Exploring the transformation of value in the digital age By Michael J. Casey, Chief Content Officer Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. |
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With the late summer showing crypto markets struggling to extend their gains and leaving those who bought at the top of the cycle last year continuing to sit on giant losses, it’s tempting to blame the speculators whose buying helped fuel the prior bubble for all that is wrong with this industry. Today’s column asks you to point blame elsewhere. In this week’s podcast, my co-host Sheila Warren went solo in my absence. She interviewed two rising stars in the crypto legal scene: Jai Massari, the chief legal officer at newly formed Lightning Network dev lab Lightspark, and Davis Wright Tremaine’s Alexandra Barrage, a former regulator at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation who is now helping law firm Davis Wright Tremaine build its crypto services. Have a listen after reading the column. |
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Launched in September 2017, KuCoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange with its operational headquarters in Seychelles. As a user-oriented platform with focus on inclusiveness and community action reach, it offers over 700 digital assets, and currently provides spot trading, margin trading, P2P fiat trading, futures trading, staking, and lending to its 20 million users in 207 countries and regions. In 2022, KuCoin raised over $150 million in investments through a pre-Series B round, bringing total investments to $170 million with Round A combined, at a total valuation of $10 billion. KuCoin is currently one of the top 5 crypto exchanges according to CoinMarketCap. Forbes also named KuCoin one of the Best Crypto Exchanges in 2021. In 2022, The Ascent named KuCoin the Best Crypto App for enthusiasts. |
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In Defense of Crypto Speculation |
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(Rachel Sun/CoinDesk) I want to clarify something: Speculation is not a dirty word. Along with many others, I’ve lately called on the crypto community to emphasize real-world use cases. The way out of crypto winter, we’ve argued, is to discard the “number go up” mindset that underpinned so much pre-winter market activity and focus instead on solutions that bring real benefits to humanity – such as renewable energy projects. The argument is that if inflows into decentralized finance (DeFi) are to be more sustainable then the yields that attract investors must be based on services that deliver more tangible economic value. But after I spoke to a gathering of credit union executives hosted by financial services provider Allied Solutions this week, I feel compelled to qualify that position. One audience member asked me how he can fulfill the demands of his credit union’s younger members that it provide crypto trading opportunities “without simply encouraging pure speculation.” On the surface, it sounded like a concern directly aligned with my “real-world use case” point. If we could just stop the speculators, there might be a better story of growth and purpose for this industry, rather than the get-rich-quick values that tend to be associated with “crypto bros.” But as important as it is to build real value, the question contained a misconception on the worth and purpose of speculation. It is vital to a market economy. It is fundamental to how we determine, as a society, which ideas, projects or businesses win or lose. We need it. Picking winners and losers When it comes to nascent technologies that, on the one hand, hold potential for mass disruption but, on the other, run up against an especially ingrained and politically entrenched incumbent system, the speculative process is both drawn out and highly volatile. We saw this in the early days of the internet, as the dot-com boom pushed prices for web-based companies to unsustainable levels but also laid the groundwork for the boom of the Web2 era. In crypto, the speculative furor is even more intense because of the degree of potential disruption and because the barriers to achieving that disruption are so high that the cycles of hope and disappointment are more extreme. Those factors also draw the period of speculation out longer because they extend the process a technology goes through before reaching mass adoption and full potential. Continue reading... |
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Off the Charts: Tornado Cash Loses Force
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You’re looking at a chart – this one from blockchain analytics firm Nansen – that reminds us of the power of the U.S. government. On one day a month ago, more than 1,000 transactions were processed through the Ethereum-based mixing service Tornado Cash. Now, two weeks after the U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control took the unprecedented step of putting the software on its special list of sanctioned individuals and entities,Tornado Cash’s volume has plunged, with the number getting as low as 128 on Wednesday of this week. |
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The Conversation: A Defamation Suit’s Short Life
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At a time when many have lost money on price bubbles, the hubbub around YouTuber Ben Armstrong (aka Bitboy Crypto – 1.44 million subscribers) filing and later withdrawing a defamation lawsuit against fellow YouTuber Erling Mengshoel, Jr., (aka Atozy – 1.24 million subscribers), is a bellwether for how tolerance for coin-pumping influencers is wearing thin. Yet, it’s also a reminder of how power in social media is still distributed unevenly. - Here’s a thread from Atozy telling his 41,000 Twitter followers of the lawsuit, which referred to a nine-month-ago video critiquing Armstrong’s support for a token called PAMP, and announcing a crowdfunding campaign to pay for his legal defense.
- Here’s Web3 commentator Cobie (728,000 Twitter followers) telling Atozy of his contribution of “100k or somethin” to his legal defense.
- Here’s Armstrong explaining the lawsuit to his 882,000 Twitter followers on the grounds that “you can’t literally make up lies and accusations about people.”
- When Ripple Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz (380,000 Twitter followers) responded by asking Armstrong to “Please identify one specific statement that you can prove is a lie,” the YouTuber replied that he couldn’t because he was advised against making statements about the case.
- Here’s Armstrong responding to the mounting backlash against him by mocking his “haters” and here he is asking, ”When will folks figure out everything you try to do to hurt me only helps me? … I just keep winning. And the wins are only about to get bigger.”
- But then here’s the YouTube video in which he announced he’s dropping the lawsuit, declaring, “I didn't understand that my name is now so big that if I file a lawsuit it would be found and be made public.”
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Relevant Reads: Ethereum Censorship Fears |
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(NOAA/Unsplash, modified by CoinDesk) Fallout continues from the U.S. sanctions against Tornado Cash, with discussion raging over whether corporate entities’ obligation to comply with the ban will result in some, or perhaps many, of Ethereum’s validators censoring its blockchain. This week the speculation impacted progress on Ethereum’s forthcoming Merge, the concern being that under the blockchain new proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, centralized managers of staking pools could block Tornado Cash transactions. CoinDesk’s coverage included the following: |
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