  What you need to know today in crypto and beyond April 21, 2021 Sponsored By:  If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.
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Today's must-reads Top Shelf  CUSTODY CONSOLIDATION: Mike Novogratz’s merchant bank Galaxy Digital is said to be in advanced talks to buy crypto custodian BitGo, according to sources familiar with the matter. The deal, whether it goes through or not, represents the need for dedicated custodians to handle customer and corporate funds as banks warm to the industry. In related news, BitGo has added $600 million to its insurance coverage to comfort large holders.
EASY EXPLOIT? EasyFi, a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol on the Polygon Network, was hit with an $80 million hack, according to its founders. CEO Ankitt Gaur said a hacker gained access to his personal computer and lifted the network’s MetaMask private keys. Gaur is offering $1 million if the hacker returns the funds and is also contemplating a hard fork to roll back the attack. DOGE TIRED? Plans to pump dogecoin to $0.69 or beyond on 4/20 were foiled on the world’s first “Dogeday.” DOGE traded downward to a low of 29 cents yesterday and is currently in that ballpark. Although a meme-melded mass mind (a la Gamestop) was unable to rally DOGE, an anonymous trader reportedly donated some of her profits to a dog shelter at Daytona Beach. She signed the gift from the "Doge community." SELL-OFF SHOCKS? Tether’s price rose against its U.S. dollar peg as traders moved capital from BTC and ETH into the stablecoin. This “tether premium” shows the token’s growing use as a safe-haven asset. Meanwhile, solana, the native token of the blockchain backed by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried, logged a record daily percentage gain on Sunday, defying bitcoin’s 6% sell-off.
– Daniel Kuhn
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 Introducing Unlocked 101 at Consensus by CoinDesk 2021 New to crypto? Here's a crash course. Unlocked 101 is a free educational series of sessions designed to give you the tools to navigate crypto. Sessions will be hosted May 4–20 to prepare you for Consensus by CoinDesk 2021, our virtual big-tent event.
Overheard on CoinDesk TV Sound Bite  "I don't see a suppression movement to come out of the government toward crypto. That would go counter to the whole notion of a free society and free market economy."
– J. Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."
A message from CoinDesk  Can't Beat Them? Join Them: Why Crypto Company Anchorage Became a Bank Perhaps the old adage "every tech company wants to be a bank — someday, at least" is true. But why would a crypto company, given Bitcoin's philosophical roots, want to become a bank? And what does a crypto bank even look like, let alone do?
Join us for a chat with leaders from Anchorage, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Blockchain Association for an inside look on why and how Anchorage became the first crypto company to secure an OCC bank charter. We'll dive deeper into the topic at Consensus by CoinDesk, our big-tent event May 24-27.
Join us on Clubhouse on April 20 at 5 p.m. ET.
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- D.K.
Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway  Crypto Is a Luxury, Gucci Just Hasn’t Realized It The world’s luxury brands are waking up to crypto, but they're not thinking big enough. Crypto is cool, crypto is tres chic.
Recently, Acker, America’s oldest wine store, began accepting several cryptocurrencies as a form of payment.
“We’ve had numerous requests regarding cryptocurrency over the past few months, which set us in motion,” an external representative for the fine wines retailer and auction house said. While it hasn’t yet made a sale in crypto, it “anticipates doing more and more business in cryptocurrency as time goes on.”
Acker integrated with BitPay with the understanding that crypto could become an “everyday” payment mechanism and that crypto people have lots of new money.
“It is clear that there has been significant wealth created by cryptocurrency and that there is a new demographic of buyer with significant buying power that is here to stay,” the rep said.
It’s following a familiar playbook here. During crypto’s first major hype cycle, a single Lamborghini dealership accepting BTC made headlines. In 2017, a gold retailer, a few politicians, a Swiss university, a budget airline and Microsoft began accepting at least BTC. Others experimented with the crypto obsession du jour, initial coin offerings, too.
The pace accelerated quite a bit this year. Tesla began accepting BTC, as have the National Basketball Association's Dallas Mavericks and Major League Baseball's Oakland Athletics, too; there’s a boutique hotel in Nashville and two luxury watchmakers Franck Muller and Hublot are selling certain timepieces exclusively for BTC. I’ll spare you the rest.
All these businesses are thinking in the fiat mindset, where you simply trade one asset (usually worthless dollar) for another consumable good. But crypto can open up a world of opportunities.
As Vogue Business noted: “Cryptocurrencies can act as social tokens, building community and loyalty.”
These are things that traditional asset classes just cannot provide. Trading crypto for a case of wine could be a decent deal if you time the purchase correctly; wine is a highly appreciable asset, and a case of 2010 Brunellos might outcompete the DOGE you spent on it. But it also may not.
That’s one of the reasons no one apparently jumped at the opportunity to buy a Tesla in BTC – despite the fact that it’s perhaps supplanted lambos as the automotive status symbol for coiners. Acker is betting “crypto investors looking to diversify [into] wine.” I think they’re more likely to do it in fiat.
Crypto’s nouveau riche don’t just want conspicuous consumption, they want more crypto. The New York Times and Forbes orchestrated successful NFT (non-fungible token) auctions, because it left crypto holders with another volatile asset that follows the same moon-logic that made them rich in the first place.
In a recent New York Magazine article, tech critic Scott Galloway predicted luxury brands will develop a “coin strategy,” which would merge the world of crypto and brand "loyalty.” Companies have long issued points/rewards/tokens, and crypto offers programmability and much greater opportunity for business innovation.
Institutions like Stanford or Chanel could auction essentially social tokens that are provably scarce, confer special privileges and can be owned outright. Stanford Coin would secure your child’s seat at the university, while a $10,000 Hermes coin might buy you a dedicated personal shopper. Perhaps Tiffany would only sell its latest releases to TFNY coin holders, Galloway imagined.
“Crypto is leveraging our instincts around scarcity,” he said. There’s some force deep in the human psyche that values rare things – it’s the driving force behind crypto and luxury goods.
If luxury brands want to stay à la mode, they better make a move.
– D.K.
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