We brought 20,000 people to Austin, Texas, and all I got was a lousy tan line.
Consensus happened! We had 20,000 attendees, 500+ speakers, 27 stages(?) and a bajillion meetings. And, as is tradition, I wrote two stories in bars at night. Only one had an embarrassing typo! It’s pretty surreal to think that the most chaotic Consensus was 2018, which was widely seen as the most popular for years afterward. We had somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people I believe.
So anyways, it was a pretty busy few weeks. I apparently missed a lot between Consensus and Davos. A quick rundown follows.
PoolTogether, a decentralized finance startup facing a lawsuit for allegedly violating New York gambling laws, is selling NFTs for its legal fund.
Nate Chastain, the former OpenSea staffer who quit last year after it came to light he may have bought NFTs from collections prior to his company listing them, now faces federal wire fraud and money laundering charges. I believe this is a first.
ForUsAll, a 401(k) provider in California, sued the U.S. Department of Labor on allegations of violating the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) when it issued guidance telling providers to “exercise extreme care” before adding cryptocurrencies to potential retirement funds.
Custodia, the Wyoming-based crypto bank founded by Caitlin Long (and previously known as Avanti), sued the Federal Reserve on allegations it violated a one-year deadline for approving master accounts. Custodia applied last year.
Grayscale (a sister company to CoinDesk) tapped Don Verrilli, a former Solicitor General for the U.S., presumably in anticipation of its own potential APA proceeding should the Securities and Exchange Commission reject its spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund conversion application next month.
Coin Center sued the U.S. Treasury Department, IRS and various officials on allegations that the transaction reporting rule enshrined in last year’s infrastructure bill is not constitutional.
Binance.US is being sued by 2,000 investors in LUNA and TerraUSD on allegations it misled those same investors by listing the pair of tokens.
