October 28, 2022

Examining the intersection of cryptocurrency and government

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Welcome to State of Crypto. Here's what's important in policy news this week:

Electric car mogul/aspiring Martian Elon Musk took over Twitter. This could mean a lot for free speech online, or not. We just don’t know. Here’s an attempt at parsing his statements and actions over the past few months.

— Nikhilesh De

Reading Elon's Tea Leaves

(Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

The narrative

Elon Musk finally took over Twitter. It took a while, and Twitter had to sue him to force him to close the deal, but it happened.

Why it matters

Twitter is a pretty central place for a lot of the crypto world. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the main town square, but it’s certainly significant. It’s also a place where many users are able to interact pseudonymously with each other, a state of affairs Musk has – intentionally or not – threatened in the past.

Breaking it down

I wrote about this whole thing when Musk first announced he had a deal with Twitter’s heads, so it seems only fair to revisit that newsletter and see what, if anything, has changed since then.

There's two ways we could approach this:

One is,“lol Elon spent $31 billion and a bunch of banks spent a further $13 billion to buy a company worth $41 billion at the time of closing and quite a bit less than that over the past few months, and this only after several months of legal wrangling that ultimately led to the same outcome it would have had Musk not tried to pull out.”
The other is, Twitter might now have a new approach to the content (tweets) on its platform. The key thing, to me anyway, is we still don’t know what Musk actually plans. He has published a few tweets saying he is pro-free speech, but on Thursday said in a message (to advertisers?) that “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape.”

Obviously it’s far too soon to actually tell what he’ll do with Twitter, but this is his chance to walk the talk on free speech.

Read the full story here.

CoinDesk dives into all sides of crypto trading, from practical strategies to how traders stay sane amid market turmoil and torrents of incoming information. Tune in for a mix of features, TV interviews, op-eds and research. Read Trading Week here.

The Biden Bunch

Changing of the guard

Key: (nom.) = nominee, (rum.) = rumored, (act.) = acting, (inc.) = incumbent (no replacement anticipated)

Beyond CoinDesk

(The Washington Post) A Post reporter followed one of the survivors of the Robb Elementary School shooting in Uvalde, Texas, over the summer. This is quite a report, and it really is worth your time.
(Bloomberg Businessweek) Bloomberg Businessweek has its second-ever cover-to-cover story, and of course it’s on crypto and of course it’s written by the one and only Matt Levine. I also thought this short clip of an interview he sat for with Bloomberg’s Sonali Basak and Kailey Leinz provided a fascinating 150-second summary of where he stands today.
(The Washington Post) The bugs are disappearing.
(FDIC) The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation published the results of its 2021 survey of unbanked and underbanked households. If we are to accept the premise that this is an issue the crypto industry wants to address, it’s obviously worth looking at data on it.

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Today's Tweet

If you’ve got thoughts or questions on what I should discuss next week or any other feedback you’d like to share, feel free to email me at nik@coindesk.com or find me on Twitter @nikhileshde.