🗓💊Gensler Calls our PoS Coins Securities, Again
Daily Bullets - Thursday, March 16th
Theo Delarosa
March 16, 2023
Today’s newsletter is a cool 5 minute read.
The crypto market is ranging and taking a breather - after an impressive rally earlier in the week and plenty of FUD to go around.
The macro situation continues looking uncertain with developments around Credit Suisse and banking worries.
On the ground level, we’ve got another day full of announcements and new developments for crypto projects. Crypto soldiers on.
Will these banking developments be beneficial for DeFi? |
Today we’re looking at:
- 💲👨⚖️ Gensler Calls our PoS Coins Securities, Again
- 💰🧺 Money Laundering & Bitcoin Mixers
- ⛓🖥 Uniswap Sh*tcoin Trading Now on BNB Chain Network
- ✅ Daily Bullets
- 📊 Market Dashboard
- 📚 Research/Reads
- 📝 Good Tweets
💲👨⚖️ Gensler Calls our PoS Coins Securities, Again
Quick Take: SEC Chair Gary Gensler suggested again that tokens using staking protocols could be considered securities under U.S. law.
Key Details:
- The returns token holders see from staking indicate that those tokens are securities and would need to be registered as such under U.S. law
- Advised token operators and intermediaries to seek compliance
- The remarks were made in response to a question about CFTC Chair Rostin Behnam's statement that ETH is a commodity
- The SEC recently settled with Kraken in its first staking-as-a-service enforcement action
- New York Attorney General Letitia James said that ETH is an unregistered security as part of an enforcement lawsuit filed against crypto firm KuCoin
Significance: The picture should be pretty clear at this point, they are targeting our coins! Regulation is coming. The SEC, Fed, Treasury Department, FDIC, Whitehouse, and every government agency with a 3 letter acronym is stepping up and firing their warning shots.
The government intends to reign in crypto and we’re witnessing it play out.
Go Deeper:
💰🧺 Money Laundering & Bitcoin Mixers
Quick Take: US and German authorities took down ChipMixer, which allegedly laundered billions of dollars worth of bitcoin. Supported by Europol, authorities seized four servers and over 1,900 bitcoin valued at around $46M.
Key Details:
- Crypto mixers/tumblers/blenders blend crypto from multiple users to obscure the source of funds
- May have facilitated the laundering of 152,000 BTC worth roughly $3.7B today
- Used by ransomware actors: Zeppelin, SunCrypt, Mamba, Dharma and Lockbit
Significance: These anonymizing services are attractive to cybercriminals looking to launder illegal proceeds and the Feds are clamping down.
The US Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned crypto mixer Tornado Cash last August for allegedly laundering over $7B since its creation in 2019, including $455M stolen by the North Korean-sponsored hacking group Lazarus Group.
On the other hand, crypto and privacy proponents argue that crypto mixers and privacy coins that operate using immutable smart contracts are not sanctionable entities, as they have lawful uses to provide privacy for an open financial system.
How do we properly balance both of these things?
Go Deeper:
⛓🖥 Uniswap Sh*tcoin Trading Now on BNB Chain Network
Quick Take: Uniswap, the world's largest DEX, officially launched on BNB Chain, the decentralized blockchain founded by Binance.
Key Details:
- Uniswap users can leverage BNB Chain's low transaction fees
- Uniswap can capture a larger share of the DEX niche and increase accessibility and liquidity
- Wormhole was chosen as the protocol's designated bridge to BNB Chain in a contentious governance vote between a16z and Jump Crypto
Significance: Besides the battle between 2 large VC players, the most interesting thing out of this will be the lower fees for users since Ethereum gas fees can spike horrendously, disincentivizing most users.
Then there’s increasing the accessible market, seeing as BNB Chain is highly popular in Asia.
What will a16z and Jump Crypto vote for next?
Go Deeper:
✅ Daily Bullets
🔥 Highlights
- Europol shuts down ChipMixer - seizes $46M in Bitcoin
- Euler hacker sends funds to crypto mixer
- A New York court denied the government’s request to halt the $1B Voyager-Binance.US deal
- Signature Bank’s prospective buyers must agree to give up all crypto business
- Uniswap launches on BNB Chain
- Lido expects staked Ethereum withdrawals in May
- Miners are no longer able or willing to hold onto all of their mined BTC
- Russia found to be using Tether to evade sanctions
- $630M seized by U.S. government. Chinese businessman arrested for $1B fraud conspiracy
- US Banking System’s credit rating gets downgraded from “stable” to “negative”
- U.S. Federal Reserve is activating its long-awaited real-time payments system in July
- Bitzlato founder held without bail as more sanctions evasion comes to light
- Coinbase to take unstaking requests a day after the Shanghai-Capella update
- Yuga Labs opened the minting of its newest NFT collection, HV-MTL
📰 Crypto News
- Bank of Israel promotes CBDC as a smooth cross border solution
- India and UAE to collaborate on developing CBDC
- CBDC research project reveal positive results for cross-border payments
- U.K. Taxpayers will have to record their crypto gains separately as of next year
- VC-Backed NFT Social Platform Metalink Launches Mobile App
- UK taxpayers must file crypto profits separately from 2025
- Web3 security company Ironblocks building a protocol monitoring product
- Saudi Arabia’s first licensed NFT marketplace gets Animoca Brands and Polygon as backers
- EU parliament passes smart contract regulation under Data Act
- Beeple and XCOPY headline the next two Sotheby’s NFT auctions
- Art trading platform LiveArt announces NFT membership card linked to exclusive drops
- Fidelity crypto goes live, millions have access to BTC and ETH
- DegenZoo uses AI to create Logan Paul’s game without him
- Ark continues Block spending. Adds further 13.7M across three funds
- French Collective GXRLS Revolution aim to bring more women into NFT art
- Australian Treasury and Reserve Bank held private meetings with Coinbase
💲Coin/Project Updates
- AI tokens’ prices soar after ChatGPT-4 release
- New Ethereum Standard ERC-4804 launched
- Starknet DAO heads towards first governance vote
- Ribbon Finance’s launch of on-chain options exchange, Aevo
- Drama surrounding the codebase of the upcoming Shibarium blockchain
- Poolz token vesting contract hacked
- Coinbase suspending trading for RLY, YFII, MIR, OMG, LOOM, & REP
- Solana art platform Formfunction is closing down just one year after raising seed funding
- FactorDao: A DeFi management solution
- Salesforce launched Salesforce Web3, an NFT management platform
- MEV Capital offers Uniswap hedging strategy
- DeFi Exchange mStable has 3 options: merger, acquisition or sunset
- Unilend Finance V2 launching testnet on Polygon on March 20th
- CLV Wallet now supports BTC Ordinals
- Unstoppable Domains releases web3 domain names for Polygon
- Metamask improvements allow for more control and transparency on mobile and extension
- Pyrometer security tool launches
- Volt Protocol V1 is being deprecated
- Saddle proposal to set gauge emissions to 1.5% over next 6 months
- Osmosis V15 update and features
📊 Market Dashboard
Chart of the Day - Bitcoin on-chain metrics
Transactions on the Bitcoin network have spiked to levels not seen since 2021, despite there being no considerable increase in the number of active addresses, new addresses, or on-chain volume.
This may be attributed to the increased popularity and speculation of Bitcoin Ordinals and not to new users returning to the crypto market.
📚 Research/Reads
- WuBlockchain |Why OpenSea and Arbitrum Should Not Issue Token and What’s the Function of Token - source
- How ERC-4337 is changing on-chain interaction | The Wallet of Tomorrow - source
- Can blockchain technology combat rising AI concerns? | AI can be defeated with cryptography - source
- Blockchain as a geopolitical tool | Blockchain is the answer to Russia’s settlement issues - source
- How to protect your wealth | What is crypto contagion, and how does it affect the market? - source
- Start Accumulating Bitcoin | Are you too late to Bitcoin? - source
- Securities, pricing, risk, volume, liquidity, timeframe | Primary vs. secondary markets: Key differences - source
- Not your keys, Not your crypto | When Will Crypto Learn From the Mistakes of Banks? - source
- Cryptographic technical research paper | Vulnerability in implementation of SHA-3 - source
- 5 important properties of security, goals and tools | My Hitchhikers’s Guide to Security by head of research at Immunefi - source
📝 Good Tweets
Nnova.eth on the history and evolution of money and bitcoin
The History and Evolution of Money.
A story about how people can’t be trusted to control the money supply.
And the fight to separate Money from The State.
- Brought to you by #Bitcoin.Let's dive in.
— nnova.eth 🦇🔊 (@NNovaDefi)
Mar 3, 2023
Verum Capital exploring the timeless question of “What if I invested…”
"What if I just invest in all the coins of the top 100 and wait?"
"What if i just spot buy $ETH and hold?"
"What if I only choose recent binance listings?"7 CMC data-driven portfolio simulations + 6 key conclusions to prepare for next bull 🧵👇
— Verum Capital (@verumcapital)
Mar 15, 2023
Shiro keeping you on track with an airdrop strategy
#Airdrops to hunt this week🧵
Airdrops have not really been the top priority lately.
But we must not forget that there is free money to be made.Today strategies & alpha on:
▪️ Base
▪️ Faucets
▪️ Promising Testnets
▪️ zkSync Era
▪️ Fuel
▪️ Shardeum
▪️ Sei& More 🪂👇
— Shiro (@CryptoShiro_)
Mar 15, 2023
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