“Bitcoin investment firm NYDIG and professional services giant Deloitte said they will work together to help businesses of different sizes incorporate digital assets into their operations. Deloitte’s clients include 90% of the Fortune 500 companies as well as 7,000 private firms.
The two formed a strategic alliance that will help NYDIG expand its client base by offering bitcoin products in banking, consumer loyalty, rewards programs and employee benefits to the consultancy’s customers while strengthening Deloitte’s digital asset offerings.
The future of financial services will center around the use of digital assets, and we are focused on advising our clients on ways to engage in a regulated and compliant way.”
See Also: Bank of Israel experiments with central bank digital currency smart contracts and privacy
“This weekend, Bankman-Fried discussed the “responsibility” he feels to bail out crypto firms in crisis. He repeated the sentiment on Twitter, where he said the principal concern is mitigating retail losses, disclosing risks and preventing bad debts from spreading across the sector.
Today, FTX supplied the struggling crypto lender BlockFi with $250 million in credit. Last week, Bankman-Fried’s trading outfit Alameda Research bailed out crypto broker Voyager Digital. Of course, these lifelines aren’t simply altruistic, but also a way for FTX to expand.
Bankman-Fried is a self-proclaimed “effective altruist,” or capitalist who believes in earning as much as possible to give as much back. It’s unclear whether his actions now fall in the former or latter camps: Perhaps he’s intervening today to profit tomorrow.
Crypto is supposed to be guided by certain core principles including financial transparency and free markets. Perhaps the most important is the idea that autonomous code, not humans, should determine winners and losers in markets – ensuring that everyone plays by the same rules. So is there a moral hazard in Bankman-Fried stepping in?
Today, the firms that seem at the greatest risk of default are those that are primarily reproducing the worst aspects of the legacy financial system – all without consumer protections. Celsius and Three Arrows were taking risky bets with client funds. And centralized exchanges are black boxes. If crypto learns anything from the ongoing market reckoning, let it be that its only real hope in breaking away from the convoluted, easily corrupted legacy financial system is in real decentralization.
Progressive politicians of JP Morgan’s day were driven to create the Fed in part after witnessing Morgan and his peers’ influence in the economy. Despite his altruistic intentions, the Pujo Committee feared that Morgan could influence markets for his own gain.
For his part, Bankman-Fried is amenable to working with regulators. He’s said he’d spend upward of $1 billion in political contributions in part to earn officials’ ears. Changes need to be made, especially if crypto’s largest players are just going to create a worse banking system.
But the real change, challenges and opportunities of the crypto industry will happen at the protocol level – not directed by any one person.”
See Also: BlockFi Receives $250M Credit Facility From FTX
See Also: Celsius Up 50% Amid GameStop-Style Short Squeeze Attempt
See Also: ‘Enormous Outflows’ From Largest Bitcoin ETF May Have Triggered BTC Crash
“Uniswap Labs said Tuesday it has acquired NFT marketplace aggregator Genie in a push to support trading of non-fungible tokens “soon.”
NFTs will be integrated into our products, starting with the Uniswap web app, where soon you’ll be able to buy and sell NFTs across all major marketplaces. We’ll also integrate NFTs into our developer APIs and widgets, making Uniswap a comprehensive platform for users and builders in web3.”
See Also: Ethereum Sepolia testnet Beacon Chain launched and ready for trial merge
“A video released by investigative YouTuber Philip Rusnack, known as Philion, has revived the debate over whether Yuga Labs’ flagship Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible token (NFT) collection employs racist imagery and white supremacist esotericism. In the hour-long video released Monday on YouTube, Rusnack laid out his case, claiming that BAYC is “one massive alt-right inside joke.”
There is a point at which these similarities are no longer coincidences.
Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Center on Extremism — who is often cited as an extremism expert — said in a February interview with Input that he saw no correlation between the logo and the Totenkopf.
Ripps has faced allegations that his complied research is a publicity tactic to sell his own BAYC derivative NFT collection called RR/BAYC, featuring over 6,000 NFTs based on the original collection.“
“The partnership allows DeFi liquidity providers to earn interest using USDC stablecoins via Tower Fund Capital, a SEC-Reg D private lender for real estate investment loans with a $140 million debt fund.
I think the timing is great given the unfolding of centralized applications where the transparency was not there. TrueFi, Maple and Goldfinch are also showcasing with Tower Fund these opportunities to be lending into real estate with full transparency, showing that DeFi capital can be allocated to specific opportunities in a way that is no longer a black box.
It’s just the latest in a series of tie-ups for Teller exploring real world assets and traditional financial services offerings, such as insurance products, to provide DeFi with an alternative to simply earning yield on cryptocurrency.”
“Twitter’s board, according to an SEC filing today, is unanimously asking shareholders at an upcoming special meeting to approve Elon Musk’s $44 billion bid to acquire the social media giant. Board members said in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing that the proposed takeover is ‘advisable and in the best interests of Twitter and its stockholders.’
If completed, the buyout could become a major milestone for crypto. In the months following Musk’s April offer, the billionaire has emphasized that integrating payment services—possibly Dogecoin—with the platform is one of three “critical areas” he intends to prioritize once taking the company private. Musk has repeatedly stated that he intends for Twitter to enable payments in both fiat and crypto.”
The Disrupt 