week on the 30th, and we got this massive move last Friday, which really kind of indicated what we saw over the weekend on Saturday when we saw Bitcoin and ETH both running to some new highs. All right, so a couple other things to be on the watch out for right now is Eric Balchunas. He's hitting on a little bit around the ETF and where the status is on that. Let me kind of zoom in on that tweet for you guys, if I can. Sometimes it doesn't want to zoom in. Latest look for S1 filing updates this week, which would answer round two comments from the SEC, which he heard were exhaustive and possible final, meaning we might be at the very closing cycle here. Remember, Jan 10th is the deadline. Jan 5th could be the, remember that, 5th is the return date after the holiday, so we could get some action that early week. Does not look like we're going to see something happen this year, even though, who knows, we could be surprised. Very interesting stuff. Now don't forget we've got other actions, and that is regulation trying to come in. And you've got Warren Davidson, of course, kind of hitting on Gary Gensler again with passing the SEC Stabilization Act. Remember what Emer said last week at the Blockchain Policy Summit, is that there could be, remember, they're in the middle of a session right now, so could we be seeing a little bit of action here before the end of the month, before holiday break, and is it the time for possibly the House to actually vote a crypto bill into law? That would be a very intriguing situation. Of course, Davidson kind of hitting on all these points of, we've got too much overreach from the SEC. Also on another thing, Coinbase dominating the BitcoinSpot ETF's custodian race right there. If you look at the applicants and who the custodians are, pretty much Coinbase, boom, boom, boom. There's Gemini, self-custody in there, and then hashtags not available. Point is, Coinbase is winning this race in a big way, and if you think about what's happening in their stock, it was mentioned earlier in the CNBC article, is that this stock has absolutely run like crazy, almost 98% growth. This is going back to just October 23rd, or excuse me, 27. That in itself is one, I think, shocking for a lot of people that have been looking at what's been happening. Even if you look at Hood right now, Robin Hood, had this big dump after their earnings miss, and then all of a sudden, where is that? Let's take a look at this growth right here on Hood, back here, of where it's playing right now. Almost 20% coming in from the 22nd of November to where we are right now in the first week of December. So, are you guys playing these? Are you looking at some of the mining stocks? Is that an alternative for you around trying to hedge? And also looking at balancing a portfolio, because you don't want to be obviously all in on crypto, or all in on stocks, or all in on real estate. Where are you guys playing this? Lots of different plays, for sure. Don't forget that Stand With Crypto is still a very, very important key thing for next year's presidential run. Excited to announce the first ever crypto presidential forum is happening. This is going to be happening in New Hampshire. Remember, this of course will be huge, and I think this is going to be another factor that is only going to put crypto at the forefront of where some of these presidential candidates are positioning themselves. Maybe we see a new presidential candidate starting to line up in here, because we've already had Kennedy come in, obviously Ramaswamy. Do we get a Nikki Haley, or even a DeSantis, who's shown some elusiveness around it, but also some supportive elements in it. Love to get your feedback. Who's your presidential candidate, by the way? Drop a comment down below, kind of curious. Last up here is Brian Armstrong, and he's kind of becoming the voice of crypto, for good reason. I mean, he's pretty much the largest IPO out there in the United States, largest exchange. And he goes into a few points. Bitcoin may be the key to extending Western civilization. That's a little bit grandiose, okay, but I'm still listening. US is somewhere on this journey, which may have discussed in the Dalio changing the world order. If you haven't listened to Ray Dalio talk about the shift of world order, he mostly references China. But it's an interesting thought process to maybe throw in Bitcoin as maybe an area around this. They may start moving fiat into crypto as an antidote to inflation, that could happen as well. I don't think this is a threat to the dollar. It will be a natural check and balance that will complement the dollar, could be also. It's better to move from dollars to crypto than another country of regions fiat. Think BRICS. And then, of course, there are also more complements than substitutes. Dollar backed stable coins like USDC or Flatcoin, which was the stable coin from Coinbase proposal, will play a major role in unifying these worlds. I think stable coins are going to be a key factor here. The minute that we see regulation with stable coins come through, I think that's when we would see banks really start to adapt, businesses adapting, along with all sorts of innovation around payments, which are really going to be the holy grail, I think, for crypto in general and blockchain. So we're going to be covering this and a lot more this week. We've got a whole slew of great guests lined up, so don't miss it. Make sure and subscribe to the channel. Very easy to do. And if you're not part of the Diamond Circle, get in right now. It's another great place to be for additional content. And if you guys want to follow me out there on X, it's at Paul Baron. We'll catch you next time right here on Tech Path.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from MARKETS DAILY: Crypto Update | Insights from Coinbase's Q3 Earnings Report
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by CME Group and PayPal. It's Monday, November 6th, 2023, and this is Markets Daily from Coindesk. My name is Noelle Acheson, Coindesk collaborator and author of the Cryptos Macro Now newsletter on Substat. On today's show, we're talking about trading volumes, layer 2 blockchains, business activity, and more. So you don't miss an episode, be sure to follow the podcast on your platform of choice and turn on notifications. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Now, a markets roundup. Crypto markets had a relatively quiet yet positive weekend. According to Coindesk indices, at 9am Eastern Time today, Bitcoin was trading at $35 ,066, up 0 .04 % over the past 24 hours. Ether was trading at $1 ,904, up 1 .5%. Elsewhere, Ripple's XRP token is up more than 13%, Uniswap and Stellar are up more than 7%, and Avax and Filecoin are up over 5%. A more optimistic sentiment does seem to be consolidating, and when it comes to Bitcoin, the gentle upward slope of the price trajectory over the past couple of weeks suggests that the increases are from a steady inflow of new demand. This is more organic, as opposed to the sharp moves that we have seen recently, many of which were triggered by derivatives -related repositioning. Hopefully this also means the trend is more sustainable than other upward moves we've seen so far this year. In macro indicators, we need to look at a point from Friday that was somewhat overshadowed in the excitement about the soft employment report. We need to talk about the US Purchasing Managers Index, or PMI, specifically that for services. There are a few PMI series published, but one of the main ones comes from the Institute for Supply Management, which measures business activity on a monthly basis via an index that reflects responses from purchasing managers as to whether the market conditions are expanding, staying the same, or contracting. Anything above 50 is expansion, below 50 is contraction. On Friday, we got the Institute for Supply Management's PMI for the services industry. Services PMI is especially interesting given that services contribute almost 80 % of US GDP, and it is services -related inflation that has proven particularly hard to bring down. Well, in October, according to the index, services activity in the US declined for the second consecutive month. It is still expanding, but at its weakest pace in five months and notably less than economists had forecast. It's too soon to say this deceleration will last. A separate gauge of new orders increased in October after a sizable drop in September, so we could see activity pick up again next month. The reading does highlight that the economy is looking a bit choppy, though, and it makes the next few monthly PMI readings all the more relevant. In stocks, as expected, the US indices continued their upward march on Friday, as softer -than -expected jobs data brought forward expectations of a rate cut and pushed bond yields down further. The US 10 -year yield on Friday almost touched 4 .5 % for the first time since September, having been at 5 % just a few days earlier. The S &P 500 was up almost 1%, the Nasdaq closed up 1 .4%, and the Dow Jones rose two -thirds of a percent. Futures this morning are pointing to a mixed opening. In Europe, stocks were largely mixed to flat on Friday in spite of the US enthusiasm, but they closed out a strong week with the German DAX and the broader Eurostox 600 posting their strongest weekly gains since March. The FTSE 100 showed some weakness, closing four -tenths of a percent lower but still breaking a two -week losing streak. So far this morning, sentiment is still looking mixed. In Asia, sentiment in today's trading was decidedly bullish. Japan's Nikkei index jumped 2 .4%, the Hang Seng closed up 1 .7%, and even the recently beleaguered Shanghai Composite Index rose almost 1%. In commodities, oil prices settled more than 2 % lower on Friday as supply concerns eased. This morning, the Brent crude benchmark was recovering slightly, trading up 0 .5 % at $86 .50 the barrel. Gold is again holding steady, trading at $1 ,986 an ounce. Stay with us. After the break, we're going to take a closer look at some intriguing insights in Coinbase's Q3 earnings. Introducing PayUSD, PayPal's stablecoin. Designed for digital payments and Web3 transactions, PayUSD is the only stablecoin supported by PayPal. Built on Ethereum, it's compatible with widely used wallets, exchanges, and dapps, and fully backed by US dollar deposits and cash equivalents. Eligible US PayPal customers who purchase PayPal USD are able to transfer PayPal USD between PayPal and external wallets. Send PayPal USD to friends in the US on PayPal or Venmo without fees. Shop with PayPal USD on millions of sites. Convert any of PayPal's supported cryptocurrencies to and from PayPal USD. Whether you are a crypto expert or a newcomer, PayPal provides a secure and convenient platform for your crypto transactions. Start exploring at PayPal .com slash P Y U S D. Welcome back. Crypto exchange Coinbase released its third quarter earnings last week. Now that I've had a chance to go through them, there are a few things worth highlighting. Revenue fell by almost 5 % from the previous quarter, a smaller drop than most analysts were expecting, and the net loss shrunk from almost $100 million in the second quarter to around $2 million in the third quarter. Unsurprisingly, most of the revenue drop was due to a decline in transaction fees, which of course accompanies a drop in trading volumes. According to Coinbase, global spot volumes were down 24 % in the third quarter, which is, you know, ouch. Coinbase's volumes fell by less. Retail trading volume was down by 21 % and institutional trading volume was down by 17%. Nevertheless, this obviously hurt, but less than many other crypto trading businesses since trading revenue accounts for less than half of the company's income. An interesting insight is that it's not just trading volumes that impact exchange revenues, it's also crypto asset volatility. With higher volatility, traders trade more. According to Coinbase in the third quarter, crypto asset volatility reached its lowest point since 2016. Well, if you've been following the Bitcoin price recently, you'll have noticed that it has picked up. According to data from the block, 30 -day historical volatility for Bitcoin is roughly three times what it was at August's low point. This is good news for exchanges, especially since spot volumes should follow volatility up. Together, they should increase overall liquidity, which would be very good news as that could encourage more new large investors to enter the numbers. I want to mention something Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong said in the earnings call. He opened with what he himself acknowledged was a provocative statement about the future of blockchain development. I quote, on chain is the new online end quote. He goes on to elaborate how blockchains are extending the impact of the internet on the way we interact by bringing back the decentralization that was the original part of the internet manifesto. But not only that, blockchains also introduced the concept of ownership, which the internet was missing. But how can blockchains become as ubiquitous and flexible as the internet? According to Armstrong, it's through layer twos, which are scalable blockchains that anchor to layer one security. Layer one in this case refers to base layer blockchains such as Bitcoin and has this to say about layer twos. I quote, the transition from layer one networks to layer two networks can be likened to the transition from dial up internet to broadband. That's an evocative comparison for sure. Some could accuse it of being somewhat commercial since Coinbase launched a layer two network this summer. Called base, it anchors to Ethereum and aims to provide a fast and reliable platform for developers to work on practically any type of application. Activity has declined since the initial hype, but base is still doing pretty well. According to DefyLama, total value locked, which is the amount stored in smart contracts on the network is around $300 million with roughly 55 ,000 daily active addresses. For context, that's slightly less than half the number of daily active addresses on Arbitrum, the largest layer two in terms of value locked. But we should remember that base has only been open to the public for a long time. However, rather than dismiss the comparison of layer twos to the advent of broadband as a self -serving framework, we can look at the investment in base as an extension of a loftier goal to rethink what we want the internet to be. Here we have an exchange focusing on more than trading volumes. And while Coinbase will earn revenue on its layer two through sequencer fees, there are no plans to issue a token as yet that could centralize the monetization of network growth. Will layer twos become the new internet only with greater decentralization and a new concept of digital ownership? Obviously, I hope so. There's a long way to go though, in terms of usability. And there's the danger we end up with what we have now, a concentration of power and dubious monetization strategies. A big difference is the transparency of layer two development. And there's a lot of us watching and rooting for it to succeed. That's it for today's show. For more crypto podcasts, check out the Coindesk Podcast Network. You can reach us at podcasts at coindesk .com, follow us, and if you like the show, please leave us a five star rating on whatever platform you're listening to us on. Markets Daily is produced and produced by Coindesk. We're back tomorrow with more market news and insights.
Crypto Banter
Fresh update on "brian armstrong" discussed on Crypto Banter
"Okay 8.15, we've had our matcha, time to hit the gym, let's do this. I'm still listening to podcasts right now actually on two speed, it never stops, this is my time where I'm gymming but I'm actually listening, I'm researching all the time, let's go. Okay, time to hit the gym, now the real workday begins, we're going to go to the office, you're going to join our newsroom morning call and that's when the workday really begins, so we're late, we better get going. All right, here we are, we're in the office, this is a super important part of the day, so what I'm doing now is I'm actually scrolling through the news group over here which has everything that all the researchers have dropped and as I mentioned to you there's about 30 researchers working here and I'm actually just opening every single bit of information that has been dropped to try and understand what the narratives are for the day. So, if you take a look here, one thing I've realized, one thing I've seen here is there is a big move to decentralize exchanges after the Coinbase and the finance news which is coming out as a big narrative today. Also, there's some ETH narrative here, whales buying and selling ETH but I'm spending about 15-20 minutes before the research call or the newsroom call just scrolling through this group and just making sure that I'm aware of every single bit of news that has actually happened. So, there's a lot going on, there's Binance, there's Coinbase, there's a lot going on today. I've had a look at the analytics this morning. It's basically the show's dead. It performed really well relative to other shows over the past couple of weeks. It actually performed super well but I think by the time we finished the spaces yesterday, the Coinbase story has been covered. By the time it hit 10 p.m. it just went flat, 10 or 11 p.m. 250 views an hour now, so it's dead. There's been updates on the Coinbase thing and also the Binance US freezing assets. There are two updates from the actual story. We've got to find a new angle. We were the first ones to report on Coinbase and the show died like five hours later. Okay, all right guys, chat later. Research document at one o'clock today. See you. Okay, so this is where we're at. If you come and have a look here, what you'll see is that I've got about a hundred tabs open here, which is all the documents that I've read in about the last hour. I've literally read every single one of these documents and every single one of these days is now open. Now I'm still missing some information. So this is where I get hold of my researchers and I leave their voice notes to send me information that I need. So I'm going to send one now so that you guys can hear. CZ and Brian Armstrong had two very different responses to their attacks by the SEC. Brian Armstrong came out much more with leadership and CZ came out with more angered tweets at the SEC. I need to get as much information as I can. Send me the list of tweets so that I can compare the two responses. Showtime. It's quarter past, ten past. We're going to rush into the studio, get ready for the show. Let's go. Time to set up. Now, pro tip, you've got to take a pee before you get on to the show because if you don't, then... Last minute things to do because news is just broken. I'm supposed to go live, but news is just broken. So got to get ready for it. Okay, live in five, four, three, two, one, zero. So the heavy hand of the SEC has come down or the heavy hand of the regulators has come down on Binance. And today what they're looking to do is they're actually looking to get an injunction to freeze Binance's US assets. If you look at that's what's happening today, the SEC has actually seeks temporary restraining order to freeze Binance's US assets. And that's just one day after the SEC went for Coinbase. Then we've got to look at anyone who's holding these altcoins. So if you're holding any of these altcoins, Adam, BNB, BUSD, Coty, Solana, ADA, Matic, Filecoin, Sandbox, Manor, Algorand, Axi, Chiliz, Nia, Flow, ICP, VGX, Dash, Nexo. If you're holding any of these tokens, we got to talk because these are now securities. Between the Binance case, the SEC versus Binance case and the SEC versus Coinbase case, these tokens are now securities. And the question is, if you're holding them, what are you supposed to do? Are you supposed to sell them? Are they going to go to zero? Are they going to get delisted from your favorite exchanges? That is what we're going to be talking about today. Big, big, big show, guys. Let's go.That was a great show. We had over 5,000 people live. It was one of our biggest shows. And it's just amazing. I'm going to buzz. I'm going to hide. So listen, if you believe that you have what it takes, you've seen my day, you've seen the pace at which I work. If you believe that you can help me produce and write shows and be part of this amazing vehicle every single day, it's very simple. All you need to do is mail me a document of how you would lay out a show and what tweets and what comments you'd include in it. And maybe you'll be my right hand. Maybe you'll help me write the content. Listen, I don't have much time. I've got to get onto that Twitter space. So I'll see you again soon. Until then, trade well, my friends. All right. Before I ask my question to Scott, which is the all-important question, Ryan is here. Simon, has anyone looked into the inflows and outflows from different exchanges? I'm curious. I looked today at the infos from Binance and outflows they'd lost. By the time I'd done my show, they'd lost one and a half billion out of 50 billion, which is about 2%. They may have been scared of the injunction, which would have happened in 48 hours. Now, if that's the case and you think that the exchange might not be 100% funded, the first thing you do is you run for the hills. You try and get your money out.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Coinbase on Crypto Regulation & National Security | INTERVIEW
"All right, today we're going to dive into crypto regulation, what the landscape might look like, especially in the current times with ETFs looming, with all the things we're seeing, especially in the house here recently with the new speaker. All of this needs to be broken down, I think, by some experts in the industry that I think are going to be very interesting to listen in on. So you don't want to miss this one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back to Tech Path. All right. Joining me today is Faryar Shrizad, who is the chief policy officer at Coinbase, leading companies engagement with policymakers around the world. So Faryar, welcome to the show. Thanks for stopping in. Thanks, Paul. Thanks for having me on. Let's get into a couple of topics here, and I want to go into tokenized assets and what that is going to look like, especially from a regulatory framework. I was just looking at a post here by Circle, and this was really about how tokenized assets are going to make their way onto and with in combination with USDC and what's happening with Circle. When you look at the framework of regulation now, obviously we're already struggling, I think, with just general regulation. What are your thoughts on how, especially around tokenized securities, how this will make its way through the ranks of the House and the Senate coming up, hopefully in the next year or two? Well, the way you frame the question is actually really important. There's a broader momentum moving towards the tokenization of a full range of assets, so financial instruments, but also real world assets as well. And all you have to do is take a step back and you'll see it. I was down in Brazil last week meeting with officials there, including at the central bank, and they have a really clear vision of pervasive tokenization across the economy. And they see their role as the central bank as to use regulation and government measures, including bank regulation, bond issuance, and the like to catalyze the process of tokenization. In the US, we're taking more incremental steps, starting with what you alluded to, which is federal legislation around the regulation of crypto intermediaries. Now, obviously, in the US, that's a hugely important step and one that we at Coinbase are spending enormous amounts of time to get right. But one of the things I try to do, and I know a lot of my colleagues try to do as well, is we try to make sure that we all remember that the end goal is not the regulation of crypto intermediaries like Coinbase, although that's a really important step. The ultimate end goal is to make sure that the US has the right policy environment for tokenization across the board. It's going to happen. We're in a bit of a period of turbulence as the first big breakthrough legislation potentially gets through. But there's a bigger vision much beyond the regulation of central intermediaries that's ultimately in front of all of us as a society. For sure. And we're going to get into some of that, I think, just in the future of the United States, especially around innovation and just in general, I think, even national security. And we'll talk about that here in a moment. But I want to stay on the focus of where the growth of the industry is starting to, for the first time, I think, you know, I've been following this for several years and now it feels like D .C. is actually paying attention to what's happening, which is great. Whether or not we get a full reign of understanding is still questionable. I want to jump to one of your colleagues, Paul Graywell. Of course, there are all arguments coming out here in the motion for judgment now being set for early January. This is the big Coinbase case that could be another loss for the SEC. When you look at it from a policy guy's side and you think, wow, all of these losses are piling up against the SEC, we've already seen continuous situations roll out all the way from Ripple and many others. What does that do to the policy makers? You're out there talking with these guys all the time. Are they watching this and kind of understanding really what's happening in the courts? Oh, absolutely. And the observation actually goes both ways. I think the courts are typically will take notice when Congress is stepping in to provide guidance or clarity around an area of legal uncertainty and courts become respectful and deferential to what they see in terms of congressional action. But to your question, Congress also pays attention to what the courts do when they're struggling with an issue that ultimately requires resolution by the political branches. In this particular context of digital assets, you've had the SEC chair saying multiple times that he actually initially started saying he needed legislation to regulate crypto assets. And then after eight, nine, 10 months or so, he flipped and he said, no, no, he had all the authority he needed. And now we've had about a year and a half of the courts and all of us who've engaged with the SEC testing out that new version of the legal framework that he says he has in terms of having all the authority he needs and having three cases in the district courts go against the fundamental theory that he's put forward in terms of regulating the crypto markets and then having another one to finding his decision making with regard to, in the case of Grayscale, on another crypto matter was arbitrary and capricious. Lawmakers know that. They watch it. They see it quite closely and they understand that it raises real questions that the courts are being forced to try to deal with, but also fundamental questions regarding the strength of the SEC's theory in terms of how they intend to try to exercise oversight over the space. And that's, I think, helpful in moving legislation forward, which we're excited about. So, OK, so just for our viewers and listeners, understanding you spent some time at Goldman Sachs as their global policy lead. You look at it from and that's being traditional finance. Now you're on this side of the fence in the sense of I think what I think will eventually be qualified as traditional finance as well. But the point being is that you feel that this industry, how big of a hill do you think we have to really climb? You've seen it from the tradfi side. Now you're seeing it from this side of the fence. Is this something that is insurmountable? Is it something that you feel is going to happen in the next couple of years? What's your feeling of what you've seen? You've worked with these people on both sides now. Well, what I would say is our glass is way more than half full. When you're in crypto, particularly for people who were around it for a long time, there's a lot of reasons to be down in the dumps, particularly if you're in the United States and you see some of the behavior out of the regulatory agencies, it just seems beyond any fair application of law. But I always try to remind myself to take a few steps back. One to remind myself that 83 % of the G20 countries have or are in the midst of implementing sensible crypto regulation. We as an industry like some parts of it, we don't like other parts of it. But generally speaking, the entire rest of the developed economies are all moving forward to adopt crypto and embrace it through their regulatory systems. That's an example that the U .S. cannot ignore for much longer and will drive U .S. policy making at some point, maybe not quite yet, but it'll happen sooner than you think. The other thing is that there's a handful of crypto critics. Now Elizabeth Warren, Gary Gensler, a few of the regulators that Warren has a lot of influence over, were being very tough on crypto. I deal with members of Congress and the House and the Senate, and we are lucky in crypto not to be like almost every other issue in Washington, which is partisan and tribal. We have a lot of allies who are Democrats, and we have a lot of allies who are Republican, and we have lots and lots of members who just are beginning their crypto journeys, beginning to figure out how to pay attention to this. Our starting point is much, much better than a lot of other industries have. In traditional finance, you can't barely take a half a step one way or the other without triggering kind of old battle lines that have nothing to do with the merits of the issue on the table, but just have to do with certain political camps in Washington or against the banks. If the banks advocate for declaring that the sky is blue, they'll be against that. We don't have that in crypto as much as we feel that we're picked on at times. We're in a much, much better position, and the onus is really on us to kind of pick ourselves up, go into every member of Congress and every other policymaker and make our case. I think when we do that effectively, we change minds and win hearts and win allies. I feel very good about that. OK, so there's really kind of two major factions that are not only injecting change right now, but also could be part of the future in a way, whether you're a pro personal finance or you love the idea of anonymity in crypto or the idea of freedom of being your own bank, all those kind of things can work. But now this time around, in terms of this cycle, we'll call it, we're seeing the first real introduction of institutional capital. And not only that, we're also seeing the introduction of traditional finance, meaning big banks. You look at obviously what's happening with Fidelity, but then you bring in all these ETFs coming in from BlackRock, et cetera, along with a lot more funds. You look at all that and you consider, all right, this is kind of the realization of where crypto is going. I was just looking at this tweet right here. This kind of brings my question home from Balchunas over here at Bloomberg. And he was breaking this down by interest level from millennials. This even surprised me in the terms of where millennials were interested in terms of investing. So ETFs there, which most likely could start to see some movement, especially in the next year. How are lawmakers, because this is all the voting block, I mean, really coming at them at full force, how are lawmakers really understanding the kind of movement that we're seeing, both in TradFi now, as well as the world of crypto? Lawmakers hear about this everywhere. I mean, they hear it among their staff who are often maybe two or three steps ahead of them on crypto adoption. They hear it at home, among family members. Sometimes there are kids who are on the front end of crypto adoption. We've done polling on this. There's about 52 million Americans, 52 million Americans who have bought crypto. That's more people than have union cards, more people than have electric vehicles. We're not a niche issue. We're mainstream in terms of the breadth of interest in crypto. And this is still at the first or second inning of crypto's adoption. And now, as you said, we have institutional interests coming in. And so, crypto will, I think, better be seen as it should, as a technology that powers the democratization of a lot of applications. And there'll be a lot of different entry points that people will want to come into crypto. So for sure, we've all seen the retail token trading, the exuberance of the markets when they seem like there was no way but up, and people got into it, and obviously, the market crashed down. But this is typical of the early stages of development of any financial asset. And now, you've got institutional interests. You've got these ETF applications, of course, but you have other institutional entry points that people are looking at. And I think this will begin to demystify this industry and show that there's a very comfortable diversity of options that people have, regulated and unregulated, to enter the cryptosphere. And our job is to have these use cases become demystified in the eyes of policymakers so that they embrace the full panoply. I mean, one of the risks of institutional adoption of crypto is that it almost makes some policymakers who aren't paying a lot of attention to this think that you no longer need decentralized solutions or smart contracts. And I think that's a point I was trying to make a second ago, which is you want to be able to have the full diversity of the crypto toolkit available from a public policy perspective. And that's why you'll find Coinbase active on DeFi issues, on smart contracts issues, on mixer issues, on institutional derivatives offerings, on being a part of the solution that ETF applicants are providing to the SEC, because we want that whole scope of what crypto can do to be in front of both the markets and policymakers. Okay, so good news is that obviously the policymakers are starting to get enough of signal from not only the markets, but also people that are really understanding where this future is going. Now you get into the real policymakers that make sense. This of course was Tom Emper steps away, obviously as speaker. This would have been our dream crypto guy, I think, I feel like anyway, it would have been one of the top ones I would have selected, but at the same time now we've got Mike Johnson in here. So Mike Johnson, not necessarily heavily experienced in the essence of as a speaker obviously now, but as a lawmaker in general. How big of an impact is this on the crypto community now? I know we've got Patrick McHenry kind of out there leading the charge. You still have a lot of pro -crypto, pro -blockchain innovation lawmakers. Will this make much of a difference with Johnson now in the lead as speaker? Well, the speaker has a lot of issues on his plate, or Nancy Pelosi did when she was speaker as well. And so however pro -crypto a particular speaker may be, they still need to get the budget done. They need to get appropriations built through. They need to get the whole range of things that they have to do just as a matter of their constitutional responsibility. So Mike Johnson doesn't have a track record on crypto, but I'm confident given the allies that we have, committee chairs and senior members of the Republican caucus, that we're going to be in a very good spot with this new leadership. The thing that I do pay attention to is the speaker election process that the Republicans went through has delayed the timing of when the FIT21 bill potentially would come to the floor. And I think that's a more immediate issue. So we've been lucky that the politics, I don't think, have shifted much and our Democratic allies are with us, notwithstanding a lot of the fireworks that you saw in the context of the speaker sort of drama. But the more tangible thing that I pay a lot of attention to is just the timing issue. How far back have we been pushed on the calendar? Do we have time to get FIT21 up on the floor? And how are we going to use that time most effectively to win allies, get people to come onto the bill and get a good vote ultimately out of the House? So obviously with FRER, we've got the stablecoin regulation also coming into the House and potentially going through. With that statement that you just made, if we miss this window, what does it look like from a landscape standpoint into next year? When could we see possibly regulation come back to the forefront? Well, in terms of legislation, I think I would say the thing about legislation having done it for many, many years is you never know. And I always find I talk to people who analyze the landscape and tell me with great confidence that it's hard to pass legislation this year, next year is a better year and so on. And at a certain level, that may or may not be true. But in a way, legislation is more about maximizing what you can control and not worrying about the stuff that you can't control. And so yes, in principle, next year is an election year. The Speaker embraced, delayed things. Things are pushed back. As you get closer to the election, things get slower and slower. And there's a hundred sort of factors of that sort to think about and why 25 might be better than 2024 and so on. But I can't control any of that. All I can control is making sure my Coinbase team and all the industry partners and trade associations that we work with are not for one half a second taking their foot off the gas pedal and not using every minute available to us to go in to talk to every member in the House, Republican, Democrat, progressive left, conservative right, and making the case for crypto and then simultaneously turning over every rock in the home districts of members who we don't have on our side yet and finding constituents who are here and bringing them into the debate as well. And that's part of the reason why we started the StandWithCrypto .org organization is to get that grassroots dimension into the mix. And once you think of it in that way, there's a lot we can control. And today is a great day to move legislation. And the leadership will ultimately decide when it goes on the floor. But we're going to make the conditions as strong as possible. So when they make that decision, we have as many allies as possible to get the bill through with bipartisan support. A couple of things I want to hit on here, because, you know, we've already seen the idea of what Choke Point was. Now, what we're starting to see is is other aspects of of, we'll just say, mainstream media starting to take jabs at crypto. This was just some recent hits on it. Of course, you're one of your colleagues, Paul Graywall, here hitting on the journalistic mistakes by The Wall Street Journal. This was in reference to potentially funding into terrorist groups. So the idea is kind of pathetic when people really understand blockchain because this is the worst thing you can use out there. And then you've got Brian Armstrong, of course, your CEO. This is crazy, inaccurate, et cetera. This was, of course, them. They issued a correction to the data. And now we're starting to actually see there was a hearing, I think, yesterday. We're actually starting to see data come out, you know, from on chain analysis. My question to you is this is The Wall Street Journal. I mean, next, it could be Axios. Next, it could be The Hill. I mean, there's just so many opportunities here for mainstream press to become a major hurdle, whether they don't understand it or there's other nefarious actions at work here. How are you guys planning to kind of fight that battle? Because that I feel like that's one of the bigger battles to that is waging right now. My education, I think, is just, you know, engaging, meeting the reporters. Just like you would meet members of Congress where they are, regulators as well. Each of those audiences are a bit different in terms of how you approach them, but they're not different in the sense that fundamentally you just want to bring facts to the table, a narrative around why crypto matters and then just be compelling in terms of speaking to them in a language that they understand. I mean, I would say on reporters, you know, there are a lot of reporters that gave Gary Gensler a huge benefit of the doubt in terms of his theory of the case on how he intended to regulate the crypto markets. You've had three district courts now repudiate the core foundation of his theory of why the SEC should treat virtually every crypto token as a security. Now, these are three district court cases. And I suppose, you know, our case might be the fourth one. We'll see ultimately where they all land and that will be appeals and this, that, and the other. But in the end of the day, even reporters who, you know, at times you think, well, gee, I wish they would tell the story a bit differently, with time ultimately begin to see where the facts lay. And you'll see, I think some of the reporting is becoming a little bit more thoughtful in terms of, you know, asking the second and third question of the SEC. You see that in the courts. Typically, the SEC had huge deference in the courts in terms of decisions it would make. You see now the courts kind of saying, particularly the Grayscale case, what the court found did a complete comprehensive assessment of any basis of argument that the SEC was relying on for denying the Grayscale application. And they repudiated every bit of it, which they didn't necessarily needed to do. But in the end, they found that the SEC's decision -making was arbitrary, capricious, and unlawful. That is on the outer edge of the worst thing that can happen to you as a person who's running an agency. And I ran an agency in an earlier administration. If I had a court finding my decision -making comprehensively to be arbitrary, capricious, unlawful, I would wonder if that was sort of the end of my career. And those sorts of things have huge import. As much as a particular regulator may try to brush it off and think it's just sort of, you know, information gathering, these things have impact. And I think they'll have impact on reporters, just like you're just an impact reporting over the longer term. So I feel like we'll do fine. We just need to keep at it. Keep the education coming. To your point in reference to the regulatory scenario with the SEC, this was from Caitlin Long and it was referencing Hester Pierce talking about the SEC reopening Howie just to kill crypto wasn't necessarily the SEC's best interest. And that's my point. I mean, now you've got Gensler up here, obviously aligned with Senator Warren. When do you feel like there's going to be just too much political baggage or weight on Gensler that will continue to see this pushback? Because and I have two points of interest here. One is killing innovation and the other is national security. Let's forget just the idea of what crypto is, but this is real. We've already seen it worldwide. When do you think that D .C. will finally say, OK, enough's enough? I don't know. I mean, I can't speak to Gensler's motivations specifically, but there are lots of political figures that we all see in the paper all the time or on the news who are solving for a very narrow purpose. You see it in the Congress and they're solving for a particular constituency that they're appealing to. And whatever chaos ensues is somebody else's problem. It's not their problem. And again, I'm not speaking to Gensler in particular, but I think we've all learned that there are different members and different policymakers and different politicians who are just interested in speaking to one constituency. And if they don't speak to the rest of the country, it's just not really a concern. And I think whether Gensler is like that or not, whether he's solving exclusively for Elizabeth Warren and not for the public good, I don't know. But, you know, likely his term is up by the end of this coming year. And, you know, we'll see who's next. And in the meantime, do our best to stick up for ourselves in court and help members of Congress on both sides of the aisle who want to get sound crypto legislation done. And I feel like that's plenty for us to focus on. Yeah, for sure. Let's say, OK, you have a chance. You're here on our channel, so you get a chance to talk to a lot of people. What are some of the things that business owners, investors in crypto, people who are just general curious about what's happening in blockchain? What is the best thing they can do right now to kind of secure this future? Obviously, I'm going to show the Stand With Crypto page. Because we've pitched this quite a bit about calling your congressman, getting involved with your local community, letting people kind of know where you stand. But is there other are there other steps that could be taken? Yeah, I appreciate you putting that up. So I would encourage everybody to go to StandWithCrypto .org. So StandWithCrypto .org. Right when you get on your landing page, you will see these three images. And it's a very cool functionality. You can you can click the phone icon, you can click the email icon. And it will put you right into calling your member of Congress. You just have to put in your address. They'll figure out who your member of Congress is. If you're doing an email, it will through AI technology, essentially through a customized chat GBT functionality that we have. Write a letter for you. You can guide the parameters, edit it if you want and send it directly to your member of Congress. And if you do that, you would be surprised how huge an impact that has. I used to be a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee. I worked for the chairman, very powerful guy, very powerful committee. As a staffer, I had a relatively powerful position. My boss was from Delaware. My chairman was from Delaware. And if somebody from Delaware called, even if they hadn't really thought through their position on whatever they were calling about, or even if it didn't have anything to do with my job, by goodness, I knew my boss insisted that I listen to them and hear them out and follow up as necessary. And this is so people in Delaware had a superpower over me when I was a staffer on the Senate Finance Committee working for a Delaware Senator. And everyone out there who's listening to this, you have a superpower over your member of Congress, much more formidable than you ever imagine, much more powerful than a tweet, much more powerful than an op -ed. It's just simply to call your policymaker. And we give you talking points if you want to have help on that. You'll see on there, the sandwichcrypto .org page has a link for this crazy IRS proposal that's out. And that is formidable as well. So I would encourage people to do that. And I appreciate you giving me a chance to alert people to that functionality that's available to them. Last point, because I'm not sure a lot of people know what the IRS is trying to propose here, explain that in a nutshell for our audience.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from ELIZABETH WARREN CRYPTO FUD EXPOSED! BIG SEC COINBASE LAWSUIT UPDATE
"Welcome to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, we've got some huge news around Elizabeth Warren and the crypto fudge she's been spreading about Hamas and other terrorists using crypto to fundraise. Well, folks, Elliptic, which is the firm that Wall Street Journal cited for their data used in the article entitled Hamas militants behind Israel attack raise millions in crypto and which Senator Elizabeth Warren used in her recent letter to top security officials, says there is no evidence to support the assertion that Hamas has received significant volumes of crypto donations. They also say they have engaged with the Wall Street Journal and Senator Elizabeth Warren's office to correct the misinterpretations and ensure that the relevant parties have a proper appreciation of the complexities and nuances of analyzing these wallets. Folks, this is a huge update. Now, call to action. I need every single one of you listening. Go to Twitter, retweet this news, get it out there. We have to spread the facts. We have to expose corrupt Elizabeth Warren, who has formed an anti -crypto army, as she said, and is using lies, false information and nefarious activities to try to destroy crypto, folks. And we know she's working with Gary Gensler to do this. And the two of them, along with Brad Sherman, are three peas in a pod. Folks, you have social media. We see the pressure that we're putting on these companies and mainstream media because our voices can be heard, because we can drum up so much attention on these social media platforms like Twitter or X, as it's called now, or YouTube or Facebook. We have power now. And it doesn't cost you anything to tweet out something or post something. So please go and tweet this news out. If you hold crypto, it's your duty, folks, because you have these people who are using any type of illegal and the spreading of misinformation to try to kill crypto. You have to take action. So that's one thing. Second, clear as day, Senator Elizabeth Warren is corrupt. I know there's mainstream issues that a lot of people agree with her on. But folks, she's a corrupt politician. She tries to paint herself as some angel and she's a nice grandma. I don't know if she's Pocahontas or whatever. She has some Native American background and all that stuff. It's all facade. I want you to know that, folks, you're not dealing with someone here who's a grandma who lives next door, who may be a nice lady. That's not what you're dealing with here. And I want to open your eyes because I used to think that she was a good person. She's not. And it's only through crypto, Twitter and all the news and facts that have been shared by different people that I'm like, wow, this person is pretty corrupt and clear as day. She's using false information. Now, the question is, will she go out and retract this letter? Will she make an apology? Right. That's a big question. Will The Wall Street Journal retract their article? Because right now, I think on Twitter, the author is trying to cover his tracks and not retract and not own up to his mistakes. So we are dealing with liars here, folks, and we have to use social media to our advantage. So a lot of people are tweeting about this. And let me give you some quick takeaways, some elliptic. They published the corrections. Here are some takeaways from their own websites. There is no evidence to support the assertion that Hamas has received significant volumes of crypto donations. A full understanding of block chain analysis and the context of any analysis is needed when using these insights to draw conclusions. The elliptic has engaged with The Wall Street Journal to correct misinterpretations of the level of crypto funding by Hamas. In addition, we have been in discussions with the office of Senator Warren to ensure that relevant parties have a proper appreciation of the complexities and nuances of analyzing these wallets. So I appreciate this company coming out and the headline on their website is setting the record straight on crypto crowdfunding by Hamas. Folks, the facts are Hamas has used fiat currency and other terrorists have used fiat currencies for the most part throughout history. Right. To fund their activities, crypto came along. They attempted to use crypto. I'm not saying they haven't used crypto. They attempted to. But what we saw, what the data tells us is that they ramped down in using crypto because they were getting exposed. Everything was being tracked on the block chain. So if somebody in Iran or some other country funded Hamas or terrorists on the block chain, they send Bitcoin, Tether, whatever it is, right? Ethereum, that wallet got tracked. The funds got tracked and the people who send the donations got exposed. Not a good way to fund your bad actor activities. Right, folks? Those are the facts. So that got ramped down based on the data, not opinion, not feelings or emotions, not lies, but on the chain analysis data, tracking how much funds are being sent. But guess what? We can't even tell how much fiat currency U .S. dollars or any other fiat currency was used to fund Hamas. Right. There's rumors that money that was sent to Iran was used to fund Hamas, but we can't track it because cash is hard to track. And we know primarily they've used cash. But Elizabeth Warren doesn't want you to know that she wants you to think crypto funded the whole shebang. Right. Crypto was the reason terrorists has been going. Terrorism has been going on for years and years for the last 50, 60 years. Right. When crypto didn't exist. That's the nonsense we're dealing with. Now, you and I who are educated about the situation, we know this is bullshit from Elizabeth Warren, but to the public who is not knee deep in crypto following the news, they just see passing headlines. They may see a tweet from Elizabeth Warren and they get the wrong perception. Folks, we got to change that. We got to put the pressure and we have social media to do that. Now, Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase, said this is crazy and inaccurate Wall Street Journal articles citing evidence from Elliptic caused 20 percent of Congress to sign a letter. Elliptic has now refuted the evidence in the Wall Street Journal article. He tagged the Wall Street Journal saying, will you issue a retraction slash correction? And we see the author. He's he's still trying to stand on his high ground here, but he doesn't have high ground. He's a liar. His name is Ian Talley. And here, Ryan Selkis said the following. He's the CEO of Masari Elliptic confirmed what we learned from chain analysis earlier this week. Crypto is about as useful to Hamas as Elizabeth Warren is to the Cherokee Nation.
The Café Bitcoin Podcast
A highlight from Bitcoin Restoring Personal Freedom with CK and Arsh of the "Human Rights Foundation" - October 23rd, 2023
"Hello, and welcome to the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast brought to you by Swan Bitcoin, the best way to buy and learn about Bitcoin. I'm your host, Alex Danson, and we're excited to announce that we're bringing the Cafe Bitcoin Conversations Twitter Spaces to you on this show, the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast, Monday through Friday every week. Join us as we speak to guests like Michael Saylor, Len Alden, Corey Clifston, Greg Foss, Tomer Strohleit, and many others in the Bitcoin space. Also, be sure to hit that subscribe button. Make sure you get notifications when we launch a new episode. You can join us live on Twitter Spaces Monday through Friday, starting at 7 a .m. Pacific and 10 a .m. Eastern every morning to become part of the conversation yourself. Thanks again. We look forward to bringing you the best Bitcoin content daily here on the Cafe Bitcoin Podcast. Let's go. Wow. All right. Good morning and welcome. It is Monday, October 23rd, 2023 is another awesome money in the Bitcoin ecosystem. This bright orange future, we're here for it again. Hope you all had a great weekend. We got a lot to talk about today, so we're going to dig right in. You are listening to Cafe Bitcoin. This is episode 460. Shout out to our supporters on Fountain and Nostra Nests. Our mission for this show is to provide the signal in a sea of noise and teach the other seven billion people on this planet why there is hope because of this bright orange future that we call Bitcoin. Hope against what? Well, how about hope against a surveillance state run by lizards where they know every goddamn thing you do and they control everything you do. How about that? A little fired up this morning. We got some interesting stuff to cover. For today's show, we're going to be covering the presidential race in Argentina, new developments there. We're going to be covering FinCEN's latest lizard moves. Yuan passing the euro in swift volume, that's another thing. Later today, we've got CK, you guys may know who this guy is, with the Human Rights Foundation coming to talk to us about his role there and what he's doing. I want to thank Sam Callahan for joining us so bright and early. Good morning, Sam. Michelle, likewise, we're going to be going to both of you here as we get rolling. First, the economy minister, Sergio Masa, apparently has been surprised Sunday night by finishing on top in the first round of Argentina's presidential election, however, the surprise was is that this upstart, Miele, apparently, described as a chainsaw wielding economist and freshman lawmaker came and has surged in the polls, 98 .3 % of the votes counted. Masa had 36 .7%, Miele was at 30%, meaning the two will end up in a runoff election in November. Does anybody have any thoughts or comments? Let's go. I think the incumbent cut taxes down to zero two weeks ago, and so just desperate move. I don't know, it's kind of sad that people don't see through that shit because it's only going to make inflation worse because you just take the mask off, like, hey, we're printing money for most of this, so let's just completely eliminate any sort of notion that that's not what we're doing, you know, with the taxes, but it looks like they fell for it, or they faked it, you know, I don't know, it's like quasi third world country, can you really trust elections? I'm curious of what they use to tabulate the votes, I wonder if they are using Dominion voting machines. Does anybody know? Michelle? Masa's uncle. I don't know about the machines, but one of our head developers is from Argentina and his family's all still there, so I wanted to add a couple things that he said this morning. He said that the government basically provided an unlimited budget to fight against Miele, and he believes that there was certainly some fraud, but to a larger degree, it was the government's initiative to provide a personal bank account for the campaign against Miele. He said, for example, if you get on public transportation, there are banners everywhere that say, with us, the price is 50, with Miele, the price will be 1 ,000. In all of the hospitals, there are signs up that say, with us, healthcare is free, with Miele, you are not going to be able to afford it. So the lizard people have come out very strong fighting with him. It's super unfortunate, but I think with that perspective, it's almost incredible that he was able to get as much of the vote that he did. I think the real question is about, out of all the other candidates, how much of that does Miele pull from? Are they all opposed to this economy minister? Are they diametrically opposed or what? So two of them, so the next round of elections will just be between Miele and Masa, and two of the folks that have been voted out have already come out supporting Miele. So I think he stands a really good chance in November. Of course, who knows what they might do between now and then to fight him. Yeah, Michelle, I read the third highest vote getter, she was part of the opposition party, right, if I'm correct. So you would think a handful of those votes would go to Miele. It's not surprising that the government thinks it has an unlimited budget in Argentina. It's pretty spot on. Learn it from its partners up north. That'll help the inflation, right? And just spend all the money we want to pump our candidate. Sam, by the way, congrats on the Wall Street Journal watchdog post, which I saw got over a million views. That was very awesome to see that thing run and very appropriate. Wow, that got over a million views? Good job. Damn. Has there been a retraction yet? No retraction, yeah, I mean, it's good that it got that much awareness or brought that much awareness. I think I just kind of struck a nerve and people ran with it. It actually united the Bitcoin and crypto factions, which when we're united on something, we can be a pretty strong voice, I could say. I mean, I got tweeted by Brian Armstrong, which I never thought that would really happen because I've been a pretty big critic of Coinbase. But Wall Street Journal, I don't know if people understand, but like a week ago, they had this piece where they made this claim that a significant amount of fundraising for Hamas came through crypto transactions and they cited this elliptic, they did this study with elliptic and found that like 90 million dollars worth of crypto fundraising happened for this terrorist group. And it was just a slanderous piece in response to this war. And it turned out to be completely false. It turned out to be that they made this rookie move of mistaking exchanges hot wallet and taking all the trading volume that went through that hot wallet and attributed it to a terrorist linked address. So they confused a hot wallet from an exchange to a terrorist linked address. And in reality, the amount of funds that went to there was about $450 ,000. So that's over 99 percent less than what the Wall Street Journal claimed in this article. And this was proven by chain analysis and on chain analysis that kind of tracked everything diligently and they just haven't retracted anything. And in response to that article, we saw Liz Warren and over 100 legislators write a letter to the White House and Treasury basically demanding that they look into, you know, cryptocurrencies in general for national security issues in terms of financing terrorist groups. And they directly linked this fake news article multiple times. It's primarily why they wrote the letter to the White House. And it was false. And the Wall Street Journal has done nothing to attract it or even make a correction. I mean, this is just like basic 101 journalism, you know, credibility and accountability. When you're wrong, you at least make a correction, but they haven't done anything. And even in response to this war breaking out, we saw additional sanctions come out from the Treasury Department and they sanctioned 10 new exchanges and facilitators in response to the war and the terrorist links to Hezbollah and Hamas. And one of them was a virtual currency exchange called Buy Cash. And get this, they said that Buy Cash's Bitcoin wallet that they found fundraised for Hamas was the equivalent of over $2 ,000. So they put a sanctions on some virtual currency exchange based off a $2 ,000 transaction that they found. And so they're using a crisis or a war to increase controls and clamp down on, you know, something that they deem dangerous probably to their own dollar system, but really that they're saying it's for terrorists. And this is what they do. They kind of demonize things. And but anyway, the Wall Street Journal just hasn't retracted any of this fake news. And it's factually proven that they were wrong by a lot. And so, yeah, just wrote out this tweet and then it kind of took off on its own. But it's wrong and it should be corrected as soon as possible because these politicians will continue to use this fake news, just like they do with Bitcoin's energy. They're always citing falsehoods and misrepresentations of Bitcoin's energy footprint in a lot of these letters.
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Coinbase Wallet INTERVIEW | Base Growth & Massive Updates Coming!
"You guys are always asking about wallets and today is no different. Today we're gonna do a little bit of a deep dive on a project and one that I think you've probably seen us report on a little bit before and that is Coinbase Wallet. We'll dive in deep with the project lead there. It's gonna be a fun one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Joining me today is Chintan Tokariya, who is the Senior Director of Engineering over at Coinbase. So great to have you, Thanks Chintan. so much, Paul. Really, really happy to be here and talk about wallets, one of my favorite subjects. Well, you know, right now it's a big topic obviously with everything from self -custody but the growing interest around how you can hold your own tokens and of course wallets have been a big part of that. Talk to me a little bit about where Coinbase is. We've had you guys on before here on the show. It's probably been about seven or eight months, maybe even a year, since our last interview. And I know you guys have come a long way. Where are you some of the big things that have happened in that period of time? Yeah, you know, we've been heads down shipping. The team's just been really focused on making the best, most simplest and reliable Web3 wallet. And really our goal here is to bring users on chain, to bring users into the crypto economy in like a really simple way. And at the end of the day, what we've been focusing on is, if we think about sort of the primitives here, it's really at the end goal is to create real utility, real use cases for crypto. And on Wallet, we've been really heads down on shipping power user features, simplifying onboarding, safety and discovery. So we're probably like the only wallet out there with such a rich set of features and we're really proud of that. We're really excited to have launched multi -wallet support where you can import multiple mnemonics and multiple addresses into your wallet and see them all in one place, all really clearly laid out, really nicely identified with labels. We've also like started pushing out things like a Web3 starter kit, how to bring someone on chain. Everyone asks like, hey, I heard you are building a wallet, what should I do with it? And we want to make that experience really simple. So what are the first few things they should do? Establish an identity. So we offer free L2 usernames, right? And so everyone can establish their decentralized identity. And then we've been also making sends really simple. So really excited to have launched in the last six months, this notion of gasless sends or sponsored sends. So Paul, you know, like if you're trying to do some basic things in crypto, like just move some USDC from your wallet to someone else's, many times you need like multiple tokens, right? You need the USDC, but also the native gas token like Ethereum. Well, we've taken care of that. Like we just take care of that behind the scenes for users. So they don't need to think about having multiple tokens. And the send is actually just free. So anyone today can just send USDC from one person to another, not worry about these native tokens. And it's just really, really simple. So we've just been proud to focus on those areas and along with safety and discovery too. I want to talk to you about OnChain Summer, because this was a huge success for Coinbase. You guys were able to really accelerate a lot of growth here. I was just looking at some of the Dune Analytics, you know, and the amount of growth that you guys saw in OnChain Summer. When you look at that, I mean, I know Brian and I know some of the team there. Would this be considered, this is a pretty easy question, do you think this was a huge success? But in a success ratio of say one to 10, how big was this for you guys? I mean, I think the data speaks for itself, right? And this is a resounding success for Coinbase, for Base, which is the new L2 protocol we just recently launched. And also, I think for the whole crypto community. And so if you're not familiar with OnChain Summer, for the audience, what was it? We launched this 30 -day campaign, this 30 -day sort of like fun Web3 OnChain program that was available to anyone out there. And what happened every single day was it was an opportunity participate to OnChain with a daily drop. It could be from an NFT artist. We had a drop from DK, who's like just this amazing artist. We also had big brands like Coca -Cola and Atari participate as well with a daily drop. So it was a really cool way to push ourselves here at Coinbase on just making our products better. Right. And we felt that throughout all of OnChain Summer, which every day the team was working really hard. These drops were all on Coinbase, and we could see users trying to onboard by funding their wallets, interacting and minting the NFT, and then taking part of what that creator community wanted, which is like, what do you do now once you have that NFT? So Parallel is this Web3 game on Base. We could mint their cards, and then people then started playing the Parallel game. And it was great because it was like this amazing distribution power that we have at Coinbase and bringing users OnChain through this OnChain Summer program. And then people are like engaging in the crypto and on -chain economy. How important is the next move for Coinbase to really draw in, you know, other major brands? And are you getting interest from other major brands to do some more activities like these? Yeah, absolutely. We are. We are. And it's exciting that major brands are seeing that there is a new audience they can reach, and they can reach this audience in a different way, in a way that rewards both innovation. And what Coke did here is really cool. Like, I'm just watching this. And it was just new, beautiful art that in this case is also like just 3D interactive, right? And so we're seeing brands come in, and brands are really excited about a few things. And we're excited to work with them. One, what they're excited about is the audience. Two, it's sort of like the left pocket, right pocket, right? So left pocket is like my fiat or my credit cards or my traditional TradFi bank accounts. My right pocket is my crypto assets. And of course, they're excited about that. But they're excited about the community that they can create with this and the loyalty and engagement they can create using on -chain technology. So for example, if I mint the Coca -Cola NFTs here, Coke can also start thinking about or another brand can also start thinking about like, what is this long -term engagement? As more people mint these NFTs, do I want to reward them in the future? How does this play out? It actually opens like a real sort of Pandora's box in a good way of different loyalty programs and different ways to bring in the community. What about something like an on -chain winter? What's going to be next step for Coinbase and Base? Yeah, so you know, what we're thinking as a group here and how to continue to engage the Web3 community and also find ways to keep providing on -chain activities, right? So one thing we're doing is just like this idea of just daily drops, right? So one example, Unlonely. Unlonely is an on -chain dating TV program where two folks are, you know, you can watch them like a reality show and you can see how that date's going on. But then you can also like, you know, there's a little chat view. You can chat about how this date's going. You can also bet on maybe the outcome like, you know, will they end up in a real date or will one person say, no, you know, this is not for me. So it's a really interesting sort of way to sort of marry and bring together stuff that people find interesting and also to put it on chain. I think Base Paint is another really interesting example. I really enjoyed it. That launched during on -chain summer. You can participate by buying a brush and then pixel artists will come together every day and this is happening in real time. They'll draw for 24 hours this art and it will be based on the theme. And then once the 24 -hour window hits, boom, anyone can then mint that piece of art. And the great, the coolest thing here is many artists came together and contributed and as users are minting that art, the royalties are paid back to the artists that contributed. On L2Beat, which is showing kind of the arbitrum, there's a optimism and then base number three right now. So with that being the case, I mean, you're not far behind possibly flipping optimism. So, and this is just beginning or at least it feels that way in the sense of what we've seen so far. What are what are the bigger grander picture, I guess, for Coinbase in general with what you guys are doing that kind of integrates all of this together? Continuing to find and highlight beyond financial use cases for crypto but utility -driven use cases. But also a bigger part of Coinbase's responsibility is how to bring users that are not into crypto, that haven't quite onboarded yet, how to bring them into the crypto economy in a much easier, simpler, and more meaningful way that goes beyond just financial use cases. Like buying a coffee, for example. How to make it just sort of really simple, like, hey, I could buy this coffee with crypto. Boom. Great. Awesome. Shinten, do you think that, I mean, when you look at what's happening in blockchain in general, we'll see a handful of projects that really take off. And then some that, you know, think we think they're going to take off and then they kind of, you know, fizzle out. You look at SocialFi. This is a good example. I mean, you mentioned, you mentioned FriendTech, but obviously SocialFi's growth is really kind of starting to compound here. And do you think social potentially is one of those use cases that could be massive in terms of growth and big opportunity in the few years? Or is there another aspect around utility that you think might emerge? So when we think about social, what's interesting about it? One, you can engage and interact with anyone that is on -chain. It's permissionless, it's borderless. It will work with anyone in the world. And that's really interesting. But then what are the other properties? Well, if people have established their identity, you can actually learn about someone's on -chain identity, what their likes, dislikes are and engage. FarCaster has done something really excellent. It's a social app that allows users to chat with each other. Right. And chat's amazing. But beyond that, the formation of groups with similar identities and likes and preferences. But all this data is on -chain. And because this data for social is on -chain, folks can build value add on top of that. If I want to message you, Paul, I could message you. Hopefully you have paulbarron .eth, but I can message you there and say, Hey, Paul, how's it going? Thanks for, you know, it was great catching up for dinner and boom, I can send you the 20 bucks I owe you for dinner, whatever it might be. And even then we should think of that as like a really simple social use case where you can connect one person to another. Tap to pay with my phone, Google Pay, Apple Pay or my credit card. It's really simple. So how do we make this exponentially better? Right. And so if I go into a coffee shop or a restaurant, like what Blackbird is doing, it's really cool. I can go into a restaurant, I can check into the restaurant and that restaurant can say, Hey, welcome back, Jintun. This is your 10th visit here. Here's a reward. Here's like a free drink on us. I've dined at the restaurant. How do I make the payment really simple? Right. How do I make the payment flexible either from my left pocket or right pocket as an analogy where I can just scan or tap and I can select USDC as an example and the payment just lands instantly. It's settled, it's gasless and it's using crypto behind the scenes. Do wallets become a type of crypto super app or an on chain super app where someone is holding their crypto assets? That's great. But then what do you do with it? And that's really the core of I think everything we're trying to do in this industry to grow adoption. What next? What's interesting? What's compelling? Payments and messaging, merchants are loving it. We actually, in the summer, we went to Paris. It was for the ECC conference and we worked with the local cafe, Cafe Saint Victor, really old established cafe. And we took over the cafe for a few days during the conference and ran the entire cafe using Coinbase wallet. And what was really cool to see here was the throughput, the number of orders that were coming through to the cafe with just something so simple as Coinbase wallet messaging and payments. We basically doubled it because the volume just went much higher because the payments were faster and getting the orders from the customer to the customer. That was kind of a captive audience, obviously, with ECC there in Paris. So there would be a lot of people that would do that. But you look at this out in the wild because this is something I get when I talk to a lot of retail industry is the complexity of them getting started on it, or at least they feel there's a complexity. What is Coinbase trying to do or doing to kind of overcome that? Because that's a hurdle I feel like really is in front of us right now. Step one is just getting a wallet. Even at that point, that's complicated. That's complicated for someone who's new into this space. What is the concept of keys? What is backing up the keys? Oh, you're saying that if I lose these keys, I lose everything. That's really frightening. And then the second step after the keys is how to fund the wallet and on -ramp. And then the third step is, wait a minute, I have to sign transactions to use crypto? This seems a bit foreign to me. Oh, you know what? Forget it, right? I'll try to quickly break down. How are we thinking about these three basic things? On the onboarding as an industry and even what we're doing in Coinbase wallet, we've simplified the onboarding drastically, where it's just one button push, you're onboarded. And we are looking at technologies like MPC, multi -party computation. And just think of it this way where your key material is split amongst different parties, right? Trusted parties. Coinbase could be a trusted party. So if you do lose your keys, for example, you can have them recovered across these trusted parties. That does make the onboarding much easier. And we can move into a world in the future of account abstracted wallets, where it's actually a smart contract powering the wallet. So then it feels like you're logging into email, but there's a wallet behind the scenes. And that I think, we're exploring that space and there's a lot of interesting tech being developed there. Onboarding. Onboarding should be just one click. I think of when I buy things on Amazon, I put in the cart, boom, one click it's done. And that's how easy onboarding needs to be. So what we're doing in wallet is basically making that whole experience down to one button push once you've gone through the KYC process. And then the last piece around merchants already have established point of sale systems. Why would they want to bring in another one? Why would they want to just go through that hassle? And I think what's important to, fees, right? So why should a merchant care? Fees, yes. Chargebacks don't become a thing anymore. And that's a big portion of merchant fraud or customer fraud towards merchants. We can't go into a merchant and say, hey, come accept crypto. That's already a little scary. I've heard only interesting things about crypto. I'm okay with my current setup. We have to tell them you'll save fees, credit card fees. You could even earn yield on that USDC, like 5 % yield, for example. And that's pretty powerful. You can even set up loyalty programs. So now that if I went into a coffee shop and paid, that merchant knows how to reach me. They can message me. They could airdrop an NFT into my wallet saying, hey, come back again for a free cup of coffee. There's really amazing loyalty plays that can happen. And it's all in the control of the merchant. And our goal here is to make that starter kit for a merchant really simple and easy, where it's just a few button clicks and they're like, oh yeah, this is cool. And this is more about the issue with these walled gardens, because I concern myself now with what's happening over at Apple. We saw MetaMask being taken down off the App Store for a short period of time. Everybody was freaking out. Everybody I knew had an Apple device and a MetaMask account, or immediately I'm going to just put it on. Hopefully you can get to an Android, if it was worst case, or sideload it in some scenarios. But my point is this is a problem within the industry, Apple and its relationship with the app makers. So are you guys worried about this? And if you are, what's a strategy? In this example you gave MetaMask, when they're gatekeeping, it creates a real challenge, right? Where if someone has stored their crypto assets in an app like MetaMask or Coinbase wallet, and it's no longer available for updates on the App Store, let alone even a new user coming in, that's really scary. And I think what we need to do is really, both along the education piece and build those good relationships, but also just continue to highlight why this technology, going on Chainway, blockchain technology is allowing for true access and freedom to use the apps you want, the technologies you want, and move value between users. There's also other good initiatives out there. For example, folks are building crypto OS's, like one for Solana, one for Ethereum, where it would be on their own hardware, right? And that's actually a really compelling future. If you are, for example, going back to merchants, if you're a shop owner in a small rural town, you should be able to set up shop by just downloading an app and creating a wallet, right? And once you have that 0x address, you can receive funds, you could even message your customers, they can message you. That is the beauty of what we're trying to build and create in this fully permissionless world. You mentioned USDC and the potential of earning yield. What is the likelihood of us seeing USDC? I look at this right here in terms of what's happened on just L2Beat. Again, this, of course, was what you guys are doing in terms of multi -chain around USDC and this idea of earning yield. Do you feel like this is going to be something that's going to be available in the wallet soon to where I could earn yield there versus just my Coinbase account? So today in our main Coinbase account, you can obviously earn 5 % yield on USDC. Exactly. And of course, we're looking at ways to make that also available in Coinbase wallet. And that's an important piece of just participating in this ecosystem. What about just the interactivity with banks? Because obviously, most people are going to say, at some point, I got to move money out of a wallet, whether it's an online or a hardware wallet, into my bank. You've got Beam, of course, who has already started to make this work. The potential of going from a Coinbase wallet via Beam directly into my bank account, just smooth interaction like that, is that also in the roadmap? Where are you guys going? Yes. So what you're describing is a cash out, right? That's an important use case that we definitely have to get right in our building for and to make that super, super easy. Even today, inside Coinbase wallet, you can very easily send funds from your wallet to your retail account and then cash out. But that's like a multi -step process, right? And so we are looking at ways to make that easier and simpler. Also looking at Phantom, their NFT shortcuts, which is something, again, as we see more NFT usage within wallets especially, I know we have a lot of our own team that we utilize a lot of NFT collection. Obviously, Solana and Phantom have been the choice here. What does that look like for Coinbase in terms of the wallet being able to integrate like that? We built out really interesting things as well, like iOS widgets, where you can put your NFTs or your friends' NFTs onto your home screen on Apple. And of course, in the future, we're looking at ways to just make interaction with those NFTs easier. Like today, for example, inside Coinbase wallet, if someone actually bids on one of your NFTs, let's say you have a Ute like you were showing in this video and I want to bid on your Ute, you'll get a push notification saying, hey, Jim then wants to bid on your Ute. This is the offer. You can tap it and actually accept that offer right then and there in the wallet. So we're really pushing for more use cases, both from a commerce perspective, as well as making the long -term benefits of NFTs clear. Folks have been looking at token gating for NFTs, applying discounts if you hold certain NFTs. All of that does work naturally inside of our wallet. With that being the case, because UX is going to be a part of that, let's talk about what that might look like for you guys. 3D and AR. Let's talk about, is that something that's coming down the pipe for Coinbase wallet? We've seen this in some wallets already. How about Coinbase wallet? If it's specific to NFTs, Coinbase wallet can support rendering of all these NFTs, to see. We're looking at the creators out there that are painting this future, and we're seeing more stuff come into 3D space, more stuff come into AR space. I think just recently I noticed a team building a Pokemon Go on -chain type of game that works right inside of our Coinbase wallet dapp browser. You actually don't even need to leave the wallet, because really what we've designed here is a way where if you want to play an on -chain game, you can through the dapp browser. If you want to view 3D NFTs inside the native experience, you can. But I think there's a new world where if I'm using hardware or at a physical experience somewhere else, maybe it's an art gallery, how might that art gallery tap into the assets I'm holding, the NFTs, for example, in my wallet? Taylor, for me, a really unique experience. If I have a Finney NFT, for example, or a Utes NFT, how might that art gallery, if I'm walking through the art exhibit, show me things that might actually be relevant towards the art I've curated in my own wallet? It's almost like this personalized experience inside of an art gallery. That's kind of like this bold new future that I'm pretty excited about too. I've been surprised at how much has been accomplished with some of these projects out here. So very impressed with the movement forward. Last up here, I just want to talk a little bit about the potential for Coinbase wallet for retail businesses. And then you step back and say, OK, what is Brian Armstrong, your CEO, thinking about when you look at all these advantages that are starting to prop up in the wallet sector versus traditional, whether it's base or what Coinbase as an exchange is doing? How does he see this? I mean, I'm sure, I don't know if you can give us that answer, but how does he see this? Because I would think I'm leaning a little bit here toward wallet because of all these monster markets that are developing for it. Coinbase, the exchange, it's where folks start their crypto journey, they onboard, they move fiat from their bank into the exchange, they buy some crypto. But then what's next? Well, how do we bring them on chain? And we can do that through wallet.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from US IS WAGING WAR ON CRYPTO SAYS SAM ALTMAN - CRYPTO INVESTMENTS RAMP UP! CHINA NFTS, BRAZIL TOKENIZATION
"Welcome back to the thinking crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, I want to share a quick note from crypto analyst Kaleo, and I certainly agree with these sentiments. Obviously, we're dealing with what seems to be a new war happening in the Middle East. And Kaleo here shared some thoughts, which I agree with. He said, with the war escalating, I'd be cautious with positions. No reason to try and be a hero and giggle long or a giga short. Better to just keep stacking high conviction spot plays, let the noise play out and have some dry powder on the sidelines to buy the dip if one does come. Remember the big picture of focusing on building slowly to position yourself well for 2024 slash 2025. No need to add unnecessary risk here. Now, obviously, he's speaking specifically about using leverage, going long and going short. But honestly, I'm pausing all DCA right now. Now, you may say, well, that seems a bit of an overreaction, Tony. Well, you know, I don't know what's going to happen, you know, if things are going to escalate and how big this is going to be some pretty much holding a lot of my cash positions right now. Now, I was dollar cost averaging throughout the year, so I've been accumulating it. So it's not like I'm, you know, missing some big opportunity. And if the market does dump, you know, kind of like the COVID crash of 2020, I will be taking or I should say I would be buying that dip because, you know, you're buying it at a very extreme discount. But right now, I'm in a holding pattern. I'm not saying that the market's not going to go up or, you know, we are headed to some dystopian crazy town world where markets are going to die. Obviously, I'm not saying that. But in the short term, I'm just holding to see what the hell is going on in the world. And, you know, being smart, if I do need cash for other reasons, I have to make sure I have that position and have my dry powder as well. And you know, hopefully this war and these things don't escalate and things are much better hopefully soon. And you know, obviously praying for people there and peace and so forth. So that's my position. I just wanted to let you guys know, because I'm sure it's a question and a thought that's come across your mind. You know, what's going to happen with the markets? How should I handle it? I'm just sharing what I'm doing. It's not financial advice, but I'm pausing any dollar cost averaging, unless there's some major market crash where I'll be scooping up at the bottom. So with this current position, I'm probably going to reassess in the next two weeks, you know, based on how things are escalating and I'll let you guys know. But you know, it's pretty crazy out there, right? And while crypto is a big topic of this channel, of course, that's the focus. Obviously, we live in a world where there's other things happening and we have to be smart. So I am playing it smart to try to be risk averse. And you know, I'm going to let you guys know as I update my strategy. Now Sam Altman, who is, of course, the founder of OpenAI or the CEO of OpenAI, I should say, and as well as the founder of Worldcoin, he was on the Joe Rogan podcast recently. And some of the statements he made were really interesting. And it's what we've been talking about for a long time. And that is the United States is waging war on crypto. Here are some of the quotes from Sam's interview. There are many things that I'm disappointed that the U .S. government has done recently. But the war on crypto, that's the thing that makes me quite sad about the country. He also said that a global currency like Bitcoin operating outside of government control is a super logical and important step on the tech tree. Referring to FTX's collapse, Altman said he wasn't anti -regulation. And there was clearly a role for it. But this is a quote, but I think there's an important point here, which is you have all this regulation and it didn't keep us safe. He also expressed concern over a rise in digital payment surveillance and a potential central bank digital currency. So I think Sam echoing a lot of the statements and feelings and sentiments that we've been saying here on the podcast and other folks in the crypto industry. And Jeremy Allaire, founder of Circle, which issues the Stablecoin USDC, he said crypto like A .I. is a technology and industry that the U .S. can't afford to lose or suffocate. Sam Altman on that case. And he shared the comments, of course. So I think Sam is spot on here. The we've seen it right. The SEC has been weaponized. A lot of these government agencies and it's not just the SEC. You look at the Fed fighting Caitlin Long's Custodia Bank, the CFTC has made some questionable lawsuits and decisions as well as it relates to tornado cash and other DeFi platforms and DAOs. So we are in a war, but it's a war we are going to win. We've seen historically the disruption, the disruptive tech does win. And I think we're facing some roadblocks and headwinds here. But ultimately, we will win this because this technology is a global movement. It's a global asset class. It's not specific to the United States. It's not like the dot com boom where everybody's in Silicon Valley and out in California. Right. And if you wanted to get a piece of Amazon or Google, you had to be out there. No, no longer, folks. You can be in any part of the country or any part of the world, I should say, have internet connection on your smartphone and be able to participate in these financial networks and these block chain networks. And the tokens are distributed globally. It's decentralized, it's borderless, obviously. So it's a different dynamic. And I think the United States is really fighting a losing battle here. But ultimately, if you step back and we look at while this fighting is happening, the big players in Wall Street are coming in. So they will let up eventually. I think the whole game plan here was to kill these crypto startups, allow BlackRock and Fidelity and Citadel and Charles Schwab and PayPal and all these guys to come in and take over. And we have the facts for that. Right. They've been building, filing for Bitcoin ETFs, launching their stable coins, launching exchanges while Gary Gensler is going after Coinbase. And obviously we had the rebel case and much more. So it's just a matter of time before we come out at the end of this and we can move forward. But it's pretty tough right now. But the U .S. has to be careful, though, because we're seeing a lot of other countries embracing crypto and these companies don't have to be in Silicon Valley. And that's the very different thing this time around. They don't have to be situated in the United States. And because of the digital world we live in and crypto's digital base, they can be in different parts of the world running their companies. And in a way, they can run that company without a headquarters. It could be very much decentralized. I think Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has spoken about this. Now, we've got some interesting news about RFK Junior. We know he's one of the pro crypto candidates, specifically pro Bitcoin. Well, there's news that he's leaving the Democrats to campaign as an independent, which is interesting. So that's a big update. I want to let you all know about because we're seeing more pro crypto candidates of Vivek Ramasami. You also have Ron DeSantis and there's some others as well. So the tide is shifting, is changing, and we're seeing more and more people are becoming educated about crypto and the need for this technology and for the United States to be the leader. But big change here from RFK Junior. And we'll see how this impacts his campaign. And this is part of one of the reasons why I'm bullish on crypto. Crypto is becoming a ballot item now. It's becoming so prominent people can't ignore it anymore. Now, quick word from our new sponsor, folks, and I should say partner of the channel because I am a user of the platform. I want to introduce you all to Merlin. And the slogan here is the smartest way to track your crypto. So what's Merlin? Merlin is a platform, an app that allows you to set your exit strategy, folks. And it's all in one place. It makes it easy and convenient and it gives you peace of mind. So you may say, well, why do I need this? Well, folks, I'll share my personal story. I've been using spreadsheets for years to track my exit strategy. Merlin automates that. It makes it easy. So no more spreadsheets and having to look back and forth between exchanges and coin market cap in your spreadsheet. Merlin will notify you when the price point hits your targets and it will let you know so then you can go cash out or do whatever you want. Right. And I'm going to be using this platform for the next bull market. You know, when the folks approached me about it, I was like, wow, this is such a great idea because right now there's not really anything like this. And Merlin allows you to connect to your exchanges, like uphold Coinbase much more and as well as your hardware wallets. Now, an important thing, they don't have access to your private keys. So your funds are safe. Your funds never go to this platform. All it's doing is mirroring what you have on the exchange so that you can have a very accurate tracking as close as possible. And you set your targets and you can track your portfolio value over time. And once again, it is not holding your private keys. I want to emphasize that because guess what? I don't want anybody to lose their funds. I don't want to lose my funds. Right. So Merlin does not do that. But it's a great platform, guys.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from THE PROTOCOL: Ethereum's Overcrowding & Optimistic Fault Proofs Unveiled
"This episode of The Protocol is sponsored by The Algorand Foundation. Dive deep into the blockchain realm with The Protocol podcast. With Coindesk founding editor of The Protocol newsletter, Rad Count, and tech journalists Sam Kessler and Margo Nykerk, they unravel the intricate technologies powering cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, one block at a time. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Hello and welcome to The Protocol podcast. I'm Brad Count here and I'm so excited to start this podcast. I will normally have both of co -hosts, Coindesk tech journalists, Sam Kessler and Margo Nykerk joining. However, due to the SBF trial happening this week, Sam is off reporting down at the courthouse in Manhattan, but hopefully he will be able to join us soon for some exciting conversations on the latest news and developments in technology behind crypto and blockchains. And I'm here with Margo Nykerk and we're going to start off today talking about one of the hot stories that Margo has been following, which is optimism finally delivering proofs fault and why this arcane thing became such a flashpoint in the blockchain wars. Margo, tell us, what is this story? Yeah, well, it's good to be here on our first episode, just by the way. Yeah, this was a big story this week and it's not yet delivered. It's only on testnet, but let's, let's maybe just like get into this a little bit about like why this is all important. For those who don't know, fault proofs are basically at the core of optimistic rollup technology. The tech of that behind that is used to prove that certain data from the rollup can or cannot be trusted. And so basically like these proofs, you transact on an optimistic rollup, the proofs are submitted to Ethereum. And if someone thinks that the data on that is wrong or tampered with, they can issue a challenge to basically show that there's something not right here. So without fault proofs, you just have to assume that all that data is like good to go. And optimism has not implemented fault proofs. Back in 2021, when they launched, they had it briefly on mainnet, but they took it, they decided to go down a different path and take that sort of out of the picture. And so the people behind optimism got a lot of heat for not implementing this secure, like this really important security check. Some have compared this sort of to driving a car without airbags. And so now the optimism people have been quietly working on implementing fault proofs and bringing it to its OP stack. They announced earlier this week that it's now on testnet, so it is coming to the OP stack, but it's not yet live. So this is an exciting sort of development that will probably keep following over the next few months. You know, that analogy of the car, the fast car without the airbags, you know, I mean, that is, there's, this has started to percolate, you know, on Twitter and other places, it seemed like some of their competitors were starting to take pod shots at them, almost like it was an embarrassment. You know, I mean, I'm curious, do you think they accelerated this just because it was kind of embarrassing that they're an optimistic roll -up without this key part of an optimistic roll -up or, or was it really, you know, was it really an unsafe situation? Yeah, I don't know if embarrassment is like what the, well, the optimism folks probably wouldn't admit that it's an embarrassment, right? Like, no, no company is going to come out there and say like, yeah, this is an, this is an embarrassing thing we forgot to do, you know? So, but like Stephen at Stephen Goldfeder, I should know how to pronounce his last name, but Stephen, Stephen from Arboretum, he's definitely in the past tweeted out some things about not having those checks in place. And Arboretum is the main competitor to optimism. They also, so they call them fraud proofs. You can sort of use it interchangeably, but, but they also have like a limited amount of fraud proofs going around in their ecosystem. So it's not like everything's not perfect. I'd say that the different teams probably have different takes on this. Like the reason why optimism did not come out with fault proofs immediately is because they believe they wanted to pursue this, what they call like stage two decentralization and get to this point of certain governance procedures to be in place. Because if you do have fault proofs without the right governance, like you can override that. And so that's sort of their argument behind it. It's interesting if going back to this analogy of the airbags, there was a time where cars did not have airbags. And I guess maybe the question is, where are we in the state? What does this say about the state of blockchain development today? Is it just the situation where we're, these teams are coming out with these protocols and they're not fully finished, but they're live, they're sort of experimental systems, or is it that they are actually pretty advanced and now they're sort of tucking in some additional features? I mean, that's a really good question. I think it really depends on like the project itself. You know, this is specifically for the OP stack and that's gotten also a lot of press recently because a lot of companies are using that stack to come out with their own layer two is probably the biggest one coming to mind is I don't want to speak for the optimism folks, but from what I've done from my reporting, they've realized that as there's more and more interest, there's this security feature that needs to be shipped. And you know, there's about $3 billion. I read on a tweet that there's about $3 billion in the bridges of base and optimism. And so without the security feature, the more people that transact on base, the more risky it is without these fault proofs. Yeah, I think maybe it is because there is more and more development taking place on these layer twos, and there are more and more users that are making use of these layer twos that there needs to be these kinds of security mechanisms in place. Yeah, I think that's really, really, really well said, Margo. I mean, just to put this out there, I spoke with Jesse Pollock, who is the head of base, working for Brian Armstrong at Coinbase running their blockchain.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from SEC GARY GENSLER HEARING & SUBPOENA SOON? COINBASE CRYPTO ADVOCACY WITH NANCY PELOSI!
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a 5 star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, as you all may know, Gary Gensler testified before the House Financial Services Committee today. He got grilled. He got a lot of pressure questions and things that he was shaking and unable to answer. It's the same old nonsense. And I'm sure many of you saw the clips, so I'm not going to play a whole bunch of clips for you, but I'm going to give you the big takeaways. What can we expect next? And McHenry, Patrick out of the gate, started grilling Gary Gensler. He asked him, is Bitcoin a security? And Gary was like stumbling, like he couldn't even answer it. And of course, you know, Patrick McHenry was like, what are you doing, man? I'm giving you softball questions. You can't answer me. Is Bitcoin a security? So Gary Gensler continued his clown show. This guy's a scumbag regulator, as I've been saying for a long time, and needs to be fired. But the big takeaway from what Patrick McHenry said, folks, he threatened Gary Gensler and said, don't make me have to send a subpoena. And he highlighted that Gary has not sent documents about FTX. He highlighted Gary's losses in court and much more. So I think the next step, you know, I haven't seen this level of threat about a subpoena from these folks. So I think we're getting there, folks. And I'm actually going to be interviewing Congressman Warren Davidson, who also did a great job grilling Gary tomorrow. And he's going to I'm going to ask him about the subpoena and what are the next steps. And of course, he highlighted his SEC Stabilization Act, which essentially fires Gary Gensler and replaces that chair seat, adds another commissioner and an executive director. So it makes the SEC less political and more balanced. And he has some great questions to Gary. You know, he even alluded to the EITH Ethereum free pass. Some of you may have seen the clip. So he did a great job. And once again, I'm interviewing him tomorrow. So be sure you're subscribed on the podcast as well as the YouTube channel. And Tom Emmer also brought some heat on Gary Gensler saying, I'm convinced you are not an impartial regulator. And he went on and did a press conference about this. And Gary Gensler is a bureaucrat who does not answer to Congress and much more. So, you know, similar types of comments that we've seen historically. But I think the subpoena threat was the big takeaway for me. The other stuff was, you could argue, was said historically and said before and other hearings with Gary Gensler. Now, Democrat Richie Torres did a great job of talking to Gary and getting specific, like he highlighted, is buying a Pokemon card a security? Gary said no. So he said, well, what if that Pokemon card got tokenized on the blockchain? It's a den of security. And that's where Gary was going back and forth and saying he needs more details and yada, yada. But great questions by Representative Richie Torres, very laser targeted in detail where Gary is just like caught off guard and he's trying to dodge the questions. So Gary continues to get exposed. And I like what happened today. I think the clips and all the news that are coming out of it, while they may not be very much actionable, where Gary is getting kicked out tomorrow, right? They do paint Gary Gensler in a very bad light. And remember, I've said many times, a lot of politics is simply optics. And if you have bipartisan support against Gary Gensler, that's not good. He's not going to be in that seat for very long. So it's great to see Democrats coming out against Gary Gensler. Now, quick word from our sponsor folks, and that is Uphold, which makes crypto investing easy. I've been a user of Uphold since twenty eighteen. They have ten plus million users, two hundred and fifty plus crypto currencies, and they're available in one hundred and fifty countries. You can also trade precious metals and equities on Uphold. If you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. Also, a great comment from Representative Andy Barr to Gary Gensler on capital markets. He said, if the U .S. capital markets are a gold medalist, you are the Tonya Harding of securities regulation because you are kneecapping the United States capital markets with the avalanche of red tape coming out of your commission. Wow. That is a pretty strong remark there. Many of you know about the Tonya Harding story. If you don't look it up, Nancy Kerrigan and Tonya Harden and someone who was sitting behind Gary Gensler started flashing the Coinbase stand with crypto NFT shield. Many of you have seen that. And someone also highlighted the stand with crypto logo on a piece of paper. So this is similar to what happened with the guy who did the buy Bitcoin behind Janet Yellen years ago. So they put this right behind Gary. So it's pretty funny. This is another one that's going to go in the record books. And on that note, the SEC did acknowledge that the 1 .5 trillion dollar asset manager, Franklin Templeton, spot Bitcoin ETF application. Now, that doesn't mean anything because we need an approval. But things are moving ahead for these new applicants. Now, as all this was happening, guess who was in D .C.? Brian Armstrong and the Coinbase folks. Pretty incredible. And they did this whole campaign where they're at the Hill and a Brian Armstrong tweet out here at our nation's capital for a stand with crypto day with 40 founders from across the country. It's time for America to join the rest of the G20 and get some clear rules on the books. So great move here by Coinbase because the juxtaposition of what Gary is saying and what a big publicly traded crypto company is doing with a whole bunch of founders in D .C., educating and providing advocacy is really, really great. So I love this. And you hear you see Brian posted some photos, he said a great meeting with Speaker Pelosi. Now, all feelings about Nancy Pelosi aside, this she's a Democrat, folks, and I think this is a very smart move, Brian. Very, very smart move, because today even Maxine Waters was praising Gary Gensler. Oh, he's the knight in shining armor. And Gary, you know, you've been doing your thing, protecting Americans from these crypto scammers. Right. So remember, just like two years ago, she was hugging up FTX saying she loves Sam Beckman Fried, blowing kisses, taking campaign donations from FTX. So she's can be bought and sold right pretty easily. And I really like this. Coinbase is playing chess here while Gary Gensler is getting grilled. I love it, love it, love it. And they took a whole bunch of photos here at the Capitol Hill. So smart move by Brian. Really, really smart move. Now, finally, Kraken sets sight on stock trading. So Kraken, the crypto exchange, they're looking to expand their services. And, you know, this makes sense. If you're ordering already an exchange where you sell crypto, you can easily move to stocks. And then I know some other folks have been looking to tokenize stocks and sell those. So this is a pretty big move. And we're going to see that these crypto exchanges are going to expand to other markets. And with the advent of tokenization, you know, they're going to tokenize a lot of the traditional financial markets and assets and commodities and much more. And allow people to easily get access to them globally, 24 seven trading and much more. So obviously this would put them up against like Robinhood, essentially right where you have stocks and you've got crypto in the mix. So I think it absolutely makes sense. Well, folks, that's the news. Let me know what you think. What did you think about Gary today in the hearing? And once again, I'll be interviewing Congressman Warren Davidson tomorrow. So be sure to check out that interview once it's published on Friday. And I'll talk to you all later.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Chokepoint Across the Pond: Chase UK Says No Crypto Transactions
"We've got election season coming up, remember? And if the Dems win and Gensler comes back to the same office, he doesn't care because he has the wind at his sails. And if he loses, he also doesn't care because he's out of the job. I would expect, in other words, for every court decision that goes against the SEC to be answered not with a rational shift in policy and approach, but instead two blazing middle fingers from a bureaucrat potentially on his way out the door. Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, September 27th, and today we are talking about this crazy, strange Chase UK letter banning people from accessing crypto from their bank accounts. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Well, friends, I have to start the show by eating some crow. In the morning yesterday, a letter started going around that people were, of course, breathlessly posting as fact long before it was confirmed, and it just did not read right to me. So much so that as more and more people started tweeting about it, I actually posted it saying, I think this letter is fake. Let me just read the whole thing to you. So it's not long, so you have a sense of why I was skeptical. The header says Chase, and it says our policy around crypto is changing. Here's what it means for you. Hi. To help keep your money safe from fraud and scams, we're changing the type of payments you can make from Chase. From 16th of October, 2023, if we think you're making a payment related to crypto assets, we'll decline it. If you'd still like to invest in crypto assets, you can try using a different bank or provider instead, but please be cautious as you may not be able to get the money back if the payment ends up being related to fraud or a scam. Please head to our website for more info about how to protect your money. We've made this decision because fraudsters are increasingly using crypto assets to steal large sums of money from people. Declining these payments is one of the ways we're help keeping you and your money safe. All the best, the Chase team. So a couple of things that really stood out to me. One was the tone in general non -professionalism of the letter. The use of the word fraudsters seemed very, very strange from an official corporate communication. This is obviously quite a colloquialism and so the idea that it was being used as a formal explanation for why a bank would be denying an entire category of payments options to its users seemed a little crazy. Continuing that questionable tone was the ending, all the best. That's how I sign off my emails. That's not how a major bank signs off its emails. Now, of course, there was also the general grossness of the policy if it were to become real, but that really wasn't even what I was thinking about initially. And yet, shockingly, it was confirmed to be real. I was wrong and somehow a bank associated with Chase had sent out that letter. Now, later in the day, it became clear that the policy was for Chase UK rather than the broader US or international banks. But even if it was only a domestic UK policy, the aggressive move still rubbed many people, perhaps most people, I would say, in the industry the wrong way. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong tweeted, Now, Andrew Griffith is the UK Economic Secretary to the Treasury and Minister for the City of London and Rishi Sunak is, of course, the Prime Minister who was formerly the Chancellor of the Exchequer who said while he was at that post that he wanted to make the UK a crypto hub. LightSpark CEO and former head of the Libra project at Meta, David Marcus, added, Now, UK commenters were surprisingly quiet and that's perhaps because Chase is a relatively minor player in the UK despite being a major global banking brand. Chase has, in fact, only had a presence in the UK for around two years and has less than two million customers. They're also limited to offering online services, so are, in practice, a lot closer to a fintech platform than a traditional bank. Just by way of comparison, relative to the population, Chase UK has a similar footprint to Huntington National Bank in the US. Now, if Huntington banned crypto transactions in the US, you can bet we would be chattering about it, but it wouldn't ultimately be seen as that big of a deal which perhaps explains the lack of outrage from UK crypto investors. That said, of course, Chase isn't Huntington. Regardless of whether they have a large customer base, Chase UK is still a subsidiary of the largest western bank in the world and because of that, the important part of the policy change is unpacking whether this is an idiosyncratic decision of an insignificant bank or speaks to a broader policy outlook at JPMorgan Chase. Now, the reason given in the letter for this policy change was, of course, to prevent fraud. When fielding questions from media throughout the day, a Chase spokesperson doubled down, saying, Austin Campbell rightly points out, quote, Bitcoin attorney Crypto Hat responded, Austin, eminently reasonable as he always is, responded, and other financial institutions to fight said fraud, not turtling. Now, of course, even if this policy change only affects a couple of million Brits, it still matters in the broader fight to ensure crypto investors and firms have fair access to banking services. This has, of course, been one of the biggest themes throughout this year. The pushback from the US crypto community matters in order to ensure that banks can see that these sort of blanket bans are simply not an acceptable way to deal with issues around fraudulent transactions. And for a place that said it wants to be a crypto hub, the UK in particular has had a string of larger banks rejecting crypto payments over the past year. In February, a group of CEOs from major UK banks appeared at a parliamentary hearing. Multiple CEOs said their banks were blocking crypto payments, and although they listed fraud as a major concern, they also mentioned the volatility of crypto investments. The problem became so large that the UK's Financial Conduct Authority published a report on de -banking earlier this month. The report stated that the regulator had facilitated conversations between banks and crypto firms to ensure that they would be able to open and maintain accounts. Still, some large UK banks, including NatWest, are currently refusing to service crypto firms across the board. Now, one alternative opinion came from Francis Pulio, the founder at Bull Bitcoin. He said, via video chat, and essentially interrogate them to make sure they aren't being sucked into a yield, cloud mining, or other crypto ponzis. Still, as you might imagine, even among Bitcoiners who share Francis's disgust with crypto scams, this wasn't the primary opinion out there. Indeed, by and large, the sentiment was, and this is the end -then -they -fight -you phase. So what to do? Well, some, like dGen Spartan, basically say vote with your feet. They write, but getting banks to open accounts for crypto individuals and companies is another. Just vote with your money. My crypto -friendly banks get my highest share of account. The others? Meh. Now, another response is the entrepreneurial opportunity. Rama Lawalia, the CEO of Lumida Wealth, said, Although, indeed, later he tweeted, I don't know, man. All in all, it feels a little choke pointy to me. Remember, the whole point of Operation Choke Point and why it's problematic is that it creates a scenario where government and regulators don't have to ban anything because they just make it so economically untenable and politically risky for big service providers like banks to work with crypto companies that a de facto ban is the natural response. And speaking of de facto bans, let's turn now to the intransigent SEC, a bipartisan group of House Financial Service Committee members have written to SEC chair Gary Gensler calling for the regulator to immediately approve spot Bitcoin ETF applications. Mike Flood, Tom Emmer, Willie Nickel and Richie Torres penned the letter, which asserted that, The SEC's current posture is untenable moving forward. Following the Court of Appeals decision, there is no reason to continue to deny such applications under inconsistent and discriminatory standards.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from Ron Hammond Interview - Crypto Regulation News! SEC Gary Gensler Hearing, FTX Trial, Crypto Bills, Coinbase, Stablecoin Regulation
"Last time he spoke in front of the House Finance Service Committee, he kept saying multiple times, we have not lost a court case on crypto at all. We have brought several actions. And again, remind you, they call settlements wins. And so in their case, they were. They had won every single court case. But now that talking point is really faded because, as you mentioned, the Ripple's case, the Grayscale case, there's also ones like the Coinbase suit going on right now. This content is brought to you by Link2, which makes private equity investment easy. Link2 is a great platform that allows you to get equity in companies before they go public, before they do an IPO. Within their portfolio includes crypto companies, AI companies, and fintech companies. Some of the crypto companies you may recognize include Circle, Ripple, Chainalysis, Ledger, Dapper Labs, and many more. If you'd like to learn more about Link2, please visit the link in the description. Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. With me today is Ron Hammond, who's director of government relations at the Blockchain Association. Ron, great to have you back on. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. Ron, it's going to be a busy week. It's already a busy week here in DC. Tomorrow is, of course, the hearing with chairman of the SEC, Gary Gensler. Tell us about that and what can we expect. Definitely. For those who may not know, Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, is going to be testifying in front of the House Financial Services Committee for the second time this year. That's a really big deal because, to remind you, last year, they barely saw him at all in that committee when the Democrats had control. But if the Republicans can control, they want to exercise oversight of the SEC as much as possible. And again, it's pretty typical, though, for the opposite party to try to put the screws on to the party that has the White House. But in this case, a lot has happened, both in crypto, but also just generally, that it's going to get a lot of flack for Gary Gensler, whether it be on private funds, ESG. And again, crypto will definitely come up a lot after talking to several folks on the House side. He recently testified, though, in front of Senate Banking two weeks ago, and we didn't get too much out of that candidly. We saw a couple of questions from Senator Hagerty from Tennessee on the issues of promethium, for example, and Bitcoin ETF. We also saw some questions from Senator Lummis on SAB 121, which is more crypto accounting standards, and how do you custody actual crypto for banks. So I think we're going to see a lot more hard -hitting points from the House, especially on the Republican side. But I'd also like to caveat, as well, that the shutdown approaching, a lot of Democrats are going to use their time to hit the Republicans. It's just standard politics here. The Republicans are the ones in the House that are really slowing things down, unfortunately, when it comes to funding the government. So Democrat, any for the most part, is going to utilize their five minutes to not really talk about Gary Gensler, but talk about the Republicans shutting down the government. Because again, that's a major, major thing here. As much as crypto is big for us, the macro of all of the shutdown has a lot of implications. So we won't see crypto come up too much, but after talking to a couple offices, it does seem like we're going to have some definitely hard -hitting questions, very similar to what we saw earlier this year in the House. Yeah, and to your point of, you know, things have certainly changed since the last time he appeared, because you had the Ripple lawsuit decision, you had the Grayscale decision, where Grayscale won that, Ripple won a big chunk of theirs as well. And the Prometheum details are more about what Prometheum is and what they're up to. So do you think there's going to be some hard -hitting questions around that, those cases and those things that happened? Definitely. So if you recall, last time he spoke in front of the House Financial Services Committee, he kept saying multiple times, we have not lost a court case on crypto at all. We have brought several actions. And again, remind you, they call settlements wins. And so in their case, they were. They had won every single court case. But now that talking point is really faded because, as you mentioned, the Ripple case, the Grayscale case, there's also ones like the Coinbase suit going on right now. That's got a lot more attention. Actually, it looks a lot better for Coinbase post those decisions. And so he can't rely back on the courts here or say that, hey, look, I'm winning in all these court cases. And actually, especially in the Grayscale case, he lost 3 -0. And two of those judges were Democrat appointees and they're based here in D .C. And so I think that having that set the tone of like, look, you are really overextending here and you're losing in the courts, not by a small margin, by unanimous margin sometimes. And it's just not crypto. You are pushing the balance elsewhere where other industries like ESG or like private equity are seeing these wins and saying, you know what? I think we're going to actually have a chance to win against the SC as well. So like the ETF situation where crypto really just goes out ahead and fights a lot of these fires for more traditional finance. And then those folks kind of benefit from crypto's push. I think we're seeing some of that happening now with the Grayscale case and Ripple case and Coinbase case empowering other industries who feel like they are also having overreach from the SEC saying, you know what? I think we have actually a case here when we can actually win the courts. So I think it's going to be a major theme of this hearing going forward. But also there's going to be several other questions to your point about Prometheum. That was a major issue for that committee, which had Erin Caplan in front of that committee just a couple of months ago. And they reiterate all the talking points, securities laws are clear. The SEC gave us a way to work forward and move things forward. But that argument really fell apart pretty quickly. And we're seeing that in this case, that the Prometheum line that there is a pathway forward registration, there is a way to comply, just doesn't hold water. And so I'm pretty sure we'll see some members of Congress tighten the screws a little bit there because it's been really more of a black box, the SEC, of how this process went. Caplan just kept saying that we actually kept working the SEC and they were clear, but that has yet to even show itself. So I think there'll be a major other theme for this hearing as well. Now you mentioned Coinbase and everyone's looking at that lawsuit. There was also news reported, I think you mentioned it, where Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong will be on the Hill. They've also launched an education campaign around crypto. Tell us about that. Yeah, Coinbase has been a godsend, candidly. Again, we used to have only about five or six lobbyists during the infrastructure fight. And again, we're going up against the banks who have over 150 plus lobbyists. We have going against other agencies or other groups that have way more funding. But Coinbase really has stepped up and said, look, the fights here in DC, we are committed to the United States and we're committed to resources here in the United States and DC to educate Congress, to educate regulators, and to showcase in DC why crypto is important for the future of the United States. And so they're having a huge Hill day tomorrow, actually. Again, it lines up not on purpose at all with Kerry Gensler testifying and of course also the shutdown too. But they're going to be having a whole set of presentations for Hill staff and members of Congress to learn from founders. It's not just Coinbase itself. They're also bringing in other founders from other companies and having a whole demo day, a Hill day, you can say, to educate various offices. And so I think it's really important to have. We're all seeing a lot of other folks from the industry come down. So it's going to be quite the crypto week here in DC. Of course, bad timing with the shutdown, but no one can really plan it like that. So we're really excited to see how that plays out, especially with all the heat recently more moving to AI in terms of interest, but also scrutiny. I think it's good to have more adults in the room and say, hey, look, crypto was the AI about one or two years ago. We're still here. We're fighting a lot of big battles. We need Congress's help to move the needle. But at the same time, let's show you why this is important and why this technology needs to be in America and not be based elsewhere. Because unfortunately, we're seeing a lot of folks migrate over to London, migrate over to the EU. And Coinbase is really taking a strategic stand saying, we're here to stay. We're here to comply with the rules, but we also need some action from Congress. So we'll see how that goes. Sure. Yeah, that's really great that they're doing that. And education advocacy are certainly key. And speaking of legislation and regulations, obviously, we had the market structure bill get marked up in the house. You also have the stable coin bill. What's the latest with those and the next steps? I know the shutdown is probably delaying a lot of things. What are the latest on those items? Yeah, so we were kind of expecting by October timeframe to have a vote on the stable coin bill and the market structure bill. There are other crypto bills as well that passed out of the house financial service committee, but those are the two main big ones. And so the plan was, hopefully, was after this whole shutdown drama that we would have a vote probably in October, but it's looking more like November now. And again, our message to folks is the closer we get to that 2024 election, we're almost a year out, all of a sudden, all bipartisan politics goes away and folks start retreating back to their bases. And it's my team versus your team. And that's when everything grinds to a halt in DC. We're already seeing that right now a little bit with the shutdown where folks are saying it's my team versus your team, but the Republicans are a lot more splintered on their teams. And so we want to make sure that we get these bills pushed out of the house on a good bipartisan basis and then showcase to the Senate why it's important to take up this legislation. Now, there are been some rumors going around recently. Again, Politico report on it, Punchbowl report on it recently, too, that Patrick Henry gave an interview saying, look, the Senate Bank Committee, my Senate counterpart, they're doing completely different things than we're doing in the house. We're focusing on crypto and capital formation and data privacy. They're more focused on marijuana banking, exec compensation, and banking regs. So we are in two different camps on two major different issues. But if we were able to make a trade of some sort, the priorities that Sherrod Brown, who's running for reelection in deep red Ohio, who's going to need all the help he can get, would at least his case to voters saying, look, I'm actually working on this committee that traditionally has not passed that many bills. Mind you, again, they haven't passed a bill, except for this year, for four years before that. And that's during his time as well as Republicans in the chair time. It's crazy. And so in order for this to move the needle, they have to have a trade. And I think that's what's really important to say. If this trade were to happen, a lot does have to happen. But this does provide a pathway potentially for crypto legislation to move forward to the president's desk. Again, a lot has to happen. A lot can mess this up. But this isn't one of the first few times we're seeing kind of a light at the end of the tunnel. And we're really excited by it now again. But we have to have a lot of education because the Senate has not really given too much thought to this issue besides a couple handful of really powerful champions. Yeah, boy, fingers crossed, toes crossed, everything, hoping they can get something through the House and then we can go through the Senate. Boy, I'm hoping something happens by early next year before the madness of the election cycle. Now, there's also the trial for Sam Beckman Fried and the whole FTX debacle. In addition, there's been new updates around Sam Beckman Fried's parents and how money was moved to his aunt and Stanford University and much more. What do you expect to happen in October with this trial? So the main issue that we're going to have here in D .C. is just the noise. A lot of people are going to be talking about the SPF trial. It does have a huge media attention, for better or for worse. And again, we've really at least made sure we tell folks in D .C., again, this is not a crypto problem. This is a complete scammer just using newer technology. But guess what? Same old playbook as we've seen with Madoff and others. But there is concern that there are, at least in the case of the House, for example, we're voting on these big bills. FTX came up as a reason to support the bill, as a reason also to oppose the bill. Some folks say, look, there's no coming of a customer funds. That's what FTX did. And this bill bans that. On the other end, they're saying, you know, well, this legitimizes the crypto market. So this could potentially make more FTXs come up down the road. And so we've seen FTX kind of being pulled in two different directions when it comes to supporting or opposing legislation. And so our concern is the 300 plus members of Congress who have not sat in a crypto hearing who may not even know what Bitcoin or Ethereum is, are they going to listen to the headlines and say, look, actually, SPF is all crypto, which we all know it's not the case. Or they're going to say, SPF did this fraud. That's why we need to pass legislation to make sure this doesn't happen again. And so we're trying to really thread that needle. Of course, you know, we still know everything is going to come out through the trial. There could be some regulatory implications. Again, the campaign donations is a major factor and a major reason why a lot of folks in Congress are a lot more put back by crypto and kind of staying away on the sidelines because they don't get burned again. But as we're seeing kind of recently with the indictment with Senator Menendez recently from New Jersey, some members of the Senate took money from his PAC. And so there's a lot of, you know, just it doesn't matter if you're in crypto, doesn't matter if you're a Singh Senator, there's a lot of issues when it comes to campaign financing as a whole. And a lot of folks are on their toes here. But I think, you know, we want to make sure that we showcase it. Folks, SPF kind of went abroad and tried to really railroad the industry here in D .C. by trying to screw DeFi with his legislation and trying to protect his fraud and scam. Let's make sure it doesn't happen again. Let's put some rules on the road because, yes, SEC is not providing that right now. They haven't for years. And so it's time for Congress to act. So we'll see how that makes the dynamics. I'm sure, again, there'll be a lot of D .C. ties and connections with that court case. So if there's anything damning, we'll soon find out. But our hope is that this actually encourages Congress to act rather than sit on the sidelines saying, no, we're good. Crypto is kind of all SPF, FTX. And what do you think about the dynamic of and I don't know if this is going to be discussed in the trial at all, but Sam Beckman Fried and FTX officials met with the SEC many times. These are confirmed things on the calendar. I believe Sam met with Gary Gensler, according to some calendar updates. Does that play a factor at all? Because obviously we don't know what was discussed and what was the agenda items. But would that bring any pressure on Gary Gensler? Like you met with this guy. Yeah. He said in the New York Times article back in December that he met with SPF, I think it was twice actually, SPF and Gensler personally. But again, also remind you, it's a big organization. SPF was in D .C., more than any CEO in any industry I've seen in my time in D .C. But at the same front, staff meet all the time too. I mean, it wasn't just SPF. He had a whole team of staff that helped out on this front, both at the CFTC, at the SEC and of course with Congress as well. And so Gensler said again explicitly that he met with SPF twice. But I think it'd be good to know, look, how many times does your staff interact? How long do those conversations go? What do they lead to? Because there were some rumors swirling around that FTX is going to get a pass of sorts. And again, those are rumors. We have not had confirmation of that. But the one thing about the court case is that it's going to bring all this to light. So if there's anyone that's saying anything half -truths here or they're trying to protect their character or protect their image, it could really bite them if they have been lying to the press or they've been getting half -truths here. And so if I were to chair Gensler, this likely will come up in tomorrow's hearing. The question is like, look, it's going to come out. The truth will come out. We just want to make sure you're shored up here because it's going to be really bad for you on top of all the other things that have been happening in the courts if you've been caught potentially lying here. And again, I don't see any reason why he would in this situation, but I think the focus should be also not just on SPF and Garrett Gensler, but where do the staffs and the senior level execs and regulators also meet from FTX and the SEC? Hmm. I'm very curious to get those details. Now, speaking of FTX, obviously with the relation with Binance, and I forgot to ask you this earlier, the judge recently said it blocked the SEC from conducting further discovery, if I'm not mistaken, with Binance US. Have you heard anything about that? Not as much, at least in the DC front, but at least when it comes to the Binance situation as a whole, there's still that looming DOJ investigation that a lot of folks in DC are waiting for that shoe to drop. Again, there's various rumors of why that DOJ lawsuit hasn't dropped. There have been confirmation reports of central sanction evasion violations, as well as money laundering violations by Binance and the parent company, not Binance US to my knowledge, but Binance. What is the relationship though between Binance US and Binance? Is that there much cohesion there or is there actually a pretty separate line between those two entities? So one thing's for sure though, a lot of folks in DC or in the early of 2023 are hearing a lot more from Binance. They were definitely hitting DC a lot more, trying to get their narrative out. And I think the mounting allegations are pretty damning. And we've seen a lot of folks who were in DC for Binance trying to deliver that message. They're not here anymore. It was a very short stint for them. So whether that be for the company having financial problems, whether it be more of the regulatory issues, that's unclear at the moment. I would lean more to the regulatory issues, but I think it's all going to come more to light as time goes on, but it's pretty bad. So we'll see exactly how Binance recovers from this, if at all. But at least here in DC, the folks that they had speaking, they largely aren't here anymore. Wow. And final item here, obviously you got the Gensler hearing tomorrow with the House Financial Services Committee. Is there any other major hearings for the remainder of the year that we should be aware of? Not at the moment, at least in terms of big ones. We are seeing some small hearings, rumors coming up right now for more of Senate banking. Again, if they do consider crypto legislation, they've only had one major crypto hearing so far this year, whereas the House has had over 13. But again, like I mentioned earlier, that's just two separate priorities for two separate chairs. But if this trade were to happen, I think I'd just keep an eye on Senate banking. They just had their first AI hearing last week. And as they kind of get more into the AI issues and tech issues in finance, that's going to eventually loop in crypto more and more. So I think we'll keep an eye on Senate banking. And then finally, if we are looking for those votes happening on the House floor for the stablecoin bill, as well as the market structure bill, I probably keep a little eye on the House as well. I guess I think lastly, I'll say now, too, is tax issues. We've been talking a lot about securities law, commodities law for quite some time. But tax issues are really percolating to the surface here. Senate Finance, which is Ron Wyden, who's a big champion for crypto, Democrat side, as well as Mike Crapo from Idaho, they actually put a request out to the industry and another stakeholder saying, look, what does taxation for crypto look like? Please help us. Who should be reporting 1099s? Who should be doing various filings and such? So that's just a request ended in early September. And so we potentially could see some action or at least some legislative hearings on what does crypto taxation look like. And I think it's a very important issue with the broker definition coming out from Treasury. There's a lot of comments going through that system right now. So we'll see where that lines up by keeping an eye on tax issues. That's going to be a major fight for quite some time. And I think it's going to be really important. It's a little nitty gritty, but it's very important for any business to operate in the United States. Yeah, absolutely. That's a big one. And I know there's been some other things happening. I think the FASB rule and with corporations being able to hold Bitcoin and things like that on their balance sheet, I believe there were some updates there. Don't have the full details, but there's certainly a need for further clarity and for individuals and institutions. Ron, always great information, man. Thank you so much. Happy to help. Thanks for having me.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1410: Bitcoin Will Hit $10,000,000 Per Coin - Binance CEO CZ
"In today's show, I'll be breaking down the latest technical analysis. And also I'm going to be sharing with you a 48 ,700 Bitcoin price target, pre halving according to a top analyst. Also did you know it was exactly six years ago today, China tried and failed to ban Bitcoin for the second time and ever since the Bitcoin price action is up 600 % and the mining hash rate is back at all time highs. Also quitting Max Kaiser, Bukele has restored the human rights to 7 million Salvadorians that have been taken away by murderous runts, the British and American state, a 93 % approval rating tells the story of the most popular leader in the world. And now Bukele -nomics is being copied around the world as a blueprint for freedom and justice preach. Also in today's show, Mt. Gox repayments delayed yet again. Creditors are waiting on Bitcoin, Bitcoin cash and Yen payments until next year in 2024. We'll also be discussing, according to this latest report, Coinbase currently holds 5 % of the entire Bitcoin supply in existence. That's right. While Coinbase holds 25 billion in BTC, the exchange only owns around 200 million in Bitcoin and its wallets. We'll also be discussing the catalyst, which will catapult the Bitcoin price action. According to skybridge capitals, Anthony Scaramucci will also be discussing the latest with the Binance CEO CZ setting the record straight on $250 million loan claims. That's right. The US court had recently denied an inspection plea by the SEC. I'll be breaking down this latest FUD and speaking of CZ, the Binance CEO predicts the Bitcoin price will reach $10 million per coin. In fact, a couple of years back in an interview, he said, if all of the major institutions allocate 1 % Bitcoin, we're going to see 1000 X or more growth of the Bitcoin price. And if you run the math, 1000 times today's price action is 26 to $27 million per BTC. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market, all this plus so much more in today's show. Yo what's good crypto fam. This is first and foremost, a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at crypto news alerts .net. Again, that's crypto news alerts .net and welcome everyone just joining us. This is podcast episode number 1410. I'm your host JV and today is September 23rd, 2023. So welcome to another sat stacking Saturday. Let's kick it off with our market watch as we do here each and every day, seven days a week. We can see Bitcoin back in the green trading above 26 .6 and we also have ether back in the green trading at roughly $1 ,600. The market cap is sitting at 1 .06 trillion with roughly 17 billion in volume. In the past 24 hours, we've got Bitcoin dominance at 49 .1 % and the ether dominance at 18 .2 % as Bitcoin continues outpacing Ethereum and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past 24 hours, we've got theta lead in the pack up 7 % trading just under 64 cents followed by rocket pool up 4 % trading at $21 .63, followed by chain link up 4 % trading at $7 .18 and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers of the past week, we have WeMix leading this pack up 15%. We have PLS up 8 .2 % and XRD up 11, I mean 7 .4 % and checking out the crypto greed and fear index, we're currently rated a 47, which is neutral. Yesterday was a 43 in fear, last week also a 43 and last month a 41 in fear. So there you have it. How many of you have been stacking M -Sats and taking advantage of the recent dip in dollar cost averaging? Let me know. And how many of you are anticipating Bitcoin price action to maybe dip a little further south before packing some new positions? Let me know how you feel with the current status. And also just quick reminder, we're almost at the end of September historically, September is the worst month out of the entire year for the Bitcoin price action, but it's always followed by up tober, which is historically one of the most bullish months for Bitcoin. So we only have another week until we get out of September. So we'll see how this is likely to play out. Let's break down today's Bitcoin technical analysis. Bitcoin failed to reclaim 27 ,000, though we came close. It stalled at 26 ,500 as of right now. Meanwhile, the altcoins are in no better shape with minor losses coming from most of the larger cap ones. With Chainlink, the only one with a notable price increase. So last week was expectedly less volatile, aside from the brief spike on Saturday that pushed Bitcoin then to the multi -day peak of 26 ,400. But after failing to continue upwards, Bitcoin retraced at 26 ,000 and spent the rest of the weekend there. Then Monday didn't start all that positively either, but finished the way. Bitcoin went on the offensive and soared above 27 ,000 for the first time in weeks, but then shortly dumped after. But the bulls kept the pressure on and pushed Bitcoin to a new 20 -day peak at 27 ,500 on Tuesday. The next few days were rather calm with Bitcoin maintaining 27 G's, even after the US Fed's decision to stop raising the interest rates. Yet Bitcoin's momentum disappeared by Friday as it fell to 26 ,400. It even tried to bounce off the end of the day, but failed and currently stands at 26 ,500. Its market cap is south of 520 billion, while its dominance over the alts still just inches shy of 49%. So there you have it. And as we mentioned a little earlier, the altcoins, a lot of them are also in the red with the exception of Chainlink, which seems to be outpacing the rest of the major alts. Now for a prediction from Titan of Crypto, here's what he shared on X. Bitcoin 48 ,700 before the halving rocket ship to the moon. You might want to bookmark this one. Fam, never in history the halving occurred without Bitcoin reaching the 78 .6 % Fibonacci retracement level. So first off, first cycle price reached this four months before the halving, and the second cycle it was two months before, and then on the third cycle it was 12 months before. The next halving is now roughly six months away. Bitcoin might reach the 78 .6 % Fibonacci level within this period as it currently lies at 48 ,700, but the million dollar question remains, will this time be different? So as we enter this fourth halving, let me know where you feel the Bitcoin price action is likely to hit before we have liftoff. I mean, obviously that would be a bullish scenario setting us up for a perfect price discovery in 2024 post halving. So I cannot wait. I hope the analyst is right. And if you didn't know, it was exactly six years ago. China tried and failed to ban Bitcoin for the second time because guess what? You can't ban Bitcoin. You can try. Good luck with that. And ever since the price action on the King Crypto is up 600 % and the mining hash rate continues to hit all time highs. And as you know, hash rate is a good indicator for the strength of the network, meaning the market cap is just north of only $500 billion. And as Max points out here, referring to Bukele, he has restored the human rights of 7 million Salvadorans that have been taken away by murderous runts. The British and American state, a 93 % approval rating tells the story, the most popular leader in the world. And now Bukele Nomics is being copied around the world as a blueprint for freedom and justice. Massive shout out to Najib Bukele and the people of El Salvador. Which country do you feel is likely to adopt Bitcoin as a legal tender next? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments below. I feel it's going to be another Latin American country. I'd say a great candidate for that is Argentina, which has hundreds of millions of people. We have Javier Malay, the pro presidential candidate. There is a 70 % chance plus that he is elected as the president. And we already know the likelihood he could make Bitcoin a legal tender, especially being orange -pilled by Max Keiser, who is the senior Bitcoin advisor for President Bukele. As Max has already announced, he can't wait to touch down in Buenos Aires to orange pill Javier Malay. Then we also have Mexico. We have people like Ricardo Salinas, the third richest man in Mexico, very pro Bitcoin, claiming Bitcoin has been his best investment ever because, again, Max orange -pilled him back in 2014. Then we have Brazil and so many other countries that make Bitcoin a potential to become legal tender. And we all know that's going to be a game changer. And that's just another catalyst on top of the Bitcoin halving scheduled in six months in 2024, plus the approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States. So can you say fireworks lays ahead? Let's go. Now let's discuss the latest more bullish news, meaning Mt. Gox is going to be delaying these payments, which means no crypto is going to be dumped onto the open market anytime soon, which again is good for the hodlers. Check it out. Now we got Nobuaki, the Mt. Gox trustee in charge of the funds owed to the exchange creditors, updated the public on September 21st, two days ago, according to the trustee, because of the lengthy discussions with specific payment providers, he could not make the October 31st deadline. That was the initial deadline, fam. And because of this reason, the repayments will start next year. And so they say, quitting him here. Therefore, with the permission of the Tokyo district court, the rehabilitation trustee changed the deadline of the base repayment, the early lump sum repayment and the intermediate repayment from October 31st, 2023 Japan time to October 31st, 2024 Japan time, respectively. By the letter of the Kobashi details, the Mt. Gox creditors waited nine years for payments. Good Lord. Currently, they're owed one hundred and forty one thousand six hundred and eighty six BTC plus one hundred and forty two thousand eight hundred and forty six Bitcoin cash and sixty nine is that billion yen. Good Lord. I'd love to know what that equates to in dollars anyways, though the delay has been extended. The creditors who have completed their claims might receive the payment by year's end, quoting them again. Rehabilitation creditors who have provided the necessary info to the rehabilitation trustee will see the payments made in a sequence as early as the end of this year, according to the letter. However, this schedule could change. Kobashi also said that due to the high volume of inquiries regarding the process, the rehabilitation team might not respond promptly. Well, that doesn't sound so promising, but I guess it's a good sign that most of this cash is not going to be dumped off any time soon, as there's a lot of FUD that's always circulating. The Mt. Gox, you know, sell off is going to crash the entire market. I think that is very unlikely and is nothing more than FUD. And again, we're gearing up for the most bullish sentiment in the four year cyclical cycle amongst us in twenty twenty four. So versus being in fear, I would be very optimistic about what's to come for the king crypto and the crypto market as a whole. But what are your thoughts, fam? Let me know in the comments right down below. Now let's discuss the largest crypto exchange in the United States. Clearly, it is Coinbase. The CEO is Brian Armstrong. But did you know, according to this latest report, they currently control and own over five percent of the Bitcoin in circulation. That's pretty hefty. And let's break this one down. And how many of you have used the Coinbase crypto exchange before? Let me know in the comments below. Here we go. Blockchain intelligence platform ARKAM recently identified the crypto exchange Coinbase holds almost one million Bitcoin in its wallets like, whoa, the coins are worth more than twenty five billion dollars at the current prices. Now, according to ARKAM, the exchanges holdings amount to almost five percent of all the existing Bitcoin. ARKAM said Coinbase holds a total of nine hundred forty seven thousand seven hundred and fifty five BTC. And at the moment, Bitcoin circulating supply is around nineteen million four hundred ninety three thousand five hundred thirty seven, according to coin info on CoinGecko. And as ARKAM shared here on X, ARKAM now identified twenty five billion of Bitcoin's Coinbase reserves with one million, approximately Bitcoin on chain. This makes Coinbase the largest Bitcoin entity in the world on ARKAM, with almost five percent of all the Bitcoin in existence, almost as much as Satoshi Nakamoto. Crazy, right? Furthermore, ARKAM noted that it has tagged and identified thirty six million Bitcoin deposits and holding addresses used by the exchange. And according to ARKAM, Coinbase's largest cold wallet holds around ten thousand BTC. And based on the exchanges financial reports, the intelligence company believes that Coinbase has more Bitcoin than are yet labeled and could not be identified. And while Coinbase holds over twenty five billion worth of Bitcoin in its wallets, the exchange only owns around ten thousand of all the Bitcoin in which it holds, which is roughly two hundred million dollars, according to the recent data. Meanwhile, community members express varying reactions to the news about the amount of Bitcoin on the centralized exchange in which they hold. Some believe it's a sign to withdraw their Bitcoin from the exchanges, warning hodlers not to wait until the exchanges start to halt withdrawals. Others say that since there are legitimate concerns over cold wallets, there is no good way to store your assets. I'd like to chime in real quick. Obviously, if it's not your keys, it's not your coins. So while a custodian such as Coinbase can hold your crypto, you've got to also note that it's not yours. So if something were to happen, hypothetically, like we've seen with FTX and the collapse last year, then not your keys, not your coins, they don't belong to you at the end of the day. So you've got to start to weigh the risk reward with having a custodian such as Coinbase or a centralized exchange hold your coins versus taking the responsibility for yourself and learning how to self custody your own crypto and call storage such as with a Bitcoin cold wallet, such as a treasure. So I just wanted to point that out. There's no right or wrong way to hold your crypto. You've got to do what's in your best interest, of course. So, you know, I mean, just want to keep it real at the end of the day. So check it when it comes to Bitcoin ownership by companies, business intelligence for MicroStrategy still owns most Bitcoin. I believe it's over one hundred and fifty two thousand eight hundred BTC, to be exact, worth over four billion dollars at the time of this recording, making them the largest publicly traded company to have Bitcoin on their balance sheet. Now, another major company that controls over six hundred thousand BTC is Grayscale in their GBTC product, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which they just recently had a lawsuit against the SEC with the plan to convert their trust into a spot Bitcoin ETF. So considering they already control the underlying asset in the sum of over six hundred thousand BTC makes them a pretty strong contender. Wouldn't you agree? Let me know your thoughts, fam. And now let's break down our next story of the day and discuss the Bitcoin price likely to catapult along with the altcoin to coin to SkyBridge Capital, Anthony Scaramucci. Let's break this down. Shout out to the Mooch, SkyBridge Capital founder Scaramucci is detailing how one catalyst could have a bullish impact on Bitcoin, as well as the alt. In an interview with the Wolf of Wall Street, Scott Melker Scaramucci says that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved in the first quarter of twenty twenty four, which seems to be a ninety five percent likelihood, according to top ETF analyst at Bloomberg, Eric Balchunes. So according to SkyBridge Capital founder, the approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF and the Bitcoin halving, which is expected to occur in April of twenty twenty four, could combine to ignite a crypto bull market. No, it's not. It could combine. It will combine. Just saying. Quitting him here as Wall Street or products on Wall Street are sold, they are not bought. And so there is going to be tens of thousands, if not one hundred thousand plus people at these Wall Street firms selling these products to their traditional investors. So people that are in Bitcoin understand the finite supply of Bitcoin, right? We all know there's a finite limited supply, 21 million, and they understand the nature and the quality the Bitcoin has. This will push Bitcoin up. Of course, it will have a dramatically positive effect on the altcoin market because it will lead to more capital into digital properties so people can think whatever they want. They can think short term about the near term volatility of Bitcoin. But these macro positive factors are overwhelming. And according to Scaramucci, the potential approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF filed by giant asset managers such as BlackRock, who controls over 10 trillion in assets under management and Fidelity, that controls over four and a half trillion in assets under management, can see Bitcoin increasing its market cap by roughly 24 times from the current level. We'll send it. Let's go quoting the Mooch here. It is important that now the largest asset manager in the world who started out with some level of skepticism related to digital assets and Bitcoin is now willing to adopt Bitcoin. I mean, I guess they mean BlackRock is willing to adopt Bitcoin, but even more important than that, they're willing to explain to their clients. I think BlackRock now has 13 trillion dollars in assets under management. So for them, seven trillion for Fidelity. While these numbers are higher than I even imagine, while their clients need exposure to digital property like Bitcoin. And so we have a five hundred billion dollar plus market for Bitcoin. So you and I know gold is at 12 trillion ish, depending on where it's trading. But yes, 12 trillion. There is no reason why Bitcoin couldn't get gold. So there you have it. And to watch this video interview he did with Scott Melker entitled 37000 Bitcoin. Can it skyrocket 35 percent? Check the show notes below the video in the description. And I think we all could agree it's only a matter of time before Bitcoin returns to price discovery mode, virtually meaning entering new all time highs. My personal prediction is sometime in 2024, considering the two biggest catalysts, which we just covered, the Bitcoin halving and Bitcoin ETF approval, which we know is going to be a given, especially considering the SEC is not going to be able to push it back and push back that deadline any longer because, you know, they just they have been pushing it back now for 10 years while they continue to approve futures ETFs, which can allow them to spoof and manipulate the market, which is all by design. At the end of the day, there's not new under the sun and three things cannot be long hidden. The sun, the moon and the truth. But just saying. Anyways, fam, now let's discuss the ongoing fight against CZ, the finance CEO with this 250 million dollar loan. And then I'll be breaking down his 10 million dollar price prediction and in fact sharing a transcription of him claiming that Bitcoin can thousand X from the current price, which would ultimately mean not 10 million, but we're talking twenty six to twenty seven million dollars per coin. Let's break this down. So here we go. First, with the FUD, the Binance CEO, CZ Shangping Zhao had refuted a recent report alleging that he received the 250 million dollar loan from BAM Management, the company that serves as the holding entity for Binance US. Now, how many of you have used Binance US or Binance before as the exchange? Let me know, fam. The development comes amidst Binance's struggles with plunging trading volume as the world's largest crypto exchange faces mounting lawsuits and increased scrutiny, regulatory which seems to all be by design by the SEC and the regulators. Right. The report published by Decrypt September 19th drew its conclusions from court documents associated with the ongoing lawsuit involving Binance and the United States. SEC, according to the news agency's interpretation, the Binance US legal representatives asserted in the documents that BAM Management US Holdings had issued a quarter billion dollar convertible note to CZ back in December. CZ, however, challenged the accuracy of the report when he tweeted the following. The amount of wrong information is just they got the direction wrong. I loaned 250 million dollars to BAM a while back, not the other way around, and have not taken it back. The Binance CEO clarified that the loan arrangement was, in fact, the opposite of what was reported in the post. The exec explained that he had extended a 250 million dollar loan to BAM Management and asserted that he had not yet received the payment. So there's nothing new under the sun. Just more FUD, it seems like, fam. The legal battle has taken a toll on Binance US, which saw a flurry of employee departures. The US SEC alleged that Binance was not cooperating in the ongoing probe and even claimed that BAM refused to make essential witnesses available for deposition. Concerns were also raised on CEFFU, which happens to be a custody service offered by Binance's international arm, Binance Holdings Ltd. The SEC's filing claimed that the platform appeared to be in violation of a previous agreement designed to prevent the transfer of the assets abroad. And despite the scathing attacks by the financial regulator, Binance scored a small win this week. The SEC's motion to approve an inspection into Binance US was denied by the USDC District Judge, Zia Farokhia. So there you have it. I mean, the ongoing FUD will more than likely continue, as obviously Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world and regulators seem to have a problem with them and want to go after them for whatever apparent reason. So, like I said, hopefully in the end, you know, truth is revealed and the real story versus all the FUD and, you know, the manipulation of the price action and all the shenanigans we continue to witness in the market. And with that being shared, now let's dive into the Binance CEO, CZ and his 10 million dollar price prediction, as well as him predicting that Bitcoin price action could even a thousand X from here, sending the Bitcoin price parabolic to 26 or even 27 million dollars per coin. Let's break this baby down, shall we? Here we go. JV, have you ever heard of him? A crypto YouTube influencer from Crypto News Alerts remembered CZ's prediction. You're damn right I did. The Bitcoin would reach 10 million per coin. JV referred to the statement in a recent video uploaded on YouTube where he analyzes various aspects of the Bitcoin market development. Now, JV looked back at CZ's Bitcoin prediction while analyzing the Bitcoin CEO's recent Twitter comments. And in a Q &A session on July 5th, CZ addressed several issues, including Binance's reaction to the ongoing regulatory scrutiny. He also spoke about the rising interest of institutional investors in crypto currencies, as well as the proposed BlackRock spot Bitcoin ETF. CZ made the 10 million dollar price prediction back in 2021. In fact, I have the article already pulled up and I'm going to be reading word for word what he shared. Following MicroStrategy's announcement, allocating Bitcoin for the corporate strategy, CZ based his analysis on the possibility of several corporate companies, major institutions across the world, allocating just one percent of their corporate treasury into Bitcoin. And according to CZ, that would lead to a thousand X growth in the value of BTC. JV highlighted CZ's welcoming approach to institutional investors in the Bitcoin ecosystem, and CZ noted that advantages in traditional finance firms they bring to the crypto industry, despite concerns about their intentions clashing with Bitcoin's decentralized nature. And according to JV, CZ identified two key factors driving Binance's strategy for the next 18 months. They include the upcoming Bitcoin halving event now less than six months out, as well as, you know, we could be seeing a Bitcoin ETF here in the near future. The Bitcoin community expects the next halving to occur in April of 2024. Now quoting CZ word for word from the initial interview he made on Bloomberg Radio predicting a potential 1000 X increase in the Bitcoin price action. So here's what he had to say. Right now, I think only 11 companies again, this is right around the time that MicroStrategy announced putting Bitcoin on its balance sheet. They announced having allocating some talking about Bitcoin, like usually less than one percent of their corporate treasury to Bitcoin. And we think that it is most likely what caused the initial price rise. I think MicroStrategy's Michael Saylor started it first, but there are six hundred and fifty thousand companies in the world, like relatively established companies in the world, and their treasury is huge. Preach. So if all of them talking about these major institutions only allocated just one percent to Bitcoin, we are going to see, I don't know, 1000 X more growth in the Bitcoin price. And if they allocate more than one percent, then it's going to be even bigger. So I think people don't quite get the magnitude of the wave that is about to hit us. Now, let's run that math one more time. Fam, today's price is roughly twenty six thousand five hundred times that by one thousand. He's talking about a twenty six and a half million dollar Bitcoin price action. The potential if they only put one percent of their strategic reserves into Bitcoin, you do the math. If it's five X and five percent, what are we talking? One hundred and twenty million dollar Bitcoin price. Just saying this is coming from CZ, the world's richest man in crypto. So very powerful words indeed. Let's get back to this prediction of what he shared. So the finance CEO estimates that the flagship crypto can go up anywhere from nineteen hundred percent to twenty thousand percent from the current price levels from the time he made the prediction. And he goes on to share with price predictions. It is really, really difficult. I think it can go to, I don't know, one million dollars, ten million dollars. It is very hard to tell. And again, if we literally did a thousand X from today's price, we're talking twenty six and a half million per BTZ. So CZ also reveals that the exchange is onboarding new users as an at an unprecedented sustained rate during the bull run, outpacing its user growth during the twenty seventeen bull run. So again, this was during the twenty twenty one bull run. Here's what he had to share. Just to give people the idea, in twenty seventeen, when Bitcoin hit the peak of about 20 G's, we were seeing three hundred thousand new registered users per day. And that only happened for a couple of days. And that kind of trailed off and became slower. Now we're seeing sustained new user registrations above the peak and sustained like for over two to three months. So could you imagine running the world's largest crypto exchange and having over three hundred thousand new registered users every single day for like 90 days straight? That is insanity. And that's the previous market. I think twenty twenty four is likely going to outpace the previous market as Bitcoin becomes a common household name and as Bitcoin game theory continues in full effect. You have presidential candidates making Bitcoin a big determining factor. We have people like Ron DeSantis, Kennedy Jr., Javier Malay over in Argentina. So naturally, it's just going to create more commotion and positive catalysts for Bitcoin as we move forward into twenty twenty four. So, I mean, fireworks are ahead. Let me know how you feel. We're likely to finish out this year by December of twenty twenty three. Where do you feel the Bitcoin price action is likely to be? And don't forget to check out CryptoNewsAlerts .net for the full premium experience with video and to participate in the live Q &A. And I look forward to seeing you on tomorrow's episode. HODL.
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
A highlight from ANTI BITCOIN BOB MENENDEZ CHARGED! SEC GARY GENSLER DOESN'T LIKE THE LAW (CRYPTO NEWS)
"Welcome back to the Thinking Crypto Podcast, your home for cryptocurrency news and interviews. If you are new here, please hit that subscribe button as well as the thumbs up button and leave a comment below. If you're listening on a podcast platform such as Spotify, Apple or Google, please leave a five star rating and review. It supports the podcast and it doesn't cost you anything. Well, folks, we got very interesting news, which I'm sure many of you may have heard in the mainstream media, and that is Senator Bob Menendez has been charged with bribery and a whole bunch of other crimes. And you may say, well, Tony, why are you talking about this? Right. Well, folks, Senator Bob Menendez, who is a Democrat, he introduced a bill back in 2022, which would help to stop Bitcoin adoption in El Salvador. And he was citing that the adoption would open the door for money laundering and corruption. Wow. Talk about hypocrisy, folks, right? This guy all along for a very long time, his track record, he's been accused of doing a lot of shady stuff and now he's being charged here. The folks at Bitcoin Archive said the senator who said Bitcoin can open the doors of corruption in El Salvador was just indicted for corruption by federal prosecutors who seized one hundred thousand dollars in gold bars and four hundred and eighty thousand dollars in hidden cash from his home. So politicians those who are often very loud and screaming against crypto are the ones who have a lot to lose and a lot to hide, who are probably doing shady stuff. For example, Elizabeth Warren, Brad Sherman, Gary Gensler, right? I'm sure they've got some really nasty stuff in their closet. And some folks have shown that Elizabeth Warren has a net worth of seventy three million dollars. And of course, her salary is just like two hundred and eighty thousand a year. That's a great amount of wealth she's accumulated from just a senator's salary, right, folks? But we know the game, right? This is why we got to keep fighting and we got to expose these corrupt bureaucrats and politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Brad Sherman. We know they are puppets on the string doing a lot of the bidding of the tradfi incumbents and people who would love to kill crypto and not just even kill crypto, but just stop or kill the startups and allow their banking buddies and Wall Street buddies to come in and take over. So I'm glad these folks are getting exposed. And President Nayib Bukele, who, of course, he's the president of El Salvador, he tweeted about this news. He said, this is the guy that called for an investigation against us. He ended up being charged, period. So I'm glad he's doing a victory lap there. Now we got some interesting news about a library in the SEC. So we had reported just about a week and a half ago or two weeks ago that library was going to file an appeal. And this is based on the Ripple lawsuit outcome. Right. It makes sense. We have new case law with XRP, so it makes sense for them to appeal. And the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston has directed library to file its brief by November 1st, 2023. Now of course, this is no guarantee they're going to win. But the point is, we want to put the pressure on the SEC and Gary Gensler. We want to expose them for their lies, hypocrisy and much more. So I'm glad library is doing this. Attorney Jeremy Hogan highlighted a video here with Gary Gensler being interviewed. And it just shows his hypocrisy that he doesn't care about the law. He just cares about his own power and his next job. And it's no wonder Judge Sarah Netburn said the SEC has no faithful allegiance to the law. So he says the crypto space is full of hucksters and noncompliance. Well, the reporter asked them, would anything a court says change your mind? Great question. Gensler said, well, no, not really. And of course, he looked very shaky. He's losing confidence. And Attorney Jeremy Hogan said, you can't make this stuff up. So clearly, this man has no respect for the law. He's just making things up as he goes. It's about his show, his power, his ego. And we can't have that, folks. This guy's supported by our tax dollar. He should be kicked to the streets. And I'm telling you, I hope that Coinbase mops the floor with his buffoon and the SEC so that he has so much pressure on him. He's forced to resign. I'm hoping that happens. Now, Stuart Aldarati highlighted that same video. And here's what he had to say. What's most concerning to me and should be to you in the full video clip, this is the shocking admission of an unelected bureaucrat that he won't respect the decisions of the courts. So I'm thankful for the judicial branch and the balances we have in the government that a corrupt scumbag regulator like Gary Gensler, as much as he can go around saying all kinds of nonsense and nasty stuff, he has to respect the courts in a sense of what they put out there. Right. The SEC has to abide by that. Now, he may not personally agree, and he can, you know, like in this interview, say, oh, no, I don't agree with anything. But at the end of the day, if he takes a loss, he takes a loss. Right. So we got to keep fighting. I'm hoping the industry keeps fighting back as well. Now, quick word from our sponsor, and that is Uphold, which is a great crypto exchange that I've been using since twenty eighteen. I've interviewed their CEO and many representatives so I can vouch for this platform. They have ten plus million users, two hundred and fifty plus crypto currencies, and they're available in one hundred and fifty countries. You can also trade precious metals and thirty seven fiat currencies so you can switch between these different currencies and crypto and precious metals at a click of a button. So it's a unique platform and they've been around for a long time. Once again, I can vouch for this platform. So if you'd like to learn more, please visit the link in the description. All right. Let's move ahead. Caitlin Long was at Mainnet and she was tweeting out some of the statements coming out of Mainnet. I was at Mainnet yesterday and I met her. I tweeted out a photo of us together. I was supposed to go on Wednesday as well, but I wasn't feeling too hot. So stayed home that day. But, you know, there was a lot of folks there. And Brian Armstrong, CEO, was there. He said the Biden administration has been terrible for crypto. Well, that's to say the least, right? That's an understatement. They've been horrendous, in my opinion. Caitlin also highlighted that 61 percent of pro -crypto voters actually this is she's highlighting what Chris Lee Hain had to say, that 61 percent of pro -crypto voters in 2020 voted for Biden. Democrats are at risk of losing them in 2024 due to anti -crypto policy. Absolutely right. And these Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot. Patrick Hanson of Circle highlighted the following, that the euro stablecoin, obviously Circle issues USDC, but they also have the euro stablecoin and it's now EURC instead of EUROC. So just an update there. So the euro coin is now EURC. So just heads up on that, folks. And I want to highlight something I tweeted out today, and I think it's important. And, you know, all emotions aside, all feelings aside, I was highlighting that I'm very bullish on Ethereum for the 2024 -2025 bull market. Now this is, once again, all emotions and feelings about Bill Hinman and Joe Lubin aside, I still want those guys to be held accountable. But as for the token and the code, it's getting adoption. And I highlight that PayPal is building their stablecoin in Ethereum, right, PYUSD, Citibank's token is built on Ethereum. JP Morgan is working on a deposit token, which is built on Onyx, which is a permissioned version of the Ethereum blockchain. Coinbase is obviously launching base, which is their layer two for Ethereum, or they have launched it, I should say. And there's a rise in institutional ETH staking. So I'm very bullish on ETH and this type of news, these facts now, not my feelings, not my opinions, but these facts of adoption from very big companies and brands has me very bullish on Ethereum. I obviously hold ETH in my portfolio. I stake it and I continue to buy the dip, not financial advice. You should do your own research. And obviously I'm not just bullish on ETH alone, but just there's been a lot of adoption. And I want to highlight that because it's about facts, not feelings now. And I'm bullish on Bitcoin, XRP, Chainlink and many other tokens. Let's talk about Core Scientific, which is a Bitcoin mining company. So Core Scientific sealed $77 million Bitmain deal for 27 ,000 Bitcoin mining rigs. The deal was first finalized in August with Anchorage as another party agreeing to an equity stake in the bankrupt crypto miner. So one of the key things is that BlackRock also gave them a bit of money. Guys, this was back in 2022. So it's kind of like to the Victor goes to spoils where Bitmain was in trouble and then a whole bunch of folks started coming in to grab up as much as they can. So the deal between the two mining companies will see Bitmain supply 27 ,000 Bitcoin mining rigs for $23 million in cash, along with $53 .9 million worth of common stock of the bankrupt firm. Apart from the mining hardware purchase deal, Bitmain and Core Scientific have signed a new hosting agreement to assist Bitmain's mining operations. The deal was finalized in August when a court filing highlighted Bitmain's plan to sell mining hardware in exchange for cash and equity. As part of Core Scientific's restructuring plan, apart from Bitmain, the restructuring plan also included Anchorage. And you guys may have seen my interview recently with the president of Anchorage and the co -founder of Anchorage, Diego Monica. If you haven't seen that, be sure to check it out. It says here, restructuring plan also included Anchorage, BlockFi and mass mutual asset finance. Apart from Anchorage, all other three firms chose a mix of cash and equity options to settle their claims. The expansion investment plan by Bitmain will come into force by the fourth quarter of 2023, pending approval from a judge. Once approved, the hardware will potentially add 4 .1 exahashes to Core Scientific's hash rate. The two crypto mining companies all have also agreed to work together to upgrade Bitmain's last generation miners hosted at Core Scientific's data centers to further increase the firm's productivity. So, folks, Core Scientific, I will be potentially interviewing the new CEO and I'll let you guys know when that's coming up. But I want to definitely get into the details here and what BlackRock is doing with them in addition to Bitmain. So I'll definitely be asking those questions once I get the interview locked in. But, you know, a lot of companies are preparing for the Bitcoin mining next year. And many of you may have seen my interview uploaded earlier today with Fred Thiel, who's the CEO of Marathon Digital Holdings, and Marathon is working with a sovereign wealth fund. So, folks, there's going to be a lot of capital coming to the market. You're going to see a rise in demand for Bitcoin as the spot ETFs get approved, especially around, you know, BlackRock spot ETF and Fidelity and so forth. So I'm very bullish, you know, like I've been saying, we are in quantitative tightening, fighting inflation, rates are high, but this will end right as it has historically boom and bust cycles. The Fed will eventually start its QE again. They're going to start printing money, global liquidity will go back up and we'll be back in a bull market. We just have to be patient, dollar cost average where possible. And, you know, don't look at the price every day because you'll drive yourself crazy. And, you know, it's very volatile. Sometimes it's moving sideways. It's very boring. And I know that's tough. But just, you know, take your positions, obviously do your research, take your positions and just be patient and then, you know, watch what these players are doing. Right. Not so much the price, but watch what the players like this are doing, who's investing, who's building, who's raising capital and much more. So that's what I'm looking at. And that's why I build this podcast to share the news, because, you know, this is not going to make mainstream news. This is not going to be on CNBC, Fox or CNN or whatever it is. Right. And a lot of people are not paying attention. But I'm glad I'm here early. If you are here early, pat yourself on the back because there's going to be billions of people coming in buying Bitcoin and other crypto at a premium and they're going to go to BlackRock and whoever else. Right. But you and I are on the side of smart money. We are on the side of BlackRock. We are on the side of Fidelity. Right. Accumulating the lows. And then when the bull markets come back, then, you know, the herds, the herd who watch Jim Cramer and listen to Jim Cramer will go by. And that's when I'll be taking profits. And I'm sure many of you as well. So once you understand the market cycles, both for stocks, even real estate and obviously crypto, you know, you can make money, folks. And that's what I had to learn. I had to unlearn the mainstream media finance and listening to Jim Cramer and all these things. Right. And study the charts and understand the market cycles and know when to buy and when to sell, because all those things, you have to be a contrarian. Right. You've got to go against your emotions. You've got to go against the herd mentality. And that's hard if, you know, all your life you've been trained to go with the herd. Right. From television and media and all these things, you have to unlearn that. And once you get it, boy, it's pretty sweet. Right. To be able to make a nice return, make nice money. And obviously you've got to diversify. I diversify into different tokens, into stocks. I've often tweeted and sometimes shared, you know, my positions. Recently, I told you guys I bought PayPal because Jim Cramer said to sell PayPal. So I bought PayPal. Right. I know it's not going to be some quick flip. It may I see I may see some nice returns by next year and that's OK. I a am patient investor looking to build wealth for me and my family. So anyway, guys, that's my approach. Let me know what you think. I would love to hear what you guys think about this news. Leave your thoughts and comments below. Hit the thumbs up button. Hit the five star rating on the podcast platforms. Don't forget to check out the merchandise store. Link will be in the description. Thank you for your support. Thank you for listening. And I'll talk to you all later. Thank you.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Is the SEC About to Go Scorched Earth?
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Wednesday, September 20th, and today we're asking whether the SEC is about to go scorched earth. Before we do that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find the link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello friends, lots to get through today, so let's dive right in. The SEC is not done going after crypto exchanges, according to David Hirsch, the head of the agency's crypto assets and cyber unit. Speaking at the Securities Enforcement Forum Central in Chicago on Tuesday, Hirsch said securities law violations within the industry extend far beyond existing litigation. Now, keep in mind, the crypto division of the SEC is currently bogged down with complex lawsuits against both Coinbase and Binance, two of the largest crypto exchanges. Hirsch said his unit is investigating similar activity across other firms and believes non -compliant business practices, quote, hold true well beyond any two entities. Hirsch warned, Now, the SEC is apparently also turning its gaze towards DeFi platforms in this crusade against crypto intermediaries. Hirsch said, quote, Now, a common theme of recent comments from SEC chair Gary Gensler is to mock, quote, so -called decentralized finance. This perhaps indicates that the SEC believes underlying most DeFi protocols, they will be able to find a company to sue. All that said, despite outlining an ambitious enforcement agenda, Hirsch did concede that the agency's resources are constrained. Over recent decades, the SEC has largely dealt with regulated financial institutions, with The SEC's campaign against crypto firms has largely presented existential threats rather than manageable fines, leading to a significant number of contested lawsuits. Hirsch admitted during the panel that, quote, Reflecting on that point, Hirsch recognized the scale of the task he was proposing, stating that, And similarly, there are a number of centralized platforms out there, some that are acting as unregistered exchanges. So in some ways here, Hirsch is begrudgingly admitting that the SEC is getting close to capacity, at least when it comes to ongoing litigation. They're dealing with Coinbase, Binance and Ripple, all as major cases, LBRY Library seems to be wanting to go to appeal, then there's Grayscale, which continues to be a legal battle, as well as the two recent NFT cases which settled. So the question is, can the SEC handle five lawsuits at once? Can they handle 10? Even if you think the answer is yes, at what point do you think the answer becomes no? Frankly, this is maybe why people like Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong are encouraging the industry to take up arms effectively and actually fight these legal battles out in court. Now, of course, this brings up the other question of whether the SEC can bank on funding for additional resources to expand this endeavor or whether they need to have some alternative approach. This, of course, echoes the talking point from both the GOP as well as from Dems like The SEC's regulation by enforcement approach is reaching the end of its limits to the extent that it ever was successful at all, and that a much smarter pathway at this point might actually be rulemaking and guidance rather than just trying to sue the industry off the face of the planet. Look, crypto companies are fighting back. It's only a matter of time before we see some sort of coordinated defense fund, and it wouldn't be surprising to me if even this beleaguered industry can marshal a heck of a lot more resources than the SEC can on its own. Now, the other side of the coin is how much time the SEC actually has left to bring the industry to heel. Fox Business reporter Eleanor Teret tweeted yesterday, Only 13 days left for the SEC to bring enforcement actions that will count towards fiscal year 2023 enforcement numbers. The agency filed 760 total enforcement actions in FY 2022. I wonder if we'll see a surge of cases in the next two weeks? Now, certainly when it comes to the crypto industry, there is a broad sense of bring it on. Crypto trader Laxman writes, SEC warns of upcoming charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges. Few might think this will kill crypto. I feel like this will kill SEC. Crypto McKenna retweeted the headline, SEC warns more charges against crypto and DeFi exchanges are coming, and added the Latin phrase, if you want peace, prepare for war. Simplest of all, the Gordon Law Group just said, bring it on, Gary. Now, moving to the global sphere, a German regulator has stressed the risks of crypto and called for global regulations to apply consistently without exception. On Monday, Rupert Schaefer, executive director of strategy, policy and control at the German Federal Financial Supervisory Authority, Baffin, published a blog post on the importance of united global regulation on crypto. He warned of the dangers of unregulated crypto firms using a fairly labored analogy to airspace regulation. Schaefer likened the crypto regulation to air traffic control regulations, which are relatively uniform throughout the world. In this analogy, some crypto assets and DeFi projects were UFOs. He stated then that it would be negligent to simply ignore them. Schaefer warned that FTX was a major crash and there would be many more like it to come. Now, the regulator praised the recently passed MICA regulations in Europe, but argued that further steps need to be taken. He produced a long list of global proposals from the Financial Stability Board, the International Association of Securities Commissions, the Financial Action Task Force and the Basel Committee, and this he claimed was enough to establish a global consensus, stating that quote, the international regulatory principles have been adopted and the framework has been set. Now, the common principles must be implemented consistently and consistently worldwide. There should be no white spots in the flight radar. The global rules should also apply to niche financial centers. Now, this blog post comes a little over a week since the conclusion of the G20 summit, which was pitched as an opportunity to discuss global synchronization of crypto policy. G20 leaders did manage to produce an endorsement of the latest set of policy recommendations published by the Financial Stability Board. And in her article previewing the meeting, Noelle Acheson highlighted that the adoption of FSB recommendations was quote, very likely since the recommendations don't actually say anything interesting. Noelle noted that the FSB recommendations are more around notational international cooperation and vague platitudes about enforcing risk management rather than firm policy outlines. At the same time, none of the recommendations mentioned by Schaeffer actually achieved consensus approval at the G20, calling into question how the regulator can claim that there are any common principles whatsoever. Moving over to the UK. The UK House of Lords have passed a bill which would grant authorities the power to freeze and seize crypto assets associated with crime. Currently, UK authorities cannot apply for crypto assets to be frozen unless there has been an arrest or conviction. This bill would allow them to more quickly apply for freeze orders. Hundreds of millions worth of crypto linked to crime have been seized by local authorities, but experts say this new bill could help deal with situations that aren't easily dealt with under the current legal framework. Phil Aris, Director of UK Public Sector Relations at TRM Labs said, A government fact sheet suggested even more broad use, stating that quote, The creation of a crypto asset's specific civil forfeiture power will mitigate the risk posed by those that cannot be prosecuted, but use their funds to further criminality or for terrorist purposes. Isabella Chase, Senior Policy Advisor at blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs suggested that the measure could assist with police funding, stating that quote, Corker Bining was less enthusiastic about the fundraising prospects, noting that as the UK cracks down, quite, they might find that the pool of available targets quickly dwindles as suspected criminals move their assets offshore to less enthusiastically policed jurisdictions. The bill has already been passed in the House of Commons once, so will now return for a second vote before it can be given royal assent to become law. Now, I don't know what sort of free society we're dealing with here. With the big caveat that I am not a lawyer, the discourse around this is pretty wild to me. It seems like they're talking effectively about on -chain asset forfeiture without the requirement to charge anyone with a crime. This is the digital equivalent of police being able to take what they find in your trunk if they search your car and not have to give it back to you. That's an insane policy and so is this. And I hope not just for the sake of the crypto industry, but for the sake of the UK itself, some real, real limits are put around this. Staying in the UK, however, for just a moment, on Tuesday, UK lawmakers passed the controversial online safety bill. The bill requires companies to assess the likelihood of customers encountering illegal content and of children encountering harmful content. Proponents of the bill say it will be used to protect younger internet users and make the web a safer place. The government has claimed the bill would make the UK, quote, the safest place in the world to be online. Critics, however, have warned that depending on how the bill is enforced, it could require companies to do away with encrypted messaging and essentially any notion of online privacy. WhatsApp, Signal and Telegram have all threatened to exit the UK if the bill was passed. Earlier this month, regulators attempted to appease encrypted messaging apps by promising to only implement text scanning if it was technically feasible, but WhatsApp head Will Cathcart appeared unconvinced, tweeting last week that, quote, the fact remains that scanning everyone's messages would destroy privacy as we know it. That was as true last year as it is today. WhatsApp will never break our encryption and remains vigilant against threats to do so. Signal President Meredith Whitaker was a little bit more hopeful that the implementation would be thoughtful. She said, quote, while it's not everything we wanted, we are more optimistic than we were when we began engaging with the UK government. It matters that the government came out publicly clearly acknowledging that there is no technology that can safely and privately scan everyone's communications. At this point, it is imperative that we press regulators to incorporate the government's safely and privately scan end to end encryption communications and push them to clearly and publicly commit to not using the unchecked and unprecedented power vested in them to undermine private communications infrastructure. Whitaker confirmed that Signal would remain available in the UK for the time being. But for content and messaging platforms, the enforcement of the bill is a high stakes issue, with the maximum penalty being up to 10 percent of global revenue. Lastly, today, an update from a story earlier in the week. We have recently talked about JPX, a crypto exchange that has come under fire from Hong Kong authorities. At the time, withdrawals were effectively halted and one influencer had been arrested for promoting the platform. Reporting on Monday morning stated that authorities had received 83 complaints related to assets worth $4 .3 million. Since then, the case has dramatically escalated. Authorities have now received over 1 ,600 complaints involving over $150 million worth of assets. Eight people have now been arrested with the expectation that more arrests are coming. Police have now stated that the arrests are in relation to conspiracy to commit fraud rather than merely promotion of an unlicensed exchange. Twenty locations have been raided across Hong Kong with police seizing cash, jewelry, computers and phones worth around $1 million. Police have frozen around $2 million held in bank accounts owned by arrested suspects, alongside about $5 .5 million in property. Authorities are currently considering the confiscation of around $8 million in criminal proceeds. On Monday, JPX blamed the Securities and Futures Commission and their counterparties within the industry for causing an illiquidity crisis. They said in a statement, When other cryptocurrency exchanges announced their entry into the Hong Kong market and began extensive promotion, JPX was subjected to continuous unfair treatment. The SFC sent letters to all of our partners requesting the cessation of cooperation with the platform. On Tuesday, however, Elizabeth Wong, director of licensing at the SFC, confirmed that the regulator had asked counterparties to step away from the unlicensed exchange. The regulator had been monitoring the platform for months and issued numerous warnings to users. She said that since those warnings were issued, JPX went from bad to worse. The events surrounding JPX could be seen either as a sign that Hong Kong authorities are serious about enforcement of new crypto regulations or an indication that the city still has a long way to go in cleaning up the industry. As we discussed before, given Hong Kong's role as a bellwether for Chinese authorities' attitudes towards crypto, this is a story that we will continue to watch. However, for now, that is going to do it for today's breakdown. I appreciate you listening, as always. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
The Crypto Overnighter
A highlight from 669:FTXs $3.4B Liquidation and Armstrongs DeFi Challenge
"Beef, it's what's for dinner. Funded by beef farmers and ranchers. Good evening and welcome to the Crypto Overnighter. I'm Nick Ademus and I will be your host as we take a look at the latest cryptocurrency news and analysis. So sit back, relax and let's get started. And remember, none of this is financial advice. And it's 10 p .m. Pacific on Thursday, September 14th, 2023. Welcome back to the Crypto Overnighter, where we have no sponsors, no hidden agendas and no BS. But we do have the news. So let's talk about that. Tonight, we're dissecting the court approved liquidation of FTX's 3 .4 billion dollars in digital assets. We'll also delve into the tug of war between the CFTC and Coinbase's CEO, Brian Armstrong, over DeFi regulation. And if that's not enough, we have FWOBY's rebranding fiasco, the SEC going after stoner cats, Singapore's regulatory hammer coming down on 3AC and the EU passing a new crypto tax law. Get ready for a deep dive into the land of the markets that never sleep. FTX received court approval to liquidate its digital assets. These assets total approximately 3 .4 billion dollars. Judge John Dorsey made the decision in the U .S. bankruptcy court for the District of Delaware. The assets include 1 .16 billion dollars in Solana, 560 million dollars in Bitcoin and 119 million dollars in XRP. Galaxy Digital, led by Mike Novogratz, will act as the investment manager responsible for conducting the sale. The court approved plan allows FTX to sell up to 100 million dollars worth of tokens each week. This cap could potentially be doubled for individual tokens. FTX's liquidation plan was approved despite some opposition. The exchange has assets totaling around 7 billion dollars, which it aims to use to repay creditors. The exchange also has 38 real estate properties in the Bahamas. The liquidation is part of FTX's broader strategy to repay creditors and is considered one of the most significant asset liquidations in cryptocurrency history. FTX co -founder and former CEO Sam Bankman Fried is awaiting trial in October. The exchange has the option to sell, stake or hedge its digital assets. This court approval is a landmark moment not just for FTX but for the entire crypto industry. It sets a precedent for how bankrupt crypto exchanges can handle asset liquidation, especially when creditors are involved. While the court's decision may seem like a straightforward legal procedure, it has far -reaching implications. For one, it's a nod to the legitimacy of crypto assets as a form of property that can be liquidated to repay debts, a concept still not universally accepted. Moreover, the involvement of Galaxy Digital adds another layer of credibility to the process. It's not just some random entity handling the liquidation, it's a well -known firm. Mike Novogratz is a name many in the crypto community trust. This could set a standard for future cases where large sums of crypto assets are involved, from FTX's crumbling empire to a battle for DeFi's very soul. While FTX's liquidation exposes vulnerabilities, the CFTC and Coinbase's Brian Armstrong are locking horns over the future of decentralized finance. Now before we jump in, hit that like button if you appreciate unfiltered insights.
The Breakdown
A highlight from Shockingly, Gary Gensler Doesn't Like Stoner Cats
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Thursday, September 14th, and today we are talking about stoner cats. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or, if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on The Breaker's Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Alright, friends, well, I have to tell you, at this point we really have about four archetypes of breakdown shows. There's number one, oh god, more cleanup from 2022. There's number two, hey look, a new TradFi player is getting in the game. There's number three, hey look, a judge or elected official is smacking a regulator down. And then there's number four, hey look, an unelected bureaucrat is trying to expand their power again. And today's show is indeed an example of the fourth, and the reason it matters is not just because it's another SEC enforcement action, but because I do really think that this represents and is a great example of that impulse to authority expansion. So what am I referring to? Well, of course, I am referring to the SEC bringing its second enforcement action ever against an NFT project. This time, the regulator targeted Stoner Cats, a profile picture NFT collection that was sold to finance a web series. The SEC alleged that the sale of collectible NFTs constituted the sale of unregistered securities. The production company behind the project settled the allegations without admitting to the SEC's findings. So the details. Stoner Cats sold out their collection in around 35 minutes at the height of the NFT bull market in July 2021. The project raised $8 million from the sale. Marketing highlighted materials Hollywood producers and big -name celebrities attached to the web series, and suggested that the success of the show would increase the value of the NFTs in secondary markets. The company received 2 .5 % of royalties from secondary market sales, which produced $20 million in volume. In the settlement, Stoner Cats agreed to a cease -and -desist order and a $1 million penalty. In addition, a fund will be established to refund investors and all NFTs held by the company will be destroyed. Gurbir Gural, the director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement, said in a statement, Regardless of whether your offering involves beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, under the federal securities laws, it's the economic reality of the offering, not the label you put on it or the underlying objects, that guides the determination of what's an investment contract and therefore a security. As an aside, I wonder sometime if they find their own writing as clever as they seem to. Beavers, chinchillas, or animal -based NFTs, wah. Moving on, the statement reads, Here the SEC's order finds that Stoner Cats marketed its knowledge of crypto projects, touted that the price of their NFTs could increase, and took other steps that led investors to believe they would profit from selling the NFTs in the secondary market. It's therefore hardly surprising, as the order finds, that Stoner Cats sold its entire supply of NFTs in just 35 minutes, generating proceeds of over $8 million, most of which were then resold, not held as collectibles, in the secondary market within months. Carolyn Welschans, the associate director of the SEC's home office, added, Stoner Cats wanted all the benefits of offering and selling a security to the public, but ignored the legal responsibilities that come with doing so. Now, Commissioners Hester Peirce and Mark Ueda offered what has become their customary dissent against the SEC's actions. They claimed the enforcement represented a perverse extension of the SEC's jurisdiction and the borders of the Howey Test into the realm of art and collectibles. In a statement they wrote, The application of the Howey Investment Contract Analysis in this matter lacks any meaningful limiting principle. It carries implications for creators of all kinds. Were we to apply the securities laws to physical collectibles in the same way we apply them to NFTs, artists' creativity would wither in the shadow of legal ambiguity. Rather than arbitrarily bringing enforcement actions against NFT projects, we ought to lay out some clear guidelines for artists and other creators who want to experiment with NFTs as a way to support their creative efforts and build their fan communities. The Commissioners claimed the NFT project was more properly characterized as a fan crowdfunding. More broadly, they expressed concern that, through this enforcement, the SEC were attempting to exert jurisdiction over collectibles in a way they had never previously done with physical objects. The Commissioners likened stoner cats to a scheme surrounding the launch of Star Wars toys in Christmas of 1977. The toy maker sold early bird certificate packages in lieu of actual toys due to problems with production. These certificates were redeemable for toys in due course, but could also be resold for a profit in secondary markets at the time. The Commissioners asserted that, Using the analysis of today's enforcement action, the SEC should have parachuted in to save those kids from Star Wars mania. The main point of the dissent was that the SEC should not use its enforcement to stifle innovation in creative industries through the use of NFTs. The Commissioners said that, They argued that the SEC's More generally, it contributes to the legal ambiguity facing artists, writers, musicians, filmmakers, and others seeking to build a loyal, engaged following. There are a few different categories of reactions from people in the crypto community. Some honestly said that the stoner cats were not necessarily the best example to be a standard bearer for the industry. Gabriel Shapiro, General Counsel at Delphi Labs said, NFT trader, ex -lawyer, NFTs said, And the natural extension of that is any collectible that has a robust resale market — Jordans, baseball cards, comics, rare whiskey and wine, etc. — is potentially sold as a security. That is not the law, but it seems that the SEC is using essentially dicta in an order to creep its jurisdiction. Crypto criminal lawyer Carlos says injecting language like this into settlement seems to be a recurring pattern. To which ex -lawyer again responded, Obviously to us that's not true, but the SEC doesn't play fair and will take advantage of it. And indeed, this take that the SEC was overreaching here was by, in a way, the most common take. Marissa Tashman -Koppel, the Senior Counsel at Blockchain Association said, So now the SEC is in the business of regulating creatives and artists? Creating opportunities for ownership in the creative process is one way crypto and Web3 transforms how we interact online. The SEC shouldn't interrupt this process. Crypto lawyer Ujin writes, Hester Peirce emphasized in her dissent that the SEC's position limits legitimate ways for artists to make a living and she is right. Speculative sales of art are the basis for many sales of art, and that doesn't make those sales a security offering. Now still one more take was that we are seeing something of a positive pattern of dissent. Framework Ventures' Vance Spencer said, Peirce was on her own for a long time. Important to remember for something like an ETF approval, which requires three of five. Now staying on the theme of Gensler for a moment, it's like after the Senate hearing where he had to take some punches earlier this week, he had to go out and find a venue to get his own shots in. Appearing at a conference hosted by lobbyist group Better Markets on Wednesday, Gensler said, Millions of investors have been hurt in this field. It's an area that can hurt investors, but it can also hurt the broader economy because it can hurt investor confidence and finances ultimately built on trust. The conference was of course being held to mark the 15th anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers, giving Gensler plenty of opportunity for histrionics about financial risk. Gensler trotted out his usual talking points, although adjusted to consider recent criticisms raised in court. Still, there was one kind of awkward and sweet moment where the host suggested that the crypto do seem to be finding some sympathetic judges recently, to which Gensler was uncharacteristically silent in response. Now, Jason Franek from Alliance Dow really sums it up. He wrote, Now, somewhat related, while presenting a speech at a conference hosted by the Practicing Law Institute, CFTC Enforcement Director Ian McGinley pressed home his agency's antipathy towards DeFi. McGinley said, McGinley presented the complete list of CFTC victories in DeFi cases, including a settlement with prediction market PolyMarket and derivatives exchange operator UkiDao. He said, All of this is to say, the CFTC has brought groundbreaking actions in the DeFi space, standing for the proposition that when offering core derivatives products based on digital assets to the public, whether in a centralized or decentralized manner, you must comply with the law. The comments came just a week after the CFTC announced settlements with DeFi trading platforms Open, 0x, and Derridex for offering quote illegal digital asset derivatives trading. The enforcement actions were widely viewed as the regulator taking on easy targets in an attempt to send a message. Indeed, the attack on DeFi was so brazen that one dissenting commissioner even openly suggested that the CFTC was quote, creating an impossible environment for those who want to comply with the law. Bankless co -host Ryan Schott Adams tweeted, The IRS is attacking crypto, FinCEN is attacking crypto, the SEC is attacking crypto, the CFTC is attacking crypto, OFAC is attacking crypto. This is what the now they fight you phase looks like. Now speaking of the fight and not going down without one, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has called for DeFi protocols to take the fight to the CFTC and defend enforcement actions in court. He said in a tweet on Wednesday, The CFTC should not be creating enforcement actions against DeFi protocols. These are not financial services business and it's highly unlikely the Commodity Exchange Act even applies to them. My hope is these DeFi protocols take these cases to court to establish precedent. The courts have proven to be very willing to uphold rule of law. The only thing this is accomplishing is to push an important industry offshore. Now following last week's enforcement action against that trio of DeFi platforms, many commented that the order was a stretch of existing law. And while their cases may have been defensible, the diminutive DeFi platforms were unlikely to have had the resources to take on the US regulator, which is of course why many believe they were targeted in the first place. Now while Brian Armstrong stopped short of offering funding, many others in the space urged collective defense. Crypto law US founder John Deaton said, The industry needs to create a legal fund of some sort to help defend these winnable cases. LEO Trades amplified that, saying, Brian, if you really want to affect policy change, you and Coinbase should help create a fund for projects facing enforcement. Let's be real. Everyone is worried about the financial burden of litigation. This would honestly be a better use of resources than vague political campaigns. Now a different take was summed up by Jamison Lop, who wrote, My hope is that DeFi protocols be so decentralized that the notion of them going to court is absurd. Lawyer Jason Gottlieb wrote a thread about this as well, saying, I agree with Brian Armstrong that DeFi protocols should challenge the CFTC and SEC in court on overreaching settlement demands. The sad reality is that the agencies first attack smaller outfits for whom it makes vastly more economic sense to settle rather than litigate. We see what happens when well -funded projects go to court to fight shaky theories of DeFi liability. Cases or causes of action are dismissed, partial liability can be dropped, the dynamics are greatly changed. But the regulators start with huge advantages. They have typically worn down projects with an expensive investigation first. Even just satisfying the overbearing demands for document production in these investigations can cost six figures easily. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Every single subpoena a regulator sends to a blockchain project is one less engineering job in America and more money for lawyers. Even the lawyers who benefit from that, hi there, think that is a terrible trade -off for America. One problem is funding. The regulators can wear projects down and then offer deals that, while expensive and onerous, are better than more years of continued litigation where even if the project wins, it has massively lost time, funding runway, and momentum. Another problem is that these are people's lives. An investigation is obtrusive enough. Litigation is personally highly disruptive. For us litigators, it's just what we do, it doesn't feel bad. But for founders, devs, people just trying to build, it can feel terrible. So I would love for more DeFi projects to take the CFTC and SEC to court. And is this attorney advertising? I'd love to be the lawyer who represents them. But it costs a lot of money and it's emotionally hard. Companies that have taken on the fight have done great work protecting the space, sometimes behind the scenes in ways people won't widely know about. We need more. But not everyone is well financed and in a fighting mood. So we need to support the smaller projects financially and otherwise. Everyone who believes in the efficiency, privacy, and self -control advantages of digital assets is in this fight together. The battle over the future of crypto is the battle over the future of all digital assets. And since more and more of our lives are digital, that's more and more of our lives. This fight is far more important than when moon antics. It is literally the battle for the future of your digital life. The legal battles over digital assets are the battles over the direction of our collective future. Here, here. I think I will let Jason have the last word on that one because I can't do any better. I appreciate all you guys listening. And until next time, be safe and take care of each other. Peace.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1400: Jack Mallers: This Will Send Bitcoin to $1 Million
"Bitcoin is the greatest form of money to ever exist. In today's show, we're going to be discussing Bitcoin price reacting as 3 .7%. CPI sees an inflation jump beyond forecasts, and breaking news just in, US Congressman Tom Emmer says CBDC is a surveillance tool that can be weaponized to oppress the American way of life. That's right, CBDC is slavery and Bitcoin is freedom. And quoting the high priest of Bitcoin, Max Keiser, saving El Salvador and Argentina from the central banks by introducing a Bitcoin standard will ultimately help Americans who have the same problem of a free -falling currency just delay the bid. He also says, it's not enough for a country to make Bitcoin legal tender, it must do also what El Salvador has done, erect impenetrable barriers of entry, stopping the Ishcoins, the Citadel needs protection. This is the message we'll be taking to Argentina, preach. Also in today's show, Coinbase founder, Brian Armstrong, reveals a plan to integrate the Bitcoin lightning network. Let's get it. Also in today's show, Gemini earned users could recover all their funds in the new DCG remuneration scheme. We'll also be discussing Gary Gensler, the chairman of the SEC, confirms the SEC's use of artificial intelligence for financial surveillance. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin bull market well intact despite the recent correction, according to crypto analysts who call the May 2021 crypto crash. We're talking about Dave the wave. We'll also be discussing Bitcoin payments app strike expanding to more than 65 countries from three, including Mexico, as well as Jack Mallers discussing the Bitcoin price beating hyperinflation and soaring to a million dollars plus per coin. All this plus so much more in today's show.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
"brian armstrong" Discussed on CoinDesk Podcast Network
"This episode of The Hash is sponsored by PayPal. This is The Hash podcast. Stay informed with the latest on Bitcoin, ETH, the metaverse, Web3 and more. All on The Hash for your ears. You're listening to the CoinDesk podcast network. Hey there, welcome to The Hash here on CoinDesk TV and the CoinDesk podcast network. I'm Zach Seward. We got Jensen Asse and Adam Levine on the show today. It's a Friday. Bitcoin is getting the party started early, hitting the 12 month high for the price of BTC, I guess on strong institutional interest with all these Bitcoin ETF applications being submitted. But hey, who knows? The orange coin does mysterious things, but again, it's up to the highest it's been in a year north of thirty one thousand dollars as we speak. All right. I'm going to toss it to Jen. You got the first story. Not Bitcoin related, unfortunately, but an interesting detail in the FTX Alameda saga. What do you got? Not Bitcoin related, but I am wearing an orange shirt, coincidentally, for the orange coin as we hit this milestone. So just like a great way to start off the Friday show. Alameda Research, the hedge fund, as we know, the hedge fund arm of FTX is looking for the return of seven hundred million dollars that Sam Bankman afraid appears to have paid to super networkers who had access to politicians, billionaires and reality stars. This is according to FTX's new management and outlined in a court filing yesterday. Adam, I'm going to toss this one off to you. What do you make of this? There's apparently two people here who received in total seven hundred million dollars. And FTX's new management wants that money back. I think it's an interesting story. I think, again, when you look at this story, there's a bunch of different facets of it. And one of the things that's been most interesting about FTX, of course, is the allegations of essentially political manipulation and bribery and stuff like that. Some of those charges, especially on the Chinese side, got thrown out for the current trial. But this is a reminder that there was hinky stuff going on there. And when I first saw this story, my reaction was, how many people was this going to? Because if you're talking about like, let's say this was five million dollars and there was like 40 people, $250 ,000 each, that's something that you could explain and justify about access. If you've got a ton of money, then maybe that doesn't matter. But when you're talking about $700 million going to just two people in what is effectively a venture fund, but where the notes, as far as we've seen from what's been released at this point, suggest that there really wasn't much of a plan here. My first reaction to it was, that's nice work if you can get it. Now, I think we've had a kind of denial from the folks who actually received this ones where they're like, oh, we thought everything was above board, but what was it that was above board? What was the point? I'm super curious and I don't understand that at all. Jen? I just want to read the statement that was provided to Coindesk. Elizabeth Ashford, a spokesperson for K5 Global, that's the company founded by these two people we're talking about, they said, K5 was under the impression, like many others, that Sam long -term and mutually beneficial business relationship. Our belief is that the lawsuit is without merit. I think this comes back to, you know, there are all of these people who we would hope would do due diligence to enter into a relationship of this magnitude. And it seems that this is just yet another company that maybe has relied on that trust that was built by all of the high profile relationships that were surrounding FTX. Zach, what do you think? Well, they also built the trust, though, like that's the whole point, right? They provide access to the celebrities and politicians and others who really put a lot of shine on the FTX brand, right? I think this is not mentioned in the piece, but I would imagine this connection is probably why Bill Clinton and Tony Blair spoke at FTX's conference in the Bahamas in April 2022, right? So we started to see sort of how this gets done, how FTX, which started as a pretty small brand, rose to the absolute heights of celebrity with Tom Brady, with Steph Curry, with Gisele, with Bill Clinton, with Tony Blair, the list goes on and on. And I guess these people really were super connected because it worked. But it is funny to see that statement because really what it was all about was getting that sort of celebrity endorsement appeal to establish the trust on the customer side and for subsequent marks, if we want to believe the word here, that they were also duped. So it is funny to kind of get a picture of how that machinery operated, because it is curious that FTX was able to get so many people on board so quickly. They were the hottest thing in town. They had their name everywhere. Everyone was vouching for them. And I think it probably came down to the work of these two folks who were being handsomely compensated for that work, at least according to these documents. So yeah, I'll toss it back to you, Adam. Adam Chapnick I mean, I would just say that, like, to the extent that that's true, I think it's an even more damning indictment of how business was done at FTX, which is to say that they didn't have the money to be doing this, right? And it's not, again, like, you look at somebody like Tom Brady, right? Tom Brady might have been introduced to them through this, but Tom Brady had a deal all by himself. So the deal did not necessarily come from this $700 million. This $700 million was going to this firm that was then doing these introductions. I'm just saying, like, that's a staggering amount of money. Again, you look at the allegations that are going on right now around the current U .S. president, and the corruption allegations there center around about $14 million worth of alleged payments over the course of a number of years. So, again, like $700 million is a staggering amount of money for this type of work. And I just I can't get past that number. And I can't understand. I mean, maybe they just are still holding on to a lot of it and they didn't spend it all and there is money to be clawed back there. But again, that's just bizarre to me. Jen, any final thoughts? Yeah, you have to wonder how the relationships of these two super connectors have maybe deteriorated over this news, right? We've heard about a few different class action lawsuits that are going after some of the celebrities involved in FTX. And when we talk about celebrities and influencers who start supporting different crypto projects, I think what we've heard through different interviews we've done with celebrities involved in different things and some conversations I heard at Consensus, it's largely through word of mouth, right? You trust a group of people in the industry, people who you've probably worked with before, and those people get involved in a project and then they tell you like, hey, I'm doing this thing. Come and do this with me. That's that's how the entertainment industry works. And you have to wonder how this deterioration of trust kind of trickled through the industry just from this one case. I think also just the big, huge price tag again, this is the table stakes, right? This is the ante to paying for the additional things that came down the line. But I kept thinking when I was reading this piece about Brady Dale, former Coindesk reporter now at Axios, who wrote the first book to be published on SPF and his downfall. I know he says in that book that like SPF became very attached to the idea of celebrity and being seen as famous and being seen as hobnobbing with the elite of the elite. And I think this lends a really poignant detail to how much he was willing to pay to cement that image in the public sphere. So the idea that this is, again, the ante for subsequent investments in bolstering those celebrity bona fides is really just, yeah, it's a striking number for sure. You know, before we move on, what's crazy is that this could have worked, right? Like this was working until the sudden actual downfall, again, catalyzed by Coindesk reporting that, again, kind of collapsed the scheme as it was. But this could have worked, and it was working in lots of ways, which is just wild to think about. Anyways, moving on, next up, banning crypto may not be the best way of mitigating the associated risks, the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, said in a new blog post out yesterday. That position is in pretty stark contrast to statements from the supernational organization made just months ago, purportedly because a full ban would also prevent countries gaining what the IMF describes as the associated benefits. Quote, while a few countries have completely banned crypto assets given their risks, this approach may not be effective in the long run, the IMF said, continuing, the region should instead focus on addressing the drivers of crypto demand, including citizens' unmet digital payment needs, improving transparency by recording crypto asset transactions in national statistics, end quote. Power players like the IMF increasingly can't ignore the interest from nations who do not benefit from the dollar reserve system as it exists today, but can essentially take no except position to assume that it's a
Bloomberg Radio New York
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Was one of the main drivers of the crypto exchange. Last Yesterday, the regulator charged Coinbase with violating securities rules. Armstrong passed SEC meetings at a Bloomberg Invest conference here in New York. They started to with come to us more questions about the business. So we were very forthcoming. We met with them probably 30 times over the last year and we started to kind of ask them for feedback and we said, you know, we would like there to be a robust market in the US to trade crypto of securities the thousand plus assets we've reviewed today. We've rejected 90 % of them. The we trade, we believe are commodities. What feedback do you have for this for us? How can we come into register? How can we work work together. And unfortunately, we were met with silence. That is Brian Armstrong, the CEO of Coinbase. He went on to say to that Coinbase has not seen any risk of losing its customers or banking partners since the SEC did file that lawsuit and he went on to say as well that business will be as usual well, at least in the near term. The new planned marriage between the PGA Tour and live golf could soon run run into some serious antitrust issues. More from Bloomberg's Denise Pellegrini. We're hearing officials this view tie up as a brazen play loaded with red flags and their plan to join with the European Golf Circuit DP World Tour and combined their golf related businesses and rights into a new commercial entity is already raising serious concerns from US and European antitrust going litigation antitrust between PGA and live. The final terms of the deal, including finances, are looking to coordinate key aspects of their business on which they currently compete, according to sources. And that means petition enforcers are likely to want to know how the proposed partnership will impact players, sponsorships and also broadcast rights. That is Bloomberg's Denise Pellegrini. We check markets throughout the day here on Bloomberg News. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. In 120 countries this is Bloomberg. Wake up now hiring one to earn more money for your hard work. Virginia Health Insurance Agency is now hiring sales advisors who want to earn maximum dollars with untapped commissions. Potential applicants will need to get a life and health insurance license. Start earning an email now. Careers at Virginia HealthInsuranceAgency .com. And text. Text and eat. Text and meet with a friend you haven't seen in forever.
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the crack an app, a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned kraken pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs. Integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 360 five client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTs out there, the brand new kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023, but really, the best part about bankless premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bank list team in the inner circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the analyst degen pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At bank list, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities and we're super excited to ship what we are calling bankless two soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to bank list premium, it's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. The phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and polygon. If you haven't used phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet. And we'll be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience, pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi chain wallet. But it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human readable format, with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom app slash wait list to get access in late February. Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver lining there and what did you learn? Yeah, I'd say 2022 is definitely pretty bad one. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the mount gox era where similarly the market came down, a bunch of people lost some money. The only thing it seemed like people were asking me about or talking about for 6 months or 12 months was mount gox mount gox mount gox. And we had to kind of go the industry was so tiny back then. But same thing, we had to go out there and educate the world and let people know that it's not all bad actors. There's a lot of good people trying to build in this space, even if the headlines are disproportionately about the bad actors. And then a funny thing happened, I think, about 12 months went by, and then people sort of moved on. And they stopped asking me about it as much. I don't know. It took maybe 12, 18 months, something like that. And it was just kind of gone from people's memories. So I'm hoping something similar happens here. We've got a little ways now before we get to that 12, 18 month Mark. But that's what a lot of my time has been focused on is getting out there and trying to educate the world, remind people that this industry has a lot of great companies and people in it. And we're not going to let the actions of any one bad actor called the entire industry into question. What were some of the learnings from 2022 in your mind every year presents a new set of learnings, what were some of the lessons you took coming out of that year? Yeah, well, I mean, so one was that I think we grew too quickly at coinbase. In the up markets, I always try to remember that it's never as good as it seems, right? And then down markets, you have to remember it's never as bad as it seems. So I think I probably got a little too caught up in the moment just like everybody and it felt like we had a line of customers out the door, our biggest challenge was really just how do we even onboard all of the people trying to use our products. And so it was easy to just keep adding more and more headcount. And I think the culture of a company is really strained if you sort of more than double headcount in a year. It's got too many new people who are training the new people who just joined and the culture gets kind of diffused decision making is unclear who's in charge of what communication breaks down too much game of telephone and so we definitely exceeded that a bit in that time frame 2021, 2022, early 2022. I think we hit almost three X or something like that over a 12 month period. So that was probably too much. I would have changed that in hindsight. But I think the big things we got right, which was we always were a company that focused on compliance and trust and security. And we invested a lot in doing those things the right way. And that's not always the fastest way. And I have to say it was definitely very difficult in those moments where we saw companies like FTX come on the scenes and just rock it up and he was kind of speedrunning the elite conferences of society and all the introductions and everything. And part of me was thinking, man, I've been working on this for ten years. This guy just kind of is moving so fast after two or three years. Like, how's he doing it? Maybe I'm the one who's got it wrong. And it turned out he was kind of doping, I guess, if you want to make that analogy and using customer money unethical ways. So that wasn't great. And also maybe literally doping. That too, yeah, the myth probably didn't hurt. So I think the major lesson I learned from that is, yes, as good as it seems, like if it seems too good to be true, maybe there is something that probably is. And keep focusing on what we know best. I mean, of course, we want to move fast. We want to execute, but we're also not trying to get rich quick or cut any corners. We're trying to make sure this company is around for a generations to come and we can serve as this really important foundation to help people get Fiat into crypto, but then also to use crypto and all these different ways and we can talk about how we're decentralizing more of coinbase over time. Some people have incorrectly felt like, oh, coinbase is like just now pivoting to compliance like, no, even ten years ago when I founded the company, I realized, okay, we're going to have to go get money transmission license. And have compliance teams. And the centralized actors of crypto are going to be regulated. They should be regulated exchanges custodians and stuff. And so that's how we're going to build trust in this industry and make sure it stands the test of time. I like the rest of the industry, definitely want to move on from Sam bacon tree to FTX, but I just got to ask a couple more questions on this front. As FTX was peaking and everyone was just like loving the product and Sam bacon freed was a hero among many different camps outside of crypto. Did it make you question yourself? I was like, wow, FTX arose so fast. What were you thinking about like Sam beckman free? Was he like this insane operator or did you start to get like your hair stand up on end? Because something felt wrong. What was your intuition as this man seemed to be invincible? Yeah, well, all of us are driven by ego to some degree. And I'm no exception to that, right? And I think I always try to pay attention to where is my ego getting involved and where am I using good judgment? And so I think there were definitely there were moments where I was like, man, why is this guy getting so much attention so fast? Where, you know, we've been trying to work on this for ten years. And it did feel a little unfair or something like that. But then I would always, the thing that I think actually caused me to be a little bit blind to maybe it was too good to be true, is I always felt like that's just your ego talking and get back to work. You can't ever compare yourself to other people. Just try to do the best that you can. And so I basically I chalked up a lot of their success to just, I don't know, I wasn't going to let my ego get involved. Now in hindsight, maybe I should have looked more closely at some of those things. And I have to tell you, if I ever see anybody again who moves that quickly and suddenly is on the cover of all these magazines with people proclaiming them as the next Warren Buffett, it's definitely going to cause me to be more skeptical. One of the differences. I really appreciate just the wisdom that you have Brian from just being in crypto throughout all of the years and understanding just the machinations of the crypto cycle and what it will do to you. Like the bottom is always not as bad as it seems. The top is always too good to be true, et cetera. But with mount gox, coinbase was a very young company during the mount gox area. I think something just like two years old at the time. There weren't a lot of other structures to get torn down as a result of mount gox to fall down. Fast forward to where we are in 2022. They're like, there's a lot of structures in crypto. There's a lot of big businesses. And now all of a sudden, that's the big difference that I see is that when FTX falls, now we've got much more of a mess to clean up. With mount gox, like we could kind of just like forget about it and was like, we'll just wait this one out. This one doesn't seem like we can really weigh this one out. This means we have to actually fight against the regulatory backlash that Sam bankman freed has left us. So how has the FTX collapse in Sam bankman fried collapse impacted coinbase as a business? Like how have you guys had to deal with this? What's the backlash that you guys have gotten? Yeah, well, I think you're right. We're not going to just sit back and wait for the wins to blow this over. There's a lot that is in our control and we don't want to feel like we're victims or help us. I think luckily, coinbase just I'll talk about there's different orders of ways to look at this. So the first order effect was literally like, what's the counterparty risk? There was contagion. There was others in the other dominoes that fell as a result of FTX, obviously going down. And one thing I have this was sort of a learning going back to your prior question was that the importance of risk controls inside these companies is incredibly important. And we had an incredible finance team and CFO and leader who built a risk function within coinbase over the prior years. And they were essentially underwriting every counterparty where we were storing funds with various things to operate our business. And at some point here, during the crisis, we were actually underwriting some of these things daily. Even bank partners and things like that as you saw with silvergate having issues. So that's kind of taking some of the best practices, frankly, from traditional financial services. And for the centralized actors in crypto, I think some of those skill sets are actually really, really needed. So that was one of the first things. But I guess just zooming out, what can we do? How can we actually proactively sort of counteract this narrative that's developing out there, which is that crypto is something that needs all this regulatory crackdown. Well, I think one thing is to say, look, we agree with it, right? Like the centralized actors, again, they should be brought within the regulatory perimeter. There's a misconception. I'm very surprised to hear this, but occasionally I'll interact with people in D.C. who still, to this day, believe that everybody in crypto essentially doesn't believe in regulation, they don't want to do KYC AML. They're all trying to skirt the rules. And from where I'm sitting, it's almost like impossible to believe how could this be true, because for ten years, we've been working on this, and we've been saying this. But you just have to remember, these people are busy, they're not in crypto every day. They only hear things anecdotally through their friends or through the media. They're living in a little bit of an echo chamber sometimes. And so just even repeating the very basic messages like that in on the east coast or in D.C. when we interact with folks, you can't underestimate the power of that. Now I think going beyond that is just showing up and having these meetings and building the relationships and I'm spending more and more of my time on the east coast. The other big thing I think we can do is we need to activate our user base in crypto. And there's some really great polling data that's come out recently which shows that about 80% of Americans feel the financial system doesn't work for them. And it's too slow. The fees are too high. It doesn't serve everybody equally, and so there's a real interest in updating the financial system, if you will. And I really believe crypto is the most important technology that can update the financial system. So you've seen in coinbase's messaging externally internally. We've started to go out there and tell that story a little bit more. That's a message that I've seen is resonating with people who are kind of crypto skeptics or other on the fence. They're thinking about crypto as being a financial product, and they're like, this is some unregulated financial product. And the point we're sort of making to them is, no, this is a technology. It's a technology that can improve financial services in a variety of ways. But it's not itself a financial product per se. And so another thing we've been doing is we put out actually this post crypto four 35. People can Google it. What we're trying to do is get the community of crypto holders out there organized and say, let's elect leaders in the United States who believe in crypto, they want to make sure that this technology is the innovation potential of it is protected, but it's also we protect against bad actors. And there's a sensible regulation for centralized players in crypto that could help make that happen. I'd encourage anybody to go Google that crypto four 35. And it's simple things. It's like, let's get donations, even like a hundred bucks from a million crypto holders or something, or show up at town halls, ask these questions. These kinds of things can really move the needle. And if we elect representatives in a democracy who believe in our values around economic freedom, then all of these regulatory challenges are going to end up in a good place eventually. Well, let's talk about this. So the analogy we've used at bank list like it really felt like this in 2022 is some of the scammers in the frauds of 2022 had this gigantic house party, right? And they destroyed everything. The furnitures torn up like plates are smashed, you know, biggest craziest house party match, there's a fire, like the cops show up, it's a complete mess. And now they're gone, but we are left to clean up after this party. And I want to get a sense of the magnitude of backlash that you guys might be seeing in D.C. and we as a crypto industry now face. It feels like everything got a lot more hostile. Sometime after November of 2022. We've talked about things like operation choke point, which is this some strategy to kind of choke out the banking sector in the U.S.. There's increased scrutiny on this industry, and it feels worse than it's ever been, at least in the U.S.. I think in Europe and other places, people are still sort of moving forward. Can you kind of just describe what it's like? Are you feeling that too? And if so, do we deserve this? Is this something that we caused? Well, as an industry, I do think we deserve a little more scrutiny. I mean, that's probably fair to say, but yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of people who are only tangentially aware of crypto. And there's also, frankly, a lot of people who, a lot of what they think comes from media headlines. In the crypto, that's actually increasingly becoming sort of an unpopular, uncommon thing. Most people have sort of realized that each media organization has sort of their own objectives. They're trying to push in the world and they're almost more like lobbying organizations in a way. And so they're getting their news from other things. But that's not true of the majority of people, especially I'd say people over 40 or 50 in the world, they grew up in a world where traditional media was like the main thing that they consume. So it's very simple. It's like if they see bad headlines, they start to get more skeptical if they see positive headlines. They start to get more optimistic. And so that's not really fair. It may not even be accurate, but it is what's happening. And so as we get the media sort of our messaging out there, we need to make sure we're using new media, channels like podcasts, like bankless YouTube, everything, Twitter, blogs, but also engaging with traditional media channels because some of these gatekeepers policymakers, et cetera, they're a different generation. They're an older generation. And they are still using some of these traditional media channels. And it's very interesting to sort of get a sense of what kind of messaging really works with those folks, right? For the crypto native audience, probably like a lot of your listeners, this messaging about economic freedom and decentralization and technical audiences, especially that's the kind of thing that resonates the most with me when I read the Bitcoin white paper in the back in the day. For these audiences that are older, they're non technical, they're not really in crypto necessarily for the same religion or something like that that we are. But they resonate with these messages around the financial system needs to be updated. It's slow. It's archaic. The code is from 40 years ago, like the laws are from a hundred years ago. And that message is actually pretty widely agreed by 80% of Americans. I'd say for Democrats, they're interested in equality of opportunity. They want to make sure people get fair access to financial services. That resonates with them. I think for Republicans, there's often an argument just about, actually, economic freedom does resonate with Republicans and also just sort of like in a pro business like national security type argument, they're saying, hey, this is a major tech trend. We need to have this industry built in America. It can't just be pushed offshore. Just like what happened with semiconductors and 5G, and now with AI, they're like, this is critical infrastructure to be built in America. We need to support our American companies. So you have to sort of tailor the message to the right audience. But this updating the financial system argument is the one we've found that works best in the broadest audience. That's great. Yeah, we'll come back to this, but I think there's also huge wins for the U.S. in terms of exporting its monetary policy and exporting the dollar out of stablecoin, but we'll get there. One question that because you've spent some time on the east coast in D.C. now, one question that's I'm still perplexed about is how in the world this is our last question on SPF I promise. But how in the world did this guy get such influence in America's halls of power? It was like reports of like one third of Congress had received political donations from SPF. He clearly had the attention in D.C.. How is this game played? And because if it is just kind of a money game, that doesn't actually not make me very optimistic on the democratic process and the systems of control and power in the U.S.. But you've seen this from behind the scenes. How is this game played Brian? How did this guy get so much influence in our halls of power? You know, I've asked myself that same question. And frankly, it's funny. I feel like I show up and I'm pretty easy to get along with, people, once they meet me, they're like, okay, this guy's clearly he's trying to do the right thing and maybe I agree with him or disagree with him on some stuff, but he's just like a legitimate person trying to build something in the world. You know, I'm an engineer by background. I sort of just, if people ask me a question, I'll sometimes all I know how to do is say the answer. I think that SPF, so a few things. One, I think you had an incredible passion for policy, actually. He was spending an ordinary amount of time in D.C.. I think that he also, the shibboleth, right? Which was the quote that he put out there. He basically started saying what they wanted to hear. Now it wasn't really fully authentic. And so that ultimately blew up in his face. But he basically was framing these things in a way that they was music to their ears for some of them, I guess maybe it more on the Democrat side. And I think they got duped by it. And it wasn't even authentic. If you look at some of his texts that got released and everything like that. So was that an effective strategy in the short term? Maybe, but it ultimately totally blew up in his face because you just can't be inauthentic with people. That's one of my learnings. If I disagree with somebody, I'd rather, you know, I'm not going to be a jerk to their face or something, but I'm going to say what I actually think in a polite respectful way, because if I say something I don't believe, they might leave the meeting feeling good, but then a week later or a year later, when they realize I didn't even believe it, they're just going to feel even worse. And so in a way, I don't think I'm not sophisticated in how I play the game. I am actually playing a very simple game, which is just I show up and I say what I think. But I think that's actually the right solution, long term, that it's not a game at all. I'm just trying to be an authentic person. By the way, I don't think donating money, I don't know how much his donations move the needle. It's definitely raises some big questions and I hope some of that money gets clawed back and one way or another. I don't think donations are entirely bad. I think the crypto community actually, if you look at the banking lobby or the oil and gas or any of these other industries, the entertainment industry or whatever. They actually do put a lot of dollars behind their lobbying efforts in D.C. and it's not all just companies doing it, by the way. It's the individuals. It's people. So there's something like 50 million people in the United States now who've used crypto. I mean, imagine if we even just got 1 million of those people, one 50th to become a sort of politically active or don't eat a hundred bucks to the right candidate in their jurisdiction. And in every congressional race, when there's an open seat or whatever, there's going to be somebody who's more crypto positive and someone who's not. And we've actually started building some of this stuff into the coinbase app. So people can go look up in their area. What's the rating? A through F of the people in your area. I think if we can get just a million people in the crypto space politically active, show up to the town halls, donate the money tweet about it and build this movement. It's going to be incredibly powerful. D.C. does not yet, I don't think they don't yet respect the crypto lobby. They don't realize how big of a movement this is in the United States. It's bigger than some of the biggest ones you've thought about. Some of the most powerful lobbies. We actually have more people in crypto. And they don't realize that yet. Oh my God, where do I sign? Where do I send money? Seriously, if this could be organized and aggregated and effective way and maybe we'll talk about some ways coinbase is doing that. We would be happy to be a megaphone for this. This is for us, this is about, it's about crypto, but I also live in the U.S., so to David, we care very much about the U.S. protecting these digital liberties in the 21st century. And so I think we would have a large collective of not only small donations from a large motivated population, but the idea of like a crypto kind of movement and a lobby group that is kind of bottom up from the people. But like your comment on the long game, you still think it's worth playing Brian. You still think in the long run, your strategy of just telling people what you think, what you believe, the truth, like reminding them, is an effective strategy. That this is not a dead end, because I think there is a certain segment of listeners out there bankless listeners who they've just given up on the political process, they just given up on kind of regulators. They've just even given up on voting, they will not show up to town halls because they no longer believe that the process works. And they'll even point to things like 2022, SPF, right? He was pay to play. It was just, you know, lining politicians with money. And like the long game you're playing sounds nice, Brian, but it doesn't work. It's not effective. These politicians are corrupt. You see more optimistic than that. Can you give us the case for why we should be optimistic? Yeah, I mean, look, I understand why people are cynical about it. It raised a whole bunch of questions about the process and does it work. And if not where there's a really great two by two graph that I love that shows up sometimes I think it's from Edelman, but it shows sort of trustworthiness and competence, I believe, and it sort of compares different government and NGOs and for profit businesses. And for a while, there was sort of nobody in the top right quadrant who was both trusted and competent. And slowly, people have started to view and government's not there, by the way. It's viewed as not trust at an incompetent. If you believe this survey, business is sort of increasingly moving into that top right quadrant, and if you look at their recent data and I think business basically for profit businesses have a role to play as champions in this space of helping organize individuals helping craft policy. We don't want everyone to take credit or inject ourselves into the democratic process because I think there's a line you can cross just one private company. But if you're talking about the individual citizens, the voters, I'm talking about there's 50 million people who've used crypto in the United States. I'm talking about the people here. And in a democracy, the government works for the people, not the other way around, right? So democracy, it's slow, I think that that's probably the biggest frustration people have is they're saying, this is so obvious. All my Friends are using this. I'm on Twitter every day. How do people in government not get this? And then in D.C., they're sitting in a different world. There's an age generation gap. There's the type of media that they're consuming gap. Now, but the good thing about America, America has many flaws and it's slow and bureaucratic in many ways, and you can be wrong for a long time. But what eventually ends up happening is that sentiments shift in the U.S. and a new generation of people emerges, they get people who run for office, the electorate, the voters change. And basically America has this kind of self healing system. Imagine how bad it would be if we got someone anti crypto, and they were dictator for life or something. At least we can just wait four years or 8 years in the worst case or something. And get a new crop of people in, right? So that's very slow by technology standards. But in terms of governments and the rest of the world, it's not bad. And so crypto is going to outlast any administration, any official who has the wrong idea or whatever. And so we can go through a good periods and bad periods. As long as we keep building and then the people who are engaged enough on the civic side, who want to do it, that's great. The people who just want to build, that's also great. We need both. I think we'll get there eventually. I want to circle back around to the original question that Ryan asked, which was how did Sam penguin freed get so involved with politics? And Brian, your answer was that he was really playing the game. He was playing the game of politics, and he just buy it in nature of what happens when you intentionally play that game for playing the game's sake. That's what happens. You just find, you find your way in. And I really appreciate your answer of you said that you're just a naturally born engineer. You see a problem in your state and answer. And so what I'm saying is as someone who's known you, and we've had an episode and a half of a podcast now. And I've also thoroughly enjoyed the coinbase documentary as well. First principles type guy, a problem mindset type guy. And it sounds to me like you're thinking of ways at coinbase to funnel those people who care about crypto and crypto values into being able to connect to the politicians that will resonate with those values. And as my co host likes to say, if you adopt crypto protocols, you adopt crypto values. And it sounds to me like you're addressing the same sort of engineer mindset that you did to build coinbase to also allow for people younger generations because I'm assuming the average coinbase user is a younger generation customer to connect to the politicians and question that resonate with our values. And is my intuition criteria is perhaps coinbase is a taking an engineering type approach to solving our regulatory ires. That's a fair way of putting it. Yeah, I hadn't actually thought about it that way myself. But you're right. I mean, I'm just trying to figure out what is the best way we can get the right outcome. And for me, the right outcome is more economic freedom. How do we make sure that this technology a billion people are more can benefit from it? And if there's a lot of misunderstanding and mischaracterization about it out there, how do we correct that? And I think there's many ways to accomplish that, but one of them is just, we have a ton of people in the U.S. and in every country who are now using this, they can see the benefit of it. And their voters. And so let's have them get organized and make sure that politicians understand that if they want the crypto vote, they're going to have to understand how to create better policies here. Right. And you don't just have the people, but you also have the money by definition. And so connect all the pieces of the puzzle here. There's representatives that are good or bad as it relates to crypto. There's perhaps interested voters that are also coinbase users. And by a nature that coinbase users, they also have money on coinbase. Again, taking this from an engineering mindset, what does this look like when you put all these pieces together? Like there's a feature in an app somewhere, right? In coinbase where we can look at the politicians and is there like a send money? Yeah, is there a send money or like, I don't know, send likes or something? Show support. Yeah, so I mean, there's a product grid in the top left of the coinbase app, and you can go in there and look up the policy data. But by the way, there's a bunch of election rules around this too. We have to be careful about exactly requesting somebody, don't eat specifically this candidate right in the app. And we have lots of lawyers looking into this. But certainly just making information available to people and things like that is a good first step. And that's why we helped create this crypto four 35. The name, by the way, is referencing 435 congressional districts in the U.S.. So that's a great place through a third party. People can start. And I think hopefully more and more apps in crypto people's Twitter accounts, like podcasts, like this one, you know, we can get the word out and then if we organize the crypto lobby or the crypto user base, I think that it'll be a very powerful feature over time. So really quick. So we get an action item here. Coinbase is four 35 program. What can people go do right now in this? And how can they help get exercise their voice here if they live in the U.S.? Yeah, so it's very early days today, but first thing you can do is just Google it crypto four 35 and go sign up. And then you'll basically start to get more information over time. So it'll be about key races that are coming up. You might see a through F type scores of different candidates based on their public statements of what they've said about crypto in the past. And then they're hopefully should be opportunities for people who want to donate to those candidates if they want to show up to town halls if they want to call their congressmen. When I'm in D.C., I actually ask people about this sometimes, like I'll be in these talking with the staffers before a meeting with a senator or something like that. And I'm like, do you guys actually yeah, do they? Tally up like these phone calls that come in. I'm just curious. And they're like, yeah, actually we do, it's like a big part of their job. And they sort of send aggregate statistics to the senator, oftentimes, and they'll say, all right, this week, we got 30% of calls were about X, that seems to be like the top issue on people's minds. They're like, okay, what are we doing about that? And it's not like it's going to change their mind overnight or something like that. But it's definitely a way for them to get on people's radar. So all these things, yeah, donating, calling, tweeting, showing up in person, and then ultimately devoting is going to be what moves the needle into democracy. Man, I just love the fact that the whole point of crypto, the theme of what we talk about here is coordination technology. This is good coordination technology. And that's really all I'm seeing here is lucky enough, we have a cohort of a guessing that the crypto person is most likely to be a single issue voter. And they're going to vote about crypto. Probably at a higher percentage than most other people, at least for others like single issue voter issues. And there have money, right? And so the whole coordination behind this thing. You really just got to give a hand to the fact that we're built on coordination tools and we know how to coordinate when the time comes. So tip of the hat for building the system. Yeah, I mean it's a good chance to try out our tools here, right? We should probably do this with a Dow or something like that. That would be great. I could imagine people getting NFT type badges around being a crypto advocate and what does that mean? You could imagine, you know, why don't we raise more money or giving out NFTs for certain politicians to raise? There's a lot of stuff we could do that's more
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"Where it needs to be into the long term. And I think we're really fortunate as an industry that we got Brian in the industry in 2012 so early. And to be an exemplar of these characteristics, to be a really good crypto person and a really good crypto builder. I mean, I just have a ton of thanks for Brian. And everything that he's done. And so I think you'll also be listening to that in this episode. Yeah, and also in the debrief because David, one of the things I want to discuss with you during the debrief is how not a diva, Brian, Armstrong actually is. Which is actually pretty satisfying coming out of all of the egomaniac maniacal founders and scam artists of 2022. So a reminder for bankless citizens, you have access to the debrief, which is our episode after the episode that David and I record with our thoughts on what we just heard and the conversation we just had if you would like to upgrade to become a citizen of the bankless nation. There's a link in the show notes where you can do this. Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. 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Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. 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Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver lining there and what did you learn? Yeah, I'd say 2022 is definitely pretty bad one. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the mount gox era where similarly the market came down, a bunch of people lost some money. The only thing it seemed like people were asking me about or talking about for 6 months or 12 months was mount gox mount gox mount gox. And we had to kind of go the industry was so tiny back then. But same thing, we had to go out there and educate the world and let people know that it's not all bad actors. There's a lot of good people trying to build in this space, even if the headlines are disproportionately about the bad actors. And then a funny thing happened, I think, about 12 months went by, and then people sort of moved on. And they stopped asking me about it as much. I don't know. It took maybe 12, 18 months, something like that. And it was just kind of gone from people's memories. So I'm hoping something similar happens here. We've got a little ways now before we get to that 12, 18 month Mark. But that's what a lot of my time has been focused on is getting out there and trying to educate the world, remind people that this industry has a lot of great companies and people in it. And we're not going to let the actions of any one bad actor called the entire industry into question. What were some of the learnings from 2022 in your mind every year presents a new set of learnings, what were some of the
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"Crypto came and then the low lows of crypto came. And then that cycle repeated like three or four more times until where we are today. Brian has been with his builders hat on, focusing on making the best product possible at coinbase. And so just zooming out and viewing Brian as a builder who is able to make it through the waves of the market cycles and wake it through this cams of mount gox to FTX and yet be unfazed and just put on the hat of responsibility for stewarding this industry into where it needs to be into the long term. And I think we're really fortunate as an industry that we got Brian in the industry in 2012 so early. And to be an exemplar of these characteristics, to be a really good crypto person and a really good crypto builder. I mean, I just have a ton of thanks for Brian. And everything that he's done. And so I think you'll also be listening to that in this episode. Yeah, and also in the debrief because David, one of the things I want to discuss with you during the debrief is how not a diva, Brian, Armstrong actually is. Which is actually pretty satisfying coming out of all of the egomaniac maniacal founders and scam artists of 2022. So a reminder for bankless citizens, you have access to the debrief, which is our episode after the episode that David and I record with our thoughts on what we just heard and the conversation we just had if you would like to upgrade to become a citizen of the bankless nation. There's a link in the show notes where you can do this. Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the crack an app, a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned kraken pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs. Integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 360 five client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTs out there, the brand new kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023, but really, the best part about bankless premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bank list team in the inner circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the analyst degen pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At bank list, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities and we're super excited to ship what we are calling bankless two soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to bank list premium, it's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. The phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and polygon. If you haven't used phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet. And we'll be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience, pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi chain wallet. But it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human readable format, with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom app slash wait list to get access in late February. Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver lining there and what did you learn? Yeah, I'd say 2022 is definitely pretty bad one. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of the mount gox era where similarly the market came down, a bunch of people lost some money. The only thing it seemed like people were asking me about or talking about for 6 months or 12 months was mount gox mount gox mount gox. And we had to kind of go the industry was so tiny back then. But same thing, we had to go out there and educate the world and let people know that it's not all bad actors. There's a lot of good people trying to build in this space, even if the headlines are disproportionately about the bad actors. And then a funny thing happened, I think, about 12 months went by, and then people sort of moved on. And they stopped asking me about it as much. I don't know. It took maybe 12, 18 months, something like that. And it was just kind of gone from people's memories. So I'm hoping something similar happens here. We've got a little ways now before we get to that 12, 18 month Mark. But that's what a lot of my time has been focused on is getting out there and trying to educate the world, remind people that this industry has a lot of great companies and people in it. And we're not going to let the actions of any one bad actor called the entire industry into question. What were some of the learnings from 2022 in your mind every year presents a new set of learnings, what were some of the
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"We're here to help you become more bankless. Everything you wanted to know from the coinbase cofounder and CEO Brian Armstrong, including his reflections on 2022 and his outlook on crypto moving forward. That is contained in the conversation that you're about to hear. A few benefits, some takeaways for you. An index of things we talk about. Number one, Brian's reflections on 2022. How bad of a year was it? What was learned? Number two, the regulatory situation that faces America right now in crypto. How did SPF infiltrate our halls of power we ask them that question and how do we undo the damage and win over our legislators? Number three, we talk about base chain. This is the new layer two chain that coinbase just locked in the absolute worst regulatory environment we've ever seen. Why did they do this? Number four, does Wall Street even understand crypto? Do they understand coinbase? We talk about the fundamentals. And finally, number 5, we get to one of my favorite parts in this whole conversation towards the end, which is Brian's best advice for the settlers and the builders who are sticking around during this crypto winter. David, this was an exceptional episode. What should listeners pay attention to? For me, I think the thing to pay attention to is to try and listen to this episode. Viewing the force for the trees as it relates to Brian. Brian arrived on the scene in crypto 2011 and started making coinbase in 2012. And ever since then, he's been fully committed to building out coinbase laser focused as the high highs of crypto came and then the low lows of crypto came. And then that cycle repeated like three or four more times until where we are today. Brian has been with his builders hat on, focusing on making the best product possible at coinbase. And so just zooming out and viewing Brian as a builder who is able to make it through the waves of the market cycles and wake it through this cams of mount gox to FTX and yet be unfazed and just put on the hat of responsibility for stewarding this industry into where it needs to be into the long term. And I think we're really fortunate as an industry that we got Brian in the industry in 2012 so early. And to be an exemplar of these characteristics, to be a really good crypto person and a really good crypto builder. I mean, I just have a ton of thanks for Brian. And everything that he's done. And so I think you'll also be listening to that in this episode. Yeah, and also in the debrief because David, one of the things I want to discuss with you during the debrief is how not a diva, Brian, Armstrong actually is. Which is actually pretty satisfying coming out of all of the egomaniac maniacal founders and scam artists of 2022. So a reminder for bankless citizens, you have access to the debrief, which is our episode after the episode that David and I record with our thoughts on what we just heard and the conversation we just had if you would like to upgrade to become a citizen of the bankless nation. There's a link in the show notes where you can do this. Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the crack an app, a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned kraken pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs. Integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 360 five client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTs out there, the brand new kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023, but really, the best part about bankless premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bank list team in the inner circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the analyst degen pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At bank list, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities and we're super excited to ship what we are calling bankless two soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to bank list premium, it's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. The phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and polygon. If you haven't used phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet. And we'll be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience, pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi chain wallet. But it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human readable format, with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom app slash wait list to get access in late February. Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"Advice for the settlers and the builders who are sticking around during this crypto winter. David, this was an exceptional episode. What should listeners pay attention to? For me, I think the thing to pay attention to is to try and listen to this episode. Viewing the force for the trees as it relates to Brian. Brian arrived on the scene in crypto 2011 and started making coinbase in 2012. And ever since then, he's been fully committed to building out coinbase laser focused as the high highs of crypto came and then the low lows of crypto came. And then that cycle repeated like three or four more times until where we are today. Brian has been with his builders hat on, focusing on making the best product possible at coinbase. And so just zooming out and viewing Brian as a builder who is able to make it through the waves of the market cycles and wake it through this cams of mount gox to FTX and yet be unfazed and just put on the hat of responsibility for stewarding this industry into where it needs to be into the long term. And I think we're really fortunate as an industry that we got Brian in the industry in 2012 so early. And to be an exemplar of these characteristics, to be a really good crypto person and a really good crypto builder. I mean, I just have a ton of thanks for Brian. And everything that he's done. And so I think you'll also be listening to that in this episode. Yeah, and also in the debrief because David, one of the things I want to discuss with you during the debrief is how not a diva, Brian, Armstrong actually is. Which is actually pretty satisfying coming out of all of the egomaniac maniacal founders and scam artists of 2022. So a reminder for bankless citizens, you have access to the debrief, which is our episode after the episode that David and I record with our thoughts on what we just heard and the conversation we just had if you would like to upgrade to become a citizen of the bankless nation. There's a link in the show notes where you can do this. Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the crack an app, a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned kraken pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs. Integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 360 five client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTs out there, the brand new kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023, but really, the best part about bankless premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bank list team in the inner circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the analyst degen pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At bank list, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities and we're super excited to ship what we are calling bankless two soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to bank list premium, it's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. The phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and polygon. If you haven't used phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet. And we'll be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience, pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi chain wallet. But it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human readable format, with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom app slash wait list to get access in late February. Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver
Bankless
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bankless
"Our halls of power we ask them that question and how do we undo the damage and win over our legislators? Number three, we talk about base chain. This is the new layer two chain that coinbase just locked in the absolute worst regulatory environment we've ever seen. Why did they do this? Number four, does Wall Street even understand crypto? Do they understand coinbase? We talk about the fundamentals. And finally, number 5, we get to one of my favorite parts in this whole conversation towards the end, which is Brian's best advice for the settlers and the builders who are sticking around during this crypto winter. David, this was an exceptional episode. What should listeners pay attention to? For me, I think the thing to pay attention to is to try and listen to this episode. Viewing the force for the trees as it relates to Brian. Brian arrived on the scene in crypto 2011 and started making coinbase in 2012. And ever since then, he's been fully committed to building out coinbase laser focused as the high highs of crypto came and then the low lows of crypto came. And then that cycle repeated like three or four more times until where we are today. Brian has been with his builders hat on, focusing on making the best product possible at coinbase. And so just zooming out and viewing Brian as a builder who is able to make it through the waves of the market cycles and wake it through this cams of mount gox to FTX and yet be unfazed and just put on the hat of responsibility for stewarding this industry into where it needs to be into the long term. And I think we're really fortunate as an industry that we got Brian in the industry in 2012 so early. And to be an exemplar of these characteristics, to be a really good crypto person and a really good crypto builder. I mean, I just have a ton of thanks for Brian. And everything that he's done. And so I think you'll also be listening to that in this episode. Yeah, and also in the debrief because David, one of the things I want to discuss with you during the debrief is how not a diva, Brian, Armstrong actually is. Which is actually pretty satisfying coming out of all of the egomaniac maniacal founders and scam artists of 2022. So a reminder for bankless citizens, you have access to the debrief, which is our episode after the episode that David and I record with our thoughts on what we just heard and the conversation we just had if you would like to upgrade to become a citizen of the bankless nation. There's a link in the show notes where you can do this. Also, David, we joke during the episode that, hey, we should turn this episode into an NFT. Fun fact, that's actually happening. So we turn our Monday podcast into NFTs. We will be releasing this as an NFT. There's usually a launch at 3 p.m. on every Monday. So this will become an NFT for the bankless nation. I'm actually really looking forward to emailing Brian and say, hey Brian, remember that part about us turning this podcast into an NFT. Well, we would like to AirDrop you one of the 100 NFTs that we're about to make, by the way, that wasn't a joke. That happens. I don't know if it's legal will allow that, but we'll try anyway. Guys, we're going to get right to the conversation with Brian Armstrong, but before we do, we want to thank the sponsors who made this episode possible, including kraken, which is our 2023 recommended crypto exchange, go sign up, start an account now. Kraken has been a leader in the crypto industry for the last 12 years, dedicated to accelerating the global adoption of crypto, kraken puts an emphasis on security, transparency, and client support, which is why over 9 million clients have come to love kraken's products. Whether you're a beginner or a pro, the kraken UX is simple, intuitive, and frictionless, making the crack an app, a great place for all to get involved and learn about crypto. For those with experience, the redesigned kraken pro app and web experience is completely customizable to your trading needs. Integrating key trading features into one seamless interface. Kraken has a 24/7 360 five client support team that is globally recognized. Kraken support is available wherever, whenever you need them, by phone, chat or email. And for all of you NFTs out there, the brand new kraken NFT beta platform gives you the best NFT trading experience possible. Rarity rankings, no gas fees, and the ability to buy an NFT straight with cash. Does your crypto exchange prioritize its customers the way that kraken does? And if not, sign up with cracking at cracking dot com slash bankless. Hey pink list nation, if you're listening to this, it's because you're on the free bank list RSS feed. Did you know that there's an ad free version of bank list that comes with the bank list premium subscription? No ads, just straight to the content. But that's just one of many things that a premium subscription gets you. There's also the token report, a monthly bullish, bearish, neutral report on the hottest tokens of the month. And the regular updates from the token report go into the token Bible, your first stop shop for every token worth investigating in crypto. Bankless premium also gets you a 30% discount to the permissionless conference, which means it basically just pays for itself. There's also the AirDrop guide to make sure you don't miss a drop in 2023, but really, the best part about bankless premium is hanging out with me, Ryan, and the rest of the bank list team in the inner circle Discord, only for premium members. Want the alpha? Check out Ben the analyst degen pit, where you can ask him questions about the token report. Got a question? I've got my own Q&A room for any questions that you might have. At bank list, we have huge things planned for 2023, including a new website with login with your Ethereum address capabilities and we're super excited to ship what we are calling bankless two soon TM. So if you want extra help exploring the frontier, subscribe to bank list premium, it's under 50 cents a day and provides a wealth of knowledge and support on your journey west. I'll see you in the Discord. The phantom wallet is coming to Ethereum. The number one wallet on Solana is bringing its millions of users and beloved UX to Ethereum and polygon. If you haven't used phantom before, you've been missing out. Phantom was one of the first wallets to pioneer Solana staking inside the wallet. And we'll be offering similar staking features for Ethereum and polygon. But that's just staking. Phantom is also the best home for your NFTs. Phantom has a complete set of features to optimize your NFT experience, pin your favorites, hide your uglies, burn the spam, and also manage your NFT sale listings from inside the wallet. Phantom is of course a multi chain wallet. But it makes chain management easy, displaying your transactions in a human readable format, with automatic warnings for malicious transactions or phishing websites. Phantom has already saved over 20,000 users from getting scammed or hacked. So get on the phantom wait list and be one of the first to access the multi chain beta. There's a link in the show notes, or you can go to phantom app slash wait list to get access in late February. Bankless nation, we have Brian Armstrong on the podcast again. He is the CEO and founder of coinbase. Of course, coinbase started in 2012 as just a custodial Bitcoin wallet back then. Oh my, how far we've come. It's grown into a massively successful publicly traded company that we know today serving a lot of crypto listeners worldwide. The last time we had Brian on the podcast actually was an interesting time. It was November of 2021. What a different world it was back then versus just over a year later, the beginning of 2023. We've got a lot to talk about, including FTX, including catching up with coinbase, products including 2023. Brian, it's great to have you back on bank list. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Thanks for having me back, guys. All right, let's pick up where we left off last time, all right? It was a different world back then. 2022 was in some ways what we feel like is crypto's worst years. I don't know if you share that because I know you've been in some pretty bad years even before we got into the space. And you've seen a thing or two. But what did you learn in 2022? And what are your reflections? Do you agree that it was one of our worst years? Is there any silver
Bloomberg Radio New York
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Bloomberg Radio New York
"Are going to be speaking with coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on the regulatory and market pressures facing the crypto industry. So, you know, there are thousands, I think, of coins and tokens listed on coinbase now. More like hundreds. Hundreds. 250. I didn't flip through all the pages, but there's a lot. And you guys say that you never actually list securities. But it feels like nowadays there's so much uncertainty over, you know, you could wake up tomorrow and the SEC says this is a security or that's a security. I mean, how can you say with confidence that you don't list any securities when it feels like that's a very fluid thing at the moment? Look, the best thing for us and for the whole industry would be, here's a clear rule book. Everybody has to follow it, you know? And if the rules change, give us a new rule book, we'll follow that one, right? We've actually been requesting that. And we filed a petition with the SEC on this. People can read it on their website. And we sort of enumerated, look, these are the ways that the current securities laws don't really address some of these underlying questions in crypto. Like if there is no common enterprise or centralized entity behind this thing, who publishes the disclosures, you know? So there's questions like that. What we've done in the absence of that clarity, which again would be the best case scenario, is that we have created our own internal process to review assets. And we developed something. Anyway, it has like 70 two points in the legal analysis and kind of one area it looks at is securities law. It also looks at compliance risk, cybersecurity risk, things like that. And we've evaluated probably roughly a thousand assets through this process. About 800 of them we have rejected. And for various reasons, whether securities or compliance or cyber, about 202 150 or something like that, we've decided to list. So I guess the heart of your question is what happens if the SEC comes out and says, okay, so if they come out and they, again, we were asking for more clear rules, right? Right. So if they come out and say, we think this asset is a security. That's great. Okay, now we have clarity. And assuming it's not, it meets the legal definition. It's not going too far. We would be happy to sort of update our process in our system based on that new information. Now, ultimately, if they publish something and they say, well, we think all these assets are securities. Well, that's not really our understanding of the law. And of the third party is an external council. We've worked with. And so there is a line here where I think as an industry, and it's not just us, it sees asset issuers, which are even more primarily affected. They would have to say, okay, well, let's let a court decide that. Because, you know, we have to follow a rule of law. So does the SEC, right? And so if they put out their opinion about something, that doesn't necessarily mean it's true, it just means the court ultimately has to be the decider on that. Can you give an example, not necessarily of a specific coin, but of something that you have seen in tokens that you've rejected, that to your mind said, nope, we can not list this because this is a characteristic of a security. So there's a variety. I mean, there's many prongs of the howey test, right? And I don't want to get into an in depth legal analysis here, but we've never done a howey test episode, and so this could be it. But no, go ahead. Yeah. So there's multiple prongs there, right? I think if people are buying it primarily with this expectation of profit and there's a common enterprise and so is there something in the speaking in terms of patterns that you see within crypto projects. That when you look at it's like, no, this team, like the type of things the teams do that would say, you know what, this token is not going to be kosher for coinbase. Are there things that you see in the industry where you think teams are crossing that line into, I don't know whether it's the common enterprise aspect that preclude them from at least your judgment being safe to list. Yeah, I mean, so I'll give you a security example, but there's others in cybersecurity and others. So look, if you're legitimately just trying to raise money for your company or for some project, like an apartment complex or something like that, that is a security. That's the point of security law. There has to be an investment of money into this thing. And for, you know, in a common enterprise, with an expectation of profit based on the effort of others. So that should exist, by the way, and we want that to exist in the world. We've acquired a broker dealer license. We're dormant right now. We'd like to activate it. We're working with the SEC to hopefully make that happen. Crypto is a technology that could make cryptocurrencies could offer benefits and update the financial system and improve all kinds of things. Time to settlement and various things like that. So that's an example. If people are out there kind of really hyping these things like on YouTube and the tokenomics are sketchy and there's really low float and the insiders are selling it. These are all bad fact patterns. And those are the things we try to avoid for consumer protection. You know, there's other ways there's other reasons we may reject assets too. I mean, another example would be cybersecurity risk. So we often will evaluate the smart contracts for is there some exploit in this or there's an ability the acid issuer is not even like in a malicious thing, but an accidental thing, if they lose the key, everyone's funds could be swept or something like that. That's not secure enough, right? To meet our standards. So those are examples. Is crypto shooting itself in the foot in some respects by resisting the security designation. Is that a tacit admission that maybe there isn't a reasonable expectation of profits here? Loaded questions. Yeah, yeah. I mean, we want actually crypto security is to exist. So we're not saying none of these things are securities, but on the flip side is not true either. It's not that all of these are securities. Both of those are inaccurate. Statements. And I guess the thing I would say too is that just an expectation of profit alone does not make something a security. It has to be every prong of the howey test is my understanding. So an example, people might buy a Picasso painting, hoping it goes up in value, or by gold, or something like that. So those aren't securities. So yeah, basically Bitcoin Ethereum and the assets that we trade on our platform today, we believe our crypto commodities. And people trade those and some of them they want to go up in value, just like they buy gold. Other times they're using it for various utility aspects. This is sort of, I want to give back to the regulatory question, but before I forget, can you talk for a second about how you view Bitcoin specifically because it feels like the crypto industry in many respects has moved on from Bitcoin and I'm sure you're mentions on Twitter are filled every day with angry
Tech Path Crypto
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Tech Path Crypto
"Well, now it's a little hazard to do that. Yeah, well, you know, Brian Armstrong has mentioned this many times CEO of coinbase in reference to he even spent quite a bit of time in D.C. trying to open up and get with lawmakers, but also get on the right side of the legislators that are in a position to kind of set the rules here. If you look at where the landscape is, you've got anneliese Torres judge and ELISA Torres. Basically kind of the most important person in crypto right now. Remember that senator gillibrand was the one who put her in this position, or in a way. So there's a very interesting connection here that is playing out within this for this particular case. Based on what you know of the XRP and the ripple case right now based on what you know of what the discovery has been has been done and where the SEC stands today. What is your win ratio? On ripple winning this hands down or in some sort of settlement with the SEC. Well, I really can't comment on settlement because I'm not privy to the discussions. It doesn't look like there's a lot of room for a settlement. XRP either is or is not a security. And it's hard to picture a scenario where the SEC agrees. Okay, you get to be on the good list with Bitcoin and perhaps a theorem, but in terms of how this goes, I think judge Torres is a terrific judge, really smart, went to great schools. She's a third generation judge, her father and grandfather were judges. She's really sharp, asks the right questions. And I think she had healthy skepticism sometimes for what she's hearing from the SEC. What I would say is based on some recent rulings from the Supreme Court, I would be pretty optimistic if the case gets to the Supreme Court that they are going to have a problem with what the SEC is doing in regulation by enforcement. They've been pretty clear just in the last few months that if you're going to expand your jurisdiction and hear into a brand new asset class based on a brand new technology, you're really needs authority from the Congress. Administrative agencies do not have free reign to regulate wherever they want, they are rooted in statutes. And so I think there's a very good argument in a very good possibility of the Supreme Court would say that the SEC has exceeded its authority in this attempt to regulate XRP. Yeah, I think this goes with alignment with all of our research.
The Decrypt Daily: Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News Podcast
"brian armstrong" Discussed on The Decrypt Daily: Bitcoin & Cryptocurrency News Podcast
"Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the show. Today is Thursday, march 2nd, 2023. And I don't want to lie to y'all. It's actually Wednesday, March 1st, at 6 p.m. when I'm recording this. You're listening to it. I haven't scheduled to come out. Thursday morning. Because I don't want to leave you without any crypto news. I'm going to Florida to visit my dad for a couple days over the weekend, play some golf, watch some grapefruit league baseball, some spring training, and probably complain all weekend about the new pitcher timer clock. We'll see how that works out. I can't wait to see it in action. So let's go over a couple headlines that we have coming out this evening, so you don't miss a beat tomorrow. Australia is one step closer to establishing a Central Bank digital currency or CBDC. The reserve bank of Australia announced an upcoming pilot phase for its digital version of the Australian dollar called the E AUD. The reserve bank of Australia said in quote, the pilot and brought a research study that will be conducted in parallel will serve two ends. It will contribute to hands on learning by the industry and it will add its policymakers understanding of how CBDCs could potentially benefit the Australian financial system and economy. CBDCs are similar to stablecoins, as you know, in a sense that they are digital currencies that are pegged to a price of a Fiat currency, such as a U.S. dollar but in this case, of course, is an Australian dollar. However, instead of being maintained by private companies that issue the tokens, and decentralized networks, CBDCs are backed and maintained by governments and controlled by them. Jumping over the pond though oh, not really a pond. It's an ocean and it's on the other side of the world over here in the United States. Not every lawmaker is on the same page of Santa's CBDC is the best thing since sliced bread. Republican House majority whip Tom emmer introduced legislation last month that would ban the Federal Reserve from issuing a CBDC. In advancement he claimed, would amount to stripping Americans of the right to financial privacy. Now this time we were talking about America, I know if you're listening in Nas, there's a lot of people that feel the same way. So if you don't want this to infringe on your privacy and I am a big believer that this is the Pandora's box that's going to allow for even greater infringements of your privacy. Our interests are aligned with the SEC. Says Brian Armstrong. And said that coinbase has maintained a good relationship with the various staff members and commissioners at the SEC, including meeting with the SEC chairman. Gary gensler. We are going to continue to invest in those relationships he said. And he's saying all of this in the wake of the big push by the SEC to crack down on companies and products that they feel are offering unregistered securities. You remember recently that at the SEC levied a $30 million fine against cryptocurrency exchange kraken for failing to register as staking as a service program as a security? Well, coinbase is ready to fight. Even though they just said they were not ready to fight. And they don't want to fight. Brian Armstrong said, we prepared to defend that in court if we need to. But we're never looking for a fight. He literally just contradicted himself, right? We're prepared to defend it in court, so we're prepared to fight, but we're not looking for a fight. But we're ready to fight. Let's just say they're ready to fight. They're not looking for a fight. They're ready to fight. Anyway, he continued to say, I think we're well within the law. Given the stance that the SEC has been taking defining certain assets as securities. The now bankrupt crypto lending platform Voyager tweeted this. Voyager customer voting on the company's chapter 11 plan has concluded in finalize. Of those who participated in 97% of customers representing 98% of the total claims voted in favor and what were they in voting in favor for? 97% voted in favor of the $1 billion restructuring plan that involves binance U.S.. The bankruptcy court gave Voyager permission to enter asset purchasing agreement with binance U.S. and to hold a vote among the creditors on the sale in January. With the deal, not to be finalized until the court hearing tomorrow. Actually, I'm sorry, today march 2nd. And just because there was a vote and just because it passed, it doesn't mean it's smooth sailing. There could be a few roadblocks to buy U.S. aquarium Voyager's assets as several regulators, including the SEC and the FTC, are questioning the deal. I will bet you anything. That you will hear from the SEC, the FTC, the OCC, and any other C out there, they're going to make us think about this, and they're going to figure out a way to stop it. I just have a feeling about this. What you think Matthew Aaron at decrypt CO. Thank you for listening.
Daily Crypto Report
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Daily Crypto Report
"It's 8 a.m. eastern march the second and this is your daily crypto report Bitcoin is down, half a percent at $23,370, Ethereum is down slightly at $1636 and binance coin is down slightly at $298. Listeners of daily crypto report know that we live in a world that's more digital than ever with nearly every want or need just a tap away. And so many of our favorite digital services seamlessly meet the physical world when they're delivered to your front door. Until now, that hasn't necessarily been true for crypto. Digital currencies are online native and Fiat on and off ramps are difficult. That's why we're sharing that you can now cash in and out of select digital wallets at participating money gram locations without a bank, credit card, or debit card. Convert your digital currency to cash and back again using digital wallets with real cash access, activated by money gram. Learn more at money gram dot com slash stellar wallets. What coinbase is Brian Armstrong spoke on Bloomberg TV saying the U.S. is behind the rest of the world when it comes to clear regulation that enables equal footing for crypto players and allows for innovation in the conversation Armstrong also defended coinbase's staking product as not a security and reiterated that the company is prepared to defend that in court if necessary, notably highlighting, however, that obviously they would prefer to work collaboratively with regulators, Armstrong said, my number one priority this year is the policy environment, calling for a clear rule book so the industry can be competitive within the U.S. and firms won't have to offshore. More on coinbase, the firm is switching to signature bank from silvergate bank for prime customers this change is specific to banking in U.S. dollars and is effective immediately the reasoning behind the change is not completely clear. We'll Snoop Dogg at sign on as a chief dangerous officer for the Roubaix crypto casino and a joint release, the pair said reimagining the way the worlds of entertainment and gaming intersect combining stoops three decades of industry experience in show business and innovation and passion for pursuing fun on the digital frontier. Snoop Dogg is of course very active in web three and blockchain. While crypto exchange bit BNS has illuminated that they were hacked at the start of February for 7 and a half million and didn't make the hack public because local law enforcement told them not to. The hack was first uncovered and made public by a prominent crypto sleuth, XBT with a tweet on Wednesday, bit BNS initially said the outage was system maintenance after Zach XBT tweet that BS is CEO held an hour long AMA saying some funds were recovered with the help of authorities and other exchanges. Well, Robin Hood is rolling out its wallet to iOS, customers across the globe, the wallet supports the polygon and Ethereum networks and could be available to Android users later this year that self custody solution had a wait list of over a million users and finally arbitrum decks are swap has apparently rug pulled users for over a hundred K with native RB tokens falling from a dollar and a half to a fraction of a cent. Blockchain data shows the developers minted a billion fake tokens, swapping these for USD coin and then for nearly 69 eth, the service was launched in February and ballooned to 4.4 million in total locked value. That's all for us today, visit us at daily crypto report dot IO for sources and links and listen to us everywhere else you podcast under daily crypto report. My name is Len Webb, and I'm Vincent Williams. We'd like to welcome you to our documentary podcast the class of 1989. Over the course of 6 episodes, Vincent and I will examine the importance of 6 black films that came out in 89 and how they shape and influence popular culture, filmmaking, and society in general. Come on. Let's get it on. New episodes will begin running weekly on March 6th. It's easy to get lost in the day to today happenings of our busy lives. I'm your host, cine la Paco, you may recognize me from one of the most dramatic seasons ever. Of the bachelor, and I believe that we all have something to share. Tune into something to share every Wednesday for down to earth conversations with inspiring and entertaining people, many of which you'll recognize about that special something they want to share most with the world..
The Cryptoshow - blockchain, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and decentralization simply explained
"brian armstrong" Discussed on The Cryptoshow - blockchain, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin and decentralization simply explained
"Coinbase is launching a new blockchain initiative. And in this video, I want to talk about 5 things that stick out for me. I want to talk about if I see value in this, if I don't devalue this, I want to talk about up sites, risks, potentials, whether you should be investing in this new blockchain if you actually can invest. And a few of my other thoughts. So dive in. I'm at the airport, by the way. So if in the background, if you in the background, here's a nice because I'm on a business trip for two days. And so I found out about this video here at the airport. Okay, so first and foremost, what happened? Coinbase announced that they are launching layer two built on top of the optimism stack on top of Ethereum. It's obviously going to be open-source. They announced that just yesterday. When you look into the GitHub, you see that they make the testnet life three weeks ago so the data announcing this and they are planning on going into the mainnet, they're talking about in the summer. So that's kind of the timeline here. Just looking at the guitar at the moment, it looks like there were 5 comets being done, some renaming. So not all too much to be on is so far. In the whole process. Now, absolutely key and this is just crazy because people are already trading some base token that does not that's a total different token. They are not going to be creating their own token. It's purely going to be centered around Ethereum. That's going to be interesting when I talk about bullish bearish opportunities, risks, and so on. So as a whole, it doesn't look all too planned out for too long. Because Brian Armstrong is CEO a couple of months ago still said that they are not planning any kind of blockchain initiative and now they go out and doing one. So it seems in the last couple of months, maybe with the SEC. They're kind of going this route, then so that's kind of what we know so far. So let me go into some speculation on my part. Why are they doing this? What is their motivation behind it and so on? I think on the one hand, they want to have a possibility to escape the C 5 regulation. Now we have seen there's a lot from Gary gensler from the SEC and so on. So that could be a big opportunity to kind of escape that regulation. The second part, obviously there's a lot of crypto natives coming in, coinbase has a 100 million users, more or less, about 10 million of them trade on a daily basis on a regular basis. So they want to offer something for them. They want to capture that market. And obviously they want to be in control of that ecosystem. So this is a bit of the motivation. They're building on top of Ethereum, which makes, in my opinion, most sense for them as well. They work with the optimism team. So I think that's all very much aligned. So that's obviously a bit of the motivation behind this, kind of being able to escape some of the regulation, have some possibilities add more customers. Great. So let's talk about potential upsides, potential downsides. Who's going to win in all this? Well, obviously I think the entire DeFi sector as a whole is going to win. I think Ethereum is going to win. Everyone that's building on top of theorem. Any kind of layer two, I think, will also win. There will be strong network effects. So if you're investing in defecting, I think that's going to be a big winner. I was the optimism Assyrian this kind of system. A big question is going to be how much is coinbase going to be able to pull actual users over attract builders, attract projects, so we're going to have to see that. But I think that's going to be definitely the winners. And then obviously what's the risks who are the losers? I do think that all the other layer ones here are really being put under pressure. So all the Ethereum competitors, they, in my opinion, really lose from this deal in partnership, coinbase is one of the largest players. They're going to bring massive massive attention to Ethereum with that. So to me, these are some of the biggest losers. Big risk here though in all of that is regulation at the moment regulation has stopped globally at the protocol level. So blockchain so far haven't been regulated. This could change now, right? Gary gensler, the SEC could step in and say, listen, we're going to regulate the protocol level as well now. We want to stop what coinbase is trying to do here. And obviously, that is a big risk out of all of that. Yeah, but as a whole, I think this is very, very bullish. Now, obviously, there are very critical voices already. Where these critical voices coming from mainly obviously from the Bitcoin kind of side of things, because it makes sense, bitcoiners are a bit scared of that now. And I was the media cerium kind of competitors. Now what's one of the criticism here? It is that the way this is structured right now is extremely centralized. There is this it's not like a coordinator. This is not that way, but the system that swords that transactions and that system in theory could completely halt the chain. At the moment, this is completely controlled by coinbase. So there is at least at the beginning. Zero blockchain and everything is basically a centralized database. They need to decentralize that down the line. So let's see if they're doing this, how they do in this, what's their process in this? So this is, I think, a bit of the criticism. But as a whole, I think this is very bullish for its DeFi space. I'm very bullish for anyone working with your layer twos. And so I think it's quite exciting. Please do not fall for scams to tell you that you can invest into a base token, so you have to be extra careful with that. And yeah, obviously on the company side here, at cake, we're going to be looking closely into that. Maybe looking at some partnerships, maybe looking into what we can do there. I think on DeFi chain side as a community, it's going to be quite interesting to see kind of network effects there, strengths there. So as a whole looks quite good. So yeah, data also from China, looking quite promising, so that's interesting. Yeah. So not much else to add. I hope you're staying healthy, staying safe, having a good end of a week. And yeah, I'm going to go and catch my flight. So with that, see you soon at the next video. Subscribe, like, comment. Obviously, subscribe to the podcast, if you're listening to the audio version, and then I'll see you soon. Thank you so much. You're truly Julian bye bye. Unfortunately, we are already at the end of today's episode. If you find the crypto show helpful and would like to continue being a part of it. Don't forget to subscribe so you are notified when we have the next episode out. If you want to do me a huge favor, please leave a review. It literally only takes a few seconds, but it helps the podcast platforms to rank this show. Hear you next time Julian
Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"brian armstrong" Discussed on Thinking Crypto News & Interviews
"Very bullish, whether you like coinbase or Ethereum or not. It is great. I love to see the infrastructure being built for this market and the on and off ramps being built that will help usher in more folks into the technology, whether they're builders, investors, whatever it may be. So this is awesome. Coinbase, of course, has a strong brand or the largest U.S. crypto exchange, you're publicly traded and they're using Ethereum. Of course, which is one of the top crypto and blockchains out there. I hold ether in my portfolio. So this is really great. You know, I've often talked to you guys about Metcalf's law and network adoption. The more building that happens on a blockchain or a network, the stronger it becomes, the more valuable it becomes, and here those stronger this Ethereum blockchain is going to become and for other blockchains as well, the same is true, but then the native token becomes more valuable as a result. Now it's important to note that base is not a token. They said we do not plan to issue a new network token for base and we'll use eth as the native gas token. So that's great to hear guys because what we don't want is another FTX FTT token. And one could say BNB as well, right? A centralized token and I think that would be seen very bad given all the things that we saw happen last year with Celsius and FTX and so forth. So great to see that they're supporting the native token of the blockchain. Now, this is a great initiative, a great idea, and I think game theory will play out here. We could see other crypto platforms do the same, and they're not, you know, they're going to use other blockchains, like maybe algorand, the XRP ledger, whatever it may be cardano, but this is really a great idea. And it's just going to help a lot of people to enter the crypto market to easily build and hear the website for bases based on org if you want to go learn. And you can build a lot of different things, games, lending protocols, whatever it may be. Brian Armstrong, the CEO of coinbase, he tweeted out about this. Some more data or information here that they shared. Base is secured by Ethereum empowered by coinbase open-source with optimism and I personally have not heard of optimism. The optimism foundation and they said that through the open-source set up with optimism, they're able to achieve decentralization. So that's great to hear and they said finally here would big features and small fees. So they also said base will be the on chain home for coinbase and open ecosystem where anyone anywhere can build decentralized apps that reach the next 1 billion plus users, a bridge that brings our users on chain
a16z
"brian armstrong" Discussed on a16z
"And it's literally hand to hand combat. Go in with each of your managers, do a talent assessment, force them to do it. And in most companies until you get to be 5, 10,000 people, you can take a small team of people like three or four folks that you really trust. And go in and almost just like meet with every single person for ten, 15 minutes, and really get an understanding, what are you doing that's adding value to this company? And show me the work. Are you doing the actual work or are you somebody who's in the middle relaying messages or managing or whatever? So you can do it with people, you can do it with humans, whatever your preference, but you got to find a way to go there and do it. Yeah, and it's interesting. Elon, one of the things he did at Twitter is he looked at the GitHub blogs and he's like, if you haven't checked in code in the last 30 days, that's a real problem. Right. So that may that may target you speaking of data. So one of the fallouts of the big boom period was like companies employees decided that the work wasn't necessarily the thing that they should be about. They should be about the larger society and these political issues and so forth. And you kind of now famously took a stand and said, well, not here, we're not going to do politics. We've got a mission, and that's the mission, and if your mission is anything from whatever roe V wade to the environment or what have you, you're just not going to do that here. So now it's been a year. And how is it gone? Are you happy with how the culture has come out where there are things that you would do differently, what would you, what would you recommend for the kind of founders here? Yeah, so I think it was turned out to be one of the most important and positive things that I ever did in the company, but obviously it really sucked to go through because at that time, I think everybody was trying to create these kind of activist cultures inside companies. There was actually a handful of employees. A number of employees, I think, especially in certain areas like the Bay Area and Brooklyn. It was really only in certain geographies where they were essentially trying to get hired at these companies, not with the intention of really working towards the mission, but actually to go in there and hold the company to account for some other broader societal issue that they were working on. And so I didn't really have any concept of what anybody would do that and it was
a16z
"brian armstrong" Discussed on a16z
"There's despair. There's some bad stuff happening. People get a little disillusioned. The people who are in it for a quick buck kind of get distracted and go somewhere else. The part that's different is this time the broader macroeconomy obviously went down along with it. And that's created an environment that just, it's not so much about is crypto going to be still be a thing. That was like the question everybody asked me in prior crypto cycles. I even had people come up to me at conferences and they'd say, well, what are you going to do now that Bitcoin is dead? Well, that's clearly not the case. But no one's really asking me at this point. Bitcoin's died a few times. Yeah, it has. Nobody is really asking that at this point, it's just the broader macro environment is down. And FTX kind of put a black eye on the industry, but I don't think that it's going to change anything long term. So the same thing that we have to do in past cycles, we're doing in this cycle, which is be really rigorous about costs. It's basically make sure you don't die is like the number one thing. If you're a Lehman Brothers, you're dead. You don't get to play any of the next rounds of the game. If you're Goldman or JPMorgan or whatever to use a 2008 financial crisis analogy, manage your costs, cut burn where you need to be really responsible. And then if you survive through it, you're going to be one of the you're going to thrive. You're going to be one of the top companies because you made it through this down period, any company that makes it through that is going to come out a lot stronger. There may be some good deals for companies that preserve cash along that way to if this lasts another one, two years, which we think it probably will. Until we see some real signs of life, I think there will be some of these private valuations that come down, or there'll be other opportunities to get really good talent. And so every company I think should be thinking about how this is not just not just surviving, but how do you turn it into an opportunity to actually pull out even stronger? And when you think about the kind of contrast is in your business between the okay, let's be really, really careful with cash versus the opportunities because psychologically, it's tricky, right? And in the old world, everybody's psychology was we have to get market share. We have to go faster, faster, faster, money is free. Let's just go. And now it's gone all the way to the opposite end. And I think, in retrospect, people would have been like, oh, maybe we should have saved some of that cash. And then how do you kind of get yourself to make an investment in an environment like this? At the same time that you're doing a layoff or fattening down the hatches. Yeah. Well, so I mean, I think coinbase, we've probably, I mean, we did. We over hired in 2021, right?
a16z
"brian armstrong" Discussed on a16z
"So Brian has been a crazy couple of weeks with FTX FTX collapses, SPF for those of us who actually followed it, is emerging as a super Bernie Madoff type character. And you unusually for you because you're not a spotlight type of guy. You're more of a behind the scenes type of guy. He's been on TV and taking a leadership role in trying to explain to the world what this means. So what does this mean for the crypto industry? Yeah. Well, I think we were all pretty shocked to see the scope of the fraud that happened at FTX. And let's call it a fraud. We have to call it what it actually is. It's been pretty bizarre that mainstream media hasn't really come out and said this guy's a criminal. Maybe they want to wait until he's actually indicted or something like that. And in custody, but it seems very clear at this point that that's the case. And we have to kind of come to terms as an industry with the fact that I think our industry is kind of attracting our disproportionate share of fraudsters and scammers. And that's really unfortunate. It doesn't mean that that's representative of the whole industry. There's a bunch of people here in the audience as one example and coinbase is another example of the hard work that's being done to legitimize this industry and build it. We want to bring the potential of this technology to people all over the world. And we're not going to cut any corners. We're not here to make a quick buck. We're in it for bigger ideals. Freedom and decentralization. And the power that bringing good financial infrastructure can be for everybody around the world. So that's been part of my job is to get out there and I don't normally like doing TV very much. I like building cool stuff with the team. But in this moment, it's important for me to get out there and say, look, there's a whole industry that's very different than what was happening with FTX. Coinbase is based right here in the U.S.. We're a public company. You can go read our financial statements. They're audited by a third party. You don't have to trust us. All the customer funds are segregated.