A 45-Minute Halt 🛑

Also today: 😤 Grayscale challenges SEC, 📉 Genesis pulls back, 😎 Jack Dorsey and Jay-Z's Btrust's acquisition, and more!

September 06, 2023

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What’s Poppin’?

by Samyuktha Sriram

The Base blockchain had a delay in block production earlier today, marking the network’s first outage since its launch last month.

by Samyuktha Sriram

Grayscale’s lawyers argued that the SEC should conclude that it has no grounds to treat GBTC differently than Bitcoin Futures ETFs.

by Kari McMahon

Genesis joins a number of other market makers scaling back crypto spot trading in the US.

by Kari McMahon

Jack Dorsey and rapper Jay-Z committed 500 bitcoin to set up Btrust in 2021. It has now acquired Qala, a Bitcoin developer training organization.

On the Pod…

Friend.tech, a decentralized social media platform in which you can buy and sell “keys” in your friends on X (formerly known as Twitter) whose value can go up and down, has become a viral sensation, racking up as many as 100,000 users since launching on August 10.

Should keys be considered securities and thus regulated by the SEC? How should gains and losses be taxed? And how private should users assume their communications and transactions on the platform are? Securities and banking law professor at George Mason Law School JW Verret, and tax partner and co-head of the Digital Assets and Blockchain Practice at Fried Frank Jason Schwartz, share their thoughts.

Daily Bits…✍️✍️✍️

  • 💻 The U.S. DOJ asserted that Sam Bankman-Fried has adequate laptop access to review case materials, despite his lawyers' claims of insufficient preparation time for his upcoming trial in October.

  • 🏛️ SBF may also face legal scrutiny over a Super Bowl ad and FTX's bankruptcy in the upcoming trial, with potential consequences including a significant prison sentence if found guilty of fraud and misuse of customer assets.

  • 🌐 The Financial Stability Board and the International Monetary Fund are preparing to unveil a joint paper at the G20 Summit, proposing a global roadmap for coordinated cryptocurrency policy implementation and information exchange.

  • 💰 Coinbase amplified its bond buyback program to $180 million, indicating a surge in interest from bondholders who initially showed limited enthusiasm toward selling their notes back to the company.

  • ⚖️ Matter Labs cofounder proposed the creation of an "Ethereum Supreme Court," a hierarchical system of on-chain courts to adjudicate on-chain disputes, challenging the prevailing "code is law" doctrine in the blockchain space.

  • 💼 Ark Invest's Chief Futurist Brett Winton criticized the U.S. government's approach to bitcoin, arguing that efforts to undermine the cryptocurrency could potentially harm the country's long-term strategic interests.

  • 🌏 China's Shandong province outlined ambitious plans to foster the metaverse sector, targeting a market valuation of $20.5 billion by 2025 through the establishment of industrial parks and nurturing of metaverse companies.

Today in Crypto Adoption...

  • 💳 Visa is collaborating with Solana and Circle's USDC stablecoin to enhance the efficiency of cross-border payments, aiming to leverage Solana's high-speed performance capabilities.

  • 🔗 Circle extended USDC deployment to Layer 2 networks OP Mainnet and Base, enhancing direct transaction capabilities and potentially reducing fees compared to the Ethereum network.

  • 🦊 MetaMask introduced a new feature allowing users to convert cryptocurrency to fiat, facilitating easier withdrawals to bank accounts or PayPal balances.

The $$$ Corner…

  • 💼 Coinbase garnered $57 million to initiate a crypto lending platform targeting institutional clients, where it intends to loan customer crypto assets to institutional trading entities.

  • 🌐 Story Protocol debuted with a $54 million funding round spearheaded by a16z crypto.

  • 💰 D3, a specialist in Web3 domain names, secured $5 million in funding to facilitate the tokenization of premium domain names, with Shima Capital leading the investment round.

What Do You Meme?

Recommended Reads

📈 Your Market Update 📉

  • BTC is down .1%, trading at $25,720

  • ETH is down .1%, trading at $1,631

  • BTC dominance: 46.35%

  • Crypto market cap: $1.08 trillion

*All data as of today, 7:00 am ET

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