Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
In the crypto media this week, the single biggest bit of news was the announcement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)—America’s leading derivatives regulator— is suing crypto’s top exchange by trading volume, Binance, along with CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, allegedly for unlicensed derivatives trading.
The lawsuit doesn’t end there. The exchange also stands accused of having insufficient anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) controls, knowingly evading or helping U.S. clients evade regulators, and even trading against its own customers.
The new lawsuit wasn’t a huge talking point over on crypto Twitter, probably since the industry already knows federal enforcement actions against Binance by this point are like water off a duck’s back. The exchange is also in the midst of ongoing Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Department of Justice (DOJ) and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) investigations.
When the news broke, Zhao simply tweeted “4”—which, as he made clear in a tweet back in January, is shorthand for “Ignore FUD, fake news, attacks, etc.”
Crypto analytics company Nansen did some on-chain sleuthing and saw that Binance customers weren’t all that fazed by the news either.
Meanwhile that day, the worlds of Gucci and Bored Ape Yacht Club collided in an announcement by the fashion house. Just last year, Gucci started accepting crypto at certain stores.
CryptoSlate data analyst James Stratten pointed out that Bitcoin’s hashrate growth in the last three months has been the third highest adjustment in the last five years, although the reason behind it mystified him. Hashrate is a metric for determining the combined computing power of the total Bitcoin network and it generally climbs as more and newer mining rigs get deployed.
On a 3 month rolling basis of the #Bitcoin hash rate (cancel out noise), this is the third most aggressive upwards adjustment in the past 5 years.
Only on two occasions has there been more substantial growth.
May 2021 – 70% (coming off the China mining ban).
After the 2019… pic.twitter.com/jocblsgAZ4
— James V. Straten (@jimmyvs24) March 27, 2023
Polygon launched the long-awaited mainnet for its new Polygon zkEVM network on Monday. Polygon zkEVM is an Ethereum scaling solution, which means that it processes transactions faster and cheaper than Ethereum’s own mainnet, lightening the load for the world’s most popular high-functionality smart contract enabled-blockchain. Ethereum’s creator Vitalik Buterin sent a hidden message in the first transaction.
That’s not all he did…
British celebrity chef Gordon Ramsey became the latest addition to the cryptoverse that day.
Michael Saylor, the founder and chairman of cloud software company MicroStrategy, was feeling good. He’d paid off a huge loan and Bought More Bitcoin. His company’s total holdings today have an estimated value of $3.8 million, although last year his war chest contained less BTC and was worth over $6 billion.
MicroStrategy repaid its $205M Silvergate loan at a 22% discount. As of 3/23/23, $MSTR acquired an additional ~6,455 bitcoins for ~$150M at an average of ~$23,238 per #bitcoin & held ~138,955 BTC acquired for ~$4.14B at an average of ~$29,817 per bitcoin. https://t.co/ALp9VLkTpt
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) March 27, 2023
Tether CTO Paolo Ardino shilled some USDT on Wednesday.
USDt is resilient to the test of time.#tether is on track to have another record quarter, bringing it’s additional equity (on top of reserves) to > 1.6B and counting.
Ask yourself: how many banks can say to be so overcollateralized?
Answer: none. Fractional reserve by a good… https://t.co/D7I2WwnD6D
— Paolo Ardoino 🍐 (@paoloardoino) March 29, 2023
Gabor Gurbacs, founder of community-focused crypto loyalty platform PointsVille compared the recent performances of the two leading stablecoins and found two totally different stories.
Tether (USDT) market cap increased approx. $9 Billion over the past 1 month.
USD Coin (USDC) market cap has decreased approx. $11 Billion over the past 1 month.
USDT reserves are now well over 2x that of USDC, $79 Billion vs $33 Billion, respectively. pic.twitter.com/u5Nw9C1tyP
— Gabor Gurbacs (@gaborgurbacs) March 29, 2023
Coinbase dabbled in some political crypto propaganda on Wednesday comparing the different regulatory climates in various first-world countries to suggest that U.S. lawmakers are lagging.
1 million tech jobs are at risk of going overseas. As the U.S. goes down a path of regulatory uncertainty, the EU, UK, UAE, Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, and Japan are all creating environments for crypto to flourish so that they can capitalize on the next wave of innovation. pic.twitter.com/2UMkFxajcM
— Coinbase (@coinbase) March 29, 2023
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren launched her anti-crypto reelection campaign with some propaganda that day.
A video of Matt Damon explaining his decision to do the widely-panned Crypto.com commercial made the rounds on Thursday. In it, he tells an endearing anecdote that redeems the crypto exchange a little.
A Twitter account dedicated to IRL collectibles posted a breaking bit of news about French soccer player Kylian Mbappe’s Sorare NFT. Judging by the replies, many were polarized on thsi question.
⚽️ BREAKING NEWS ⚽️
Kylian Mbappe’s Unique 1/1 Sorare card just sold at auction for $195,563.87.
This tops the all-time record for his most expensive physical card. ($161,130)
Which one would you rather have? pic.twitter.com/ltOTtYxafH
— The Collectibles Guru 🧠 (@ericwhiteback) March 30, 2023
Finally, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong on Friday came out in opposition to a widely circulated open letter calling for a halt on AI research. The petition has so far been signed by Twitter/SpaceX/Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak along with many tech luminaries in both industry and academia.
Count me among the people who think this is a bad idea.
There are no “experts” to adjudicate this issue, and many disparate actors will never agree. Committees and bureaucracy won’t solve anything.
As with many technologies, there are dangers, but we should keep marching… https://t.co/iM0sKOVTaw
— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) March 31, 2023
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Source: https://decrypt.co/125233/this-week-on-crypto-twitter-cz-fud-cftc-lawsuit-matt-damon-crypto-commercial
