| | Good afternoon. Wondering who’s really making money in crypto this year? Turns out it’s mostly lawyers, accountants, and consultants, which have racked up more than $700 million in fees since the bankruptcies of five major crypto firms, including FTX and Celsius. | Today’s Big Stories: 🏆 Should we trust Jay Clayton? ❓ Solana’s Partnership with Visa | Today's newsletter is 1,059 words, a 4-minute read. |
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📌 MUST READS |
| Former SEC Chair Says Bitcoin ETF Is Inevitable; But Is He Corrupt? |
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On CNBC this week, the former SEC chair, Jay Clayton, stated that a bitcoin ETF “is inevitable”. |
| "It is clear that #Bitcoin is not a security. It is something that retail investors want access to and importantly some of our most trusted providers want to provide this product to the retail public," says Fmr. SEC Chair Jay Clayton. "An approval is inevitable." | | | Sep 1, 2023 | | | | 135 Likes 61 Retweets 80 Replies |
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This is the same Jay Clayton who rejected a spot bitcoin ETF multiple times while he was the head of the SEC from 2017 to 2020. His reasoning then was that the SEC was unclear whether the cash bitcoin market was prone to manipulation. |
Now, as large institutions are signaling that they are comfortable with a bitcoin ETF, Clayton believes that there shouldn’t be the same level of concern. |
“There are now large institutions with surveillance mechanisms who are coming in and saying: ‘No, that’s not the case.’ We can rely on the efficacy of the cash market to a sufficient extent where we believe it’s a legitimate product. That’s a shift.” |
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Alright, of course this is a good signal. The person who held Gary Gensler’s position immediately before Gary and also rejected multiple spot bitcoin ETFs while in that position, stating that the time is right for approval is a big deal. |
The real question in our eyes is how many grains of salt should we take with this… |
So with that, let’s take a look at Mr. Jay Clayton and his esteemed track record. |
Matt Taibi called Jay Clayton “the most conflicted SEC chair ever.” We don’t have the space to get into the details here but let’s just say he was literally married to the industry he was put in charge of to police. Read more here.
He led the failed lawsuit against Ripple. One of Jay Clayton’s final acts before resigning as SEC chair was to sue Ripple Labs by challenging the legality of XRP as an unregistered security. There’s no other way to put it than this was a major failure on his part as Ripple Labs defeated a significant part of the SECs case in July.
After leaving the SEC, Clayton went on to take major roles at crypto companies. In 2021, Clayton began working for Fireblocks, a crypto custodian and One River, a multi-billion dollar crypto hedge fund which Coinbase acquired in March, 2023. Ironic. |
You might argue that none of these things actually matter in regards to the ETF being approved… and you’re right. |
But let’s call a spade a spade whether the corruption is in our favor or not. |
Just because Jay Clayton said something that fits into what crypto investors want to happen, doesn’t mean it should whitewash his history. |
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🔍️ DEEP DIVES |
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I can already see it. SBF, pinned up in a corner of a prison cell, shackled up next to his laptop, quietly fist pumping into the stagnant air after he learns that Solana (SOL) – his seemingly favorite altcoin – is finally creating some buzz without much of his help. |
What happened? |
Yesterday, Visa said that it would begin to send USDC, the second-largest stablecoin by market cap, to select merchants via the Solana blockchain in a newly announced pilot. |
The backdrop: Typically, whenever someone taps or swipes their credit card, companies like Visa and Mastercard trigger a complicated dance of settlements in the background. It works like this: You, the consumer, swipes your credit card to pay for something. After a purchase, your bank quickly wires money to Visa’s treasury. From there, Visa pulls funds from its treasury and sends them to the merchant’s bank. And to make money, of course, they tack on a small yet increasing (see below) fee to the merchant. |
These transactions are typically all done in the form of fiat. Until now. |
Now, with the help of Circle’s USDC, Visa will begin testing to send USDC out of its treasury to two companies, Worldpay and Nuvei, who will then facilitate the payments back to the merchants. |
Topping it off, these settlements will all happen on Solana’s (SOL) blockchain instead of Ethereum’s (ETH) because its cheaper, quicker, and more efficient overall. |
Why it matters: The pilot program undoubtedly signals a positive direction for blockchain/stablecoin adoption. Crypto thought-leader Nic Carter even said that this was one of the most important news events of 2023. |
| nic 🌠 carter @nic__carter | |
| Replying to@nic__carter | @cuysheffield this is one of the most important news items of the year. | | Sep 5, 2023 | | | | 157 Likes 5 Retweets 7 Replies |
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Beyond the adoption narrative, its news like this that suits incredibly well for merchants. |
Whether selling a cup of joe around the corner or products online, every merchant in this country is getting hit with higher and higher transaction fees. The WSJ highlighted, just last week, how Visa and Mastercard are planning to raise credit card fees yet again, in which merchants are estimated to pay an additional $502 million annually in fees. |
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The fees are getting so ridiculous, that many small businesses across the US are beginning to offer discounts to shoppers who choose to pay via debit card, cash, or check. |
Using crypto to facilitate payments, in theory, should be much cheaper than it is with fiat. We’d love if these crypto transactions wouldn’t have to go through a middleman – but we’ll take what we can get. More affordable merchant transactions can be a huge catalyst for crypto adoption going forward. |
Now, while we’re still years away from consumers commonly using USDC, or PayPal’s PYUSD, or heck – even Bitcoin (BTC) – to pay for common goods and services, it’s still neat to see traditional financial conglomerates like Visa better prepare themselves for the future of payments, commerce, and financial applications using fiat alternatives. Truly, very cool stuff. |
Time to Buy Solana (SOL)? In light of this news, we’ve seen a lot of publications ask the question of what this new Visa partnership could mean for SOL. |
Our answer? Don’t even go there. |
It's easy to get carried away with the headlines, but there are a few caveats to consider. |
First, Solana's SOL token saw a mere 4% uptick following the announcement, which doesn't seem like much when the token is still languishing 90% below its peak value from November 2021. |
Second, Solana users just recently fell to their lowest level in more than two years. |
Third, this is just a pilot program. In other words, they’re beta testing. To add, Visa is offering little to no transparency on how payments are actually being settled. So, even if you're swiping that card, you might not be privy to whether your transactions are going through the traditional payment rails or utilizing Solana's blockchain. |
In summary, this isn't a game-changing moment for the industry by any means; it's more like a trial run. In no way whatsoever has this encouraged us to take a “closer look” at Solana. |
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TWEET OF THE WEEK |
| Travis Kling @Travis_Kling | |
| 🚨🚨 Binance's Slow Train Wreck 🚨🚨 As summer officially draws to a close, you may have been away from the screens over the last few months. Below is a summary of the major negative events for Binance since December. It's helpful to see it all in one place. Next time someone… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… | | | Sep 5, 2023 | | | | 2.58K Likes 656 Retweets 344 Replies |
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