THIS NEWSLETTER IS SPONSORED BY | Happy Saturday! New in the noise: Biden's report on stablecoin risks, a Squid Game token scam, and something something tungsten cubes. Signal below. Mike Orcutt here. | | | The White House weighs in on stablecoins, finally. On Monday the President's Working Group on Financial Markets finally released a long-anticipated report on the risks that stablecoins pose to the financial system. Long story short: the working group called on Congress to create new laws that would limit stablecoin issuers to insured depository institutions.
The report drew mixed reviews among DC policymakers, whose responses formed the initial battle lines for the coming debate. Unsurprisingly, the crypto advocates on the Republican side of the Senate were not happy.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis said that the proposal that only insured depository institutions should be allowed to issue stablecoins is "misguided and wrong." Pennsylvania Senator stressed that as the report states, it is Congress's responsibility to clarify the authorities of various federal regulators. "While Congress works on thoughtful legislation, I hope the administration will resist the urge to stretch existing laws in effort to expand its regulatory authority," he said.
| The founder of the quietly-influential ComplyAdvantage is on a 'moral mission' to stop financial crime. Like the company he runs, Charlie Delingpole plays a discreet yet influential role in the fintech and crypto industries. ComplyAdvantage sits behind the scenes of many of the most popular fintech platforms, Ryan Weeks writes, "helping them to weed out dodgy transactions." For his latest interview piece, Ryan sat down with Delingpole to discuss his company's "moral mission" to root out money laundering. | Switzerland's marquee digital assets projects are finally coming together. Most prominently, the Six Digital Exchange (SDX), a project spearheaded by Swiss stock exchange operator SIX Group, will launch by the end of this year. That's according to Thomas Moser, an alternate member of the governing board of the Swiss National Bank. Moser recently told Ryan Weeks that the system will launch with a stablecoin that is backed by reserves held at the central bank — the first-ever such arrangement in the world. | Key crypto hires and moves: October 2021. October was quieter than recent months on the hiring front, but there were still some big hires and moves, particularly at VC firms, crypto exchanges and banks. Tim Copeland collected them all for you in his useful monthly roundup. | The Argo blockchain 'mafia' is pushing crypto into London's public markets. Executives past and present at the crypto mining firm Argo Blockchain have been busy lately, setting up publicly traded crypto companies in London. Peculiar! So, Ryan Weeks decided to investigate. Here's what he came up with. | ICYMI: A DAO bought a 2,000 pound tungsten cube for $250,000. Quintin Tarantino plans to auction six uncut, never-before-seen scenes from Pulp Fiction as NFTs. Burger King partnered with Robinhood to give away 2 million dogecoin. New York City Mayor-elect Eric Adams said he'd take his first three paychecks in bitcoin. El Salvador's president Nayib Bukele tweeted plans to use the nation's bitcoin fund to build 20 "bitcoin schools." Kroger said a press release that appeared on its website and said the website would accept Bitcoin Cash was fake. FTX US will pay University of Kentucky basketball players as part of a new sponsorship deal. Paradigm co-founder Matt Huang joined Stripe's board of directors. Bakkt said it would add ETH to its platform alongside bitcoin. Coinbase is testing a subscription service with zero trading fees and prioritized support. Square reported $42 million in bitcoin profits for the third quarter. Former Binance US CEO Brian Brooks joined Bitfury as CEO. CME will launch micro ether futures next month. Amazon Web Services is seeking a 'digital assets specialist.' The global supply chain crisis is disrupting shipments to US bitcoin mining farms. Compass Mining said it will host a new 140-megawatt mining facility in Ontario, Canada. China-based English language training firm Meten EdtechX is pivoting to bitcoin mining as China cracks down on the private tutoring business. Bitcoin mining hardware maker Canaan has filed a lawsuit against HighSharp, the chip design partner behind rival AGM Holdings, alleging patent infringement. Chinese law enforcement confiscated more than $62 million in cryptocurrency from an alleged Filecoin miner Ponzi scheme. The Biden administration nominated Saule Omarova to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Australia's top bank is planning to integrate crypto trading into its app. A PBoC official said 10% of China's population has opened digital yuan wallets. Thailand's oldest bank acquired a 51% stake in crypto exchange Bitkub for $537 million. Crypto lending platform Celsius is acquiring Israel-based custodian GK8 for $115 million. | | | Blockchain gaming is so hot right now. Among venture capitalists, at least VCs deployed nearly $3.4 billion across 163 crypto-related startups and projects in October, and 42% of the deals involved NFT and/or gaming platforms. The Block Research's John Dantoni breaks down all the big October funding trends in his latest piece (subscription required).
A DEX on Cosmos is working on a way to prevent front running. Front running and the privileged extraction of value by miners have become big problems for decentralized exchanges. That's why Osmosis, the biggest DEX in the Cosmos ecosystem, is developing a way to prevent both issues, reports Tim Copeland. | | | THIS NEWSLETTER IS BROUGHT TO YOU BY | Securing the World's Transition to Blockchain As blockchain transforms the global economy, institutions and investors urgently need secure, independent custody infrastructure for cryptocurrencies.
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| | | The NYT on NFT.NYC. The "masters of the metaverse" arrived in Manhattan this past week for an NFT party IRL. The NYT's Kevin Roose has a good recap. Highlight? "One morning, a group of NFT fans in Times Square struggled to start a chant of "gm, New York" — "gm" being the traditional Twitter greeting of the crypto-converted. By the end, even Elmo looked embarrassed." | | | "Sometimes, people focus on labels. For example, we hear terms like 'decentralized finance,' 'currency,' or 'peer-to-peer lending.' It can seem easy to take these words at face value. Make no mistake: regardless of the label or purported mission, we will be looking at the economic realities of a given product or arrangement to determine whether it complies with securities laws." —SEC chair Gary Gensler, during a November 4 speech. | | | You are receiving this e-mail because you are subscribed to The Block's free newsletter. If someone shared this newsletter with you, you can easily subscribe to receive it in your inbox here. If you're looking for even more content, we have a separate newsletter for The Block Research, which you can sign-up for here. | | | | |
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