Crypto

The US government’s criminal case against the former product leader of OpenSea, Nate Chastain, kicks off this week. Chastain is accused of buying up NFTs that he knew would be featured on OpenSea’s homepage, then selling them shortly thereafter as their value spiked.

When presented with a $100 million sponsorship deal for FTX, Swift was apparently one of the only celebrities who questioned whether it was selling unregistered securities.

Bittrex, one of the exchanges to allow trading in Dennis Rodman’s Potcoin crypto, has been charged by the SEC with operating an unregistered national securities exchange.

David Marcus left Facebook in 2021 after the company failed to launch the cryptocurrency project he oversaw. Now he’s back with a startup called Lightspark that wants to make it easy for developers to facilitate payments through the Lighting Network, a layer-two protocol for enabling fast transactions with fractions of Bitcoins.

Crypto exchange Gemini has failed to raise money, so the twin sea gods who founded the exchange have dipped into their store of shipwreck treasure to loan the company $100 million.

Andy Baio discovered it’s there while trying to fix his printer. If you have a Mac, you can see for yourself. Open Terminal, then type (in a single line):

Signature, Bank, closed by regulators almost a month ago, was an important ramp for controversial stablecoin firm Tether, Bloomberg reports. Its Signet payments platform was part of how Tether’s clientele could send dollars to Capital Union Bank.

Last week, Elon Musk’s lawyers asked a judge to dismiss a lawsuit that claims he’s “engaged in a Crypto Pyramid Scheme” around Dogecoin, citing his tweets as evidence, according to Reuters. Today, Twitter’s bird logo was swapped out for a doge one on the web.

There’s a new licensing framework there, and the US appears to be less crypto-friendly in 2023 than it was in 2021 or 2022.

Sure, maybe Elon Musk could take over FTX’s vacant office space in Miami, but the edit history on the mayor’s tweet exposes this one as a joke.

Uncle Sam sold off $216 million this month. Four more sales coming this year!

Even worse than last year, writes Fais Khan. One thing that was boosting Coinbase’s returns? Luna, which oopsies doopsie, failed.

After the rapid collapse of Silvergate, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature, the crypto world has needed to find new bankers. Regional bankers such as Fifth Third and Customers Bancorp are stepping up. Big banks like JP Morgan Chase can afford to be choosy:

Folding Ideas, the folks behind the classic “Line Goes Up” video about NFTs (and generally just a very good YouTube channel), just put up a long and spicy take on the metaverse in general, Decentraland in particular, and especially the people who spend their time and energy promoting them both. It’s a long watch, but it’s a good one. It’ll make you feel things.

CTO Michael Kagen doesn’t mince words when it comes to crypto. The industry “bought a lot of [Nvidia’s hardware], and then eventually it collapsed, because it doesn’t bring anything useful for society,” he tells The Guardian, “AI does.”

That’s right, you can use them to serve complaints now. Congratulations to the lawyers!

They just didn’t want to listen:

FT Alphaville rounds up the Signature Bank music videos.

Hey, remember the industry that isn’t the traditional US financial system?

It’s the promise the president made to depositors in a speech at the White House on Monday. Throughout his brief remarks, Biden also reassured viewers that no taxpayer money would be used to bail out the bank.

Silvergate is gone. The FDIC took over Silicon Valley Bank. Several other banks have lost billions in value, and it’s unclear whether a number of tech companies will be able to keep operating while all of this gets figured out.