From the erratic ups and downs in bitcoin and ethereum value, to the explosion in initial coin offerings, and the unstoppable demand for mining-ready GPUs, cryptocurrency has become an inescapable story. It’s also become increasingly difficult to make sense of — as the industry expands, new currencies sprout up, and companies form overnight. Check here for the complete coverage of bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, monero, Venezuela’s petro, cryptocurrencies at large, and the ways that ICOs and the underlying blockchain technology are helping shape a burgeoning industry and giving life to a new wave of startups and entrepreneurs.
Once championed by the Trump family after heavily bankrolling their crypto ambitions, Justin Sun is now unhappy with his chosen bedfellows. Suing Trump-linked World Liberty Financial, Sun alleges in a federal lawsuit that his former allies maliciously froze his $75 million investment, denouncing the platform as “World Tyranny.”
Inventing the future requires a future people want.
Yuga Labs, the creator of the now-depreciated line of NFTs, settled its lawsuit against artists Ryder Ripps and Jeremy Cahen, who were accused of launching a copycat RR/BAYC NFT collection, as reported by CoinDesk.
The parties settled to avoid a trial after a court reversed Yuga Labs’ $9 million win last year.
The New York Times thinks it found the elusive person behind the pseudonym credited with creating Bitcoin. It relied on a combination of textual analysis and in-person tells to narrow a pool of suspects “from 34,000 down to one”.
Spoiler: it’s Adam Back, a cohort of Jeffrey Epstein and early “cypherpunk” who helped lay the groundwork for cryptocurrency.
[nytimes.com]
The CFTC insists it’s the sole authority on prediction markets — but can the agency police insider trading?
Apparently he wasn’t satisfied with just the book. Sort of a shame McKenzie couldn’t release it on April 1, don’t you agree?
David Morris expands on his Verge story about Jeffrey Epstein and cryptocurrency in an interview with writer Wajahat Ali:
Kalshi and Polymarket are cosplaying as the news, even as gambling on Iran, Venezuela, and nuclear war runs rampant.
Epstein may not have fully understood crypto, but he helped shape its culture anyway.
And neither one had noticeable AI. T-Mobile brought the actual Backstreet Boys in, while Coinbase broke things up with a weird karaoke-style presentation of “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” to highlight its crypto exchange without actually mentioning crypto.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek is getting in on the Super Bowl AI commercial break craze by launching his new AI.com website during the game. A press release describes the site as a way for users to “generate a private, personal AI agent that doesn’t just answer questions, but actually operates on the user’s behalf.”
Even after his 2008 conviction as a sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein still had friends in Silicon Valley. The New York Times details the companies that took his money — including Coinbase, wearable manufacturer Jawbone, and Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures — along with more he considered investing in, including Palantir, SpaceX, and Spotify.
[The New York Times]
Crypto bros are crashing out after finding that Epstein was a prominent early figure in cryptocurrency, with investor Patrick Riley remarking that “74.79 percent of the Bitcoin core development and code was committed after Jeffery Epstein took over the defacto senior management role as benefactor.”
Apparently, JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon did not take kindly to Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong accusing them of ruining the Clarity Act, and interrupted Armstrong’s coffee date with Tony Blair to say so:
“You are full of s—,” said Dimon, a longtime crypto skeptic who previously called bitcoin a fraud, his index finger pointed squarely at Armstrong’s face. Dimon, in a nutshell, told him to stop lying on TV, according to people familiar with the conversation.
[The Wall Street Journal]
In a 12-11 vote along party lines, the Senate Agriculture Committee, which regulates commodities, voted on Thursday to advance its portion of the crypto market structure bill to a Senate floor vote. This is not a good sign for the crypto industry, which had hoped that the bill would pass with bipartisan support. (In the meantime, the Senate Banking Committee’s half of the bill, which handles securities, remains stuck in markup limbo.)
The NFL has added prediction markets to its list of “prohibited categories” for commercials in Super Bowl LX. However, as Front Office Sports points out, sports betting isn’t on that list. While there will be limits on the number of sports bettor ads allowed, the league seems to be drawing a distinction between the two categories.
[Front Office Sports]
Polymarket — the same platform someone made thousands of dollars betting on Nicolás Maduro’s arrest — has 48 hours to cease operations in Portugal after users wagered more than 103 million euros (~$120 million) on the outcome of the country’s presidential election, according to a report from CoinDesk.
Political betting is illegal in Portugal, and its gambling regulator says Polymarket doesn’t have a license to operate in the country, CoinDesk reports.
Senate Banking Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-SC) made a last minute decision to postpone a vote on the Clarity Act, which would determine which federal agency could regulate crypto. Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong came out against the latest version of the bill one day before the scheduled vote.
[The New York Times]
On Thursday, Trust Wallet announced a “security incident” affecting version 2.68 of its Chrome extension. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao confirmed that Trust Wallet “will cover” the losses and that the team is investigating the hack.
I don’t know what “AX, the financial industry’s first centralized exchange for perpetual futures on traditional asset classes,” is, but I do recognize Harrison.
He was once touting FTX Stocks, and later mentioned by the FDIC for statements about the insurance status of customers’ accounts that it considered “false and misleading,” before everything went boom.
Bitcoin tried to evade the Feds. Now it wants to share a beer with them.
His latest work, “Regular Animals,” features Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Pablo Picasso, Andy Warhol, and Beeple himself (aka Mike Winkelmann) as robot dogs that walk around taking photos and poop out stylized images, 256 of which are NFTs. Beeple told Page Six that the piece represents how we now “see the world through their eyes.” Eurgh.
The buy now, pay later service’s stablecoin — called KlarnaUSD — will be pegged to the US dollar when it launches next year. Klarna says it’s making the move to “make payments faster and cheaper.”
Said Trump of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in his 60 Minutes interview last night. Which is the same thing he said immediately after he pardoned the man two weeks ago, so at least he’s consistent.
What you won’t see on camera — even in the extended cut — is his lengthy rant following the questioning about crypto and corruption, but the transcript reveals all.
The “Boximus” avatars are for Yuga Labs’ Otherside metaverse, and they cost $65.99 each while they were available. If you’re really disappointed you missed out on a chance to own a digital, anthropomorphized Amazon box, you can buy one on the resale market.
