Recommended read: Erik Voorhees responds to Sam Bankman-Fried.
“Yesterday, Sam Bankman-Fried posted his “Possible Digital Asset Industry Standards.” He describes the document as “a set of standards that we as an industry could enact to create clarity and protect customers while waiting for full federal regulatory regimes.”
He stresses that his post is “just a draft” and he welcomes feedback.
Some have thrown Sam under the bus, questioned his motives, called him mean names, etc. While I’ve met Sam, I don’t know him personally, and I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. My assumption here is that Sam is a good actor attempting to make a productive contribution to crypto policy.
This whole topic is too important for a mere snipey Tweet, so below are some deeper thoughts on crypto industry regulation and Sam’s specific proposals.”
See Also: Bankless: SBF vs. Erik Voorhees – How Do We Regulate Crypto?
“This year’s elections mark the first wave of races in which industry donations not only rose to significant levels but, with well over $80 million in play, it actually reached a level occupied by other U.S. industries famous for their political clout – such as health care, energy and Wall Street itself.
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of crypto exchange FTX, and fellow FTX executive Ryan Salame have drawn the most attention this year as campaign ATMs, with Bankman-Fried surging to become the country’s fourth-largest individual donor. That means he’s sandwiched between giants of U.S. investing – Ken Griffin of Citadel at No. 3 and Jeff Yass of Susquehanna International Group at No. 5. Yass is also a major donor for the crypto cause.
Much of the crypto industry’s giving is funneled through a small number of PACs that amassed major war chests. Two of the biggest PACs – Bankman-Fried’s Protect our Future and Salame’s American Dream Federal Action – are propped up almost entirely by the FTX executives. Apart from the FTX executives’ groups, the crypto industry has several others PACs. Two of the biggest are the Crypto Freedom PAC, a group backed by Yass and the conservative Club for Growth that’s deployed about $5 million so far this year, and GMI – which took in $12 million in this cycle and funds other industry PACs, including Web3 Forward and Crypto Innovation.
Overall, a lot of the industry money – when factoring in the conservative PACs with GMI’s more balanced approach – went to crypto-sympathetic Republicans. Friends in the GOP could serve the industry well because Republicans are expected to take over the House majority. They also have a chance to seize the Senate, though that remains a tougher path. Total ad spending is projected to approach $10 billion for the midterms.
Seats up and down the ballot – including the race for president – are very much on our radar, not just in 2024 but for at least the next decade.
Just tallying up the congressional election victories “misses the forest for the trees,” said Boltansky. The more important point is that the crypto field is making itself known as a significant political force.
The industry will have the relationships and standing necessary to engage with policymakers the next time we see either a bad bill or a harmful proposal.”
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“Bitcoin’s price could be up for any number of reasons, but here are two key things that happened on Wednesday. The Bank of Canada surprised financial markets by raising interest rates by only 50 basis points instead of 75 basis points. And the U.S. Census Bureau also reported a 10.9% decline in new home sales in September around the same time.
Both feed into the same idea: Central banks might slow rate increases because the economy is cooling enough to tame inflation. Policy makers in Canada raised by less than expected. Meanwhile, U.S. inflation has been fueled, in part, by a hot housing market. We’ll find out what the Fed has in mind during next week’s Federal Open Market Committee meeting.
While bitcoin and crypto soared, most of Big Tech had a bad week. Last week, Alphabet (GOOGL), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META) and Microsoft (MFST) reported quarterly earnings. Each of these companies, except Apple, straight up had a bad time. Between October 24 and October 28: GOOGL shed 6.2%, Amazon dropped 13.3%, Apple gained 4.5%, Meta crashed 23.5%, and Microsoft lost 4.8%. Meanwhile, bitcoin gained 6.8%.”
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“Over the past month, as a part of the execution strategy for Lido’s Next Chapter, Lido has conducted an initial pilot integration of Distributed Validator Technology (DVT) with SSV Network on the Goerli testnet.
Distributed Validator Technology enables multiple Node Operators to run distributed validators, decreasing single points of failure and providing important benefits across decentralization and diversity, infrastructure resilience, and security. Additionally, Lido anticipates that DVT will play a crucial role in the path towards enabling permissionless validation for the protocol.
Lido is committed to allowing solo stakers to participate in the protocol, and DVT is among the most important mechanisms for this to be enabled.”
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“The government says it’s ready to engage with virtual asset service providers and invite them to the city. Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) will conduct a public consultation on how retail investors may be given a “suitable degree of access to virtual assets” to licensed exchanges, according to the policy statement.
The policy statement adds that Hong Kong is “open to the possibility” of having exchange-traded funds on virtual assets. [Further], the SFC takes the view that tokenized securities should be treated in a similar way to existing financial instruments.
The SFC has been actively looking to set up a regime to authorize ETFs [that] provide exposure to mainstream virtual assets with appropriate investment guardrails.”
See Also: Privacy Protection a Top Issue for Digital Yuan: China’s Central Bank Governor
“GameStop today announced that it has added support for NFTs minted via Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Immutable X to its marketplace—which means that assets from Web3 games can be bought and sold through the platform.
Immutable X-based games like Gods Unchained, Illuvium, and Guild of Guardians are among the titles that now have their respective interactive NFT items available through the GameStop marketplace. That includes tokenized, tradeable items such as digital trading cards and customizable land plots, among others.
Immutable, the firm behind the platform, achieved crypto “unicorn” status earlier this year. Investors like Tencent and Animoca Brands are betting big on Immutable’s vision for Web3 gaming, bringing the startup to a hefty $2.5 billion valuation via a $200 million total Series C funding round in March.”
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“Filecoin essentially allows users to buy or sell computer storage on a network that offers decentralized storage of data and files. The service is meant to act as an alternative to centralized storage providers like Amazon Web Services.
The Decentralized Storage Alliance, launched in conjunction with the nonprofit Filecoin Foundation, will work to establish development standards that would help decentralized storage solutions meet the needs of enterprise customers, including making it easier for data centers to onboard onto a decentralized network.”
See Also: Slava Rubin Says Web3’s Future Will Be Based on Decentralized Data Storage
“Musk originally said, both publicly and in private (since-leaked) text messages, that he aimed to put Twitter on-chain and make it open-source, accept Dogecoin for payments for Twitter services, and go after crypto spam bots.
Regardless of your opinion of Musk, anyone who believes in the future viability of crypto and blockchain solutions and would like to see more mass adoption should be excited to see what happens next.”
See Also: Bankless: The Next Steps for ETH – Justin Drake | Devcon 2022
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