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HOLLYWOOD APES: Coinbase is launching an NFT marketplace that will also support the production of animated short films for The Bored Ape Yacht Club. - The crypto exchange will feature a series titled “The Degen Trilogy” set to premiere at NFT.NYC in June. Coinbase invites Bored Ape owners to submit their apes as characters in the trilogy, along with a character description, which will be reviewed by a Hollywood casting director. Following the release, if users would like to see the films, they will need to create a wallet before moving through the “wallet-gated” section of the website.
- Meanwhile, brokerage Robinhood added Shiba Inu and Solana tokens to its platform as traditional financial services provider Fidelity will offer clients exposure to the “metaverse” with a new ETF.
CBDC PROTOTYPE: The Depository Trust & Clearing Corp., a top financial services company, is working with the Digital Dollar Project, a nonprofit, on a central bank digital currency (CBDC) pilot. - The CBDC pilot, titled “Project Lithium,” will look to explore the potential benefits of a CBDC and the value it could bring to the financial services industry. DTCC executive Jennifer Peve told CoinDesk the pilot will test whether a CBDC is a driver of additional value to the capital market industry.
- The prototype is likely to finish sometime this autumn, according to Peve.
- Separately, the Bank for International Settlements' Financial Stability Institute and the World Bank issued a report saying CBDCs could create competitive pressure for banks.
META MARKETPLACE: Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has started building a digital economy for the social media behemoth’s virtual reality game, Horizon Worlds. Creators will be able to sell “virtual items and effects” with this yet-to-launch program, as the company seemingly pivots away from decentralized payments but toward NFTs and “social tokens.” The Horizon World’s program won’t be subjected to fees, though The Verge reports Meta may take a cut anywhere from 25%-70% from virtual items in its marketplace. FUNDING FRENZY: Stablecoin issuer Circle has raised $400 million in a funding round by BlackRock and Fidelity. - Circle, valued at $9 billion, has $51 billion USDC in circulation across multiple blockchains and is in the process of going public through a SPAC merger and seeking a national banking license. A source familiar with the matter told CoinDesk the latest funding round won’t change the terms of the SPAC merger.
- Circle also hired two new leads to oversee regulatory operations.
- Elsewhere, Morgan Stanley said the U.S. could regulate stablecoin issuers like banks.
INFLATION HIGH: U.S. inflation jumped to a four-decade high of 8.5% in March, led in part by supply chain woes and war-related sanctions that have pushed energy and food prices even higher. - The consumer price index, a price measurement for all basic living items, including food, housing, car, energy and consumer products, finds itself at its highest point since December 1981, according to the Labor Department.
- Core inflation, which excludes seasonally volatile food and energy prices, rose only 0.3% compared with February’s number, which was lower than the 0.5% increase expected by analysts.
–Fran Velasquez |
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV... |
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"Money is too important to be left to central bankers." –Former CFTC Chair Chris Gincarlo, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover." |
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What others are writing... |
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Ariana Grande’s fundraiser for trans visibility adds crypto option (Cointelegraph) Ethereum largely passes first major test for proof of stake (The Block) Uniswap Joins the Hunt for Web3 Startups with New Venture Arm (The Defiant) California finance agency seeks clout via crypto influencers (Reuters) ‘Staggering’ Crypto Seizures Have Cops Struggling to Keep Up (Bloomberg)
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Putting the news into perspective |
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Bitcoin and Today’s Wicked Inflation Share a Common Ancestor It’s not that the economy is going through a wringer it hasn’t been through before, but it is still a period of rapid change. Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics announced consumer prices rose 8.5% for the 12 months that ended in March – the fastest inflation rate in 40-odd years. That means we’re all paying more for just about everything. There are material explanations. The world’s supply chains have been tied in a knot, ports are backed up, and the literal fuel for the economy – oil and gas – is getting more expensive, in part, due to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. A more heterodox view, perhaps familiar to CoinDesk’s audience, follows the money rather than supposedly exogenous factors. To combat the coronavirus, which stunned the world, U.S. policymakers printed about a century’s worth of dollars in two years. “It’s going to be a very difficult couple of years or more ahead for the U.S. economy and for the Federal Reserve,” former Kansas City Fed lead and current fellow at the libertarian-leaning Mercatus Center, Thomas Hoenig, told MarketWatch in a February interview. The Federal Reserve is now in a perilous position of having to keep their word to increase lending rates to slow down the economy and combat inflation. It has to do that without risking popping an asset bubble across financial assets and causing more pain. Everything from stocks to home prices to crypto to yachts has surged during a period of easy money. Not enough people are willing to say plainly that we’re in an era of great monetary experimentation. This includes the Federal Reserve’s recent ultra-dovish policy to keep interest rates low, low, low to the adoption of alternative monetary structures like Bitcoin that want to keep monetary issuance steady, predictable and final. Although there are no easy answers or pain-free solutions to the current inflationary crisis, it may be worth noting how today is the result of decisions in the past. Black sheep Hoenig is one of those black sheep, heterodox thinkers. A lifelong, soft-spoken institutionalist, he became infamous in 2010 as the lone dissenter of a novel policy of monetary experimentation called “quantitative easing” (QE) – when the Fed buys financial assets from private banks to flood the economy with capital. Although calling out what was then a truly novel course, Hoenig was branded the “Doomsday Profit.” Read the full article here. –Daniel Kuhn |
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