Crypto

 “Clearly, the thing that’s transforming is not the technology — the technology is transforming you.” Jeanne Ross, formerly of the MIT Sloan Center for Information Systems ResearchIf El Salvador’s “Bitcoin Law” was “the shot heard round the world” for Bitcoin, then when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank questioned the legislation, it was the incumbent empire striking back. However, if El Salvador can implement its Bitcoin Law despite numerous technical and legal hurdles, it may force changes upon the organizations that oppose it and hasten reforms in how United States tax and commercial laws treat cryptocurrencies. The surprise shot heard round the worldAfter winning approval by a supermajority of its congress, El Salvador enacted its Bitcoin Law and became the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender. The Bitcoin Law passed mere days after El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, first announced his plans to introduce it. The short time between Bukele’s surprise announcement and the passage of the Bitcoin Law prevented opponents from blocking it.However, in a prescient series of tweets, Avanti Financial Group CEO and Bitcoin advocate Caitlin Long predicted “a big fight” over the Bitcoin Law and warned that “the world is about to pressure it [El Salvador] given what’s at stake.”  1/ THREAD ABOUT A HISTORIC DAY in #bitcoin: #ElSalvador president publicly announced support for legislation to make #BTC legal tender. *IF* it does become law, it wld have many secondary effects. Steel yourselves bc a big fight on this probably coming thohttps://t.co/BrrNxaLzpZ— Caitlin Long (@CaitlinLong_) June 6, 2021 The IMF’s leverage and lending PoolsIndeed, the day after El Salvador passed the Bitcoin Law, the IMF claimed that the legislation raised “a number of macroeconomic, financial and legal issues that require careful analysis.” The World Bank, which frequently cooperates with the IMF, joined the fray and proclaimed that it had rejected El Salvador’s request for help with implementing its Bitcoin Law because of “environmental and transparency shortcomings.” While these proclamations from powerful Washington, DC-based multinational organizations embody the fight that Long predicted in her tweets, the Bitcoin Law’s forward momentum may hasten reform in how these organizations and laws in the United States address cryptocurrency.Based on its governing documents, the IMF is more likely to resist the Bitcoin Law by exerting economic pressure than by legally challenging the legislation of a sovereign nation. IMF member nations, including El Salvador, are bound by a code of conduct memorialized in the IMF Articles of Agreement. These articles require members to allow their currency to be exchanged for foreign currencies freely and without restriction, keep the IMF informed of changes in financial and monetary policies that will affect fellow members’ economies, and modify their policies to accommodate the needs of the entire membership. The IMF administers a pool of money from which its members can borrow “to help nations abide by the code of conduct” in its Articles of Agreement. In other words, the IMF enforces its articles through access to its lending pool.    Since El Salvador is seeking a $1.3 billion loan from the IMF to revitalize its economy, the IMF could attempt to restrict or withhold this important funding based on the Articles of Agreement. For example, the IMF could argue that it was not adequately informed in advance of the Bitcoin Law. It could also demand that El Salvador limit or modify the Bitcoin Law to accommodate “the needs of the entire membership.” However, it appears that concerns over punitive action by the IMF based on the “issues” it raised with the Bitcoin Law may have been overblown. After the IMF voiced its concerns, El Salvador’s finance minister, Alejandro Zelaya, assured the IMF that the country was not abandoning the U.S. dollar as a currency. Zelaya also stated that talks with the IMF were progressing well and claimed that the IMF did not have a problem with the Bitcoin Law. The IMF did not respond to Zelaya’s remarks, and so the jury is still out on what, if any, action the IMF may take in response to the Bitcoin Law.Assuming El Salvador stands by its Bitcoin Law, it will still need help implementing it. As drafted, the Bitcoin Law only allows 90 days for implementing measures to make Bitcoin legal tender in the country. While El Salvador already has a partnership with the private digital wallet company Strike to build the requisite infrastructure for the Bitcoin Law, the World Bank flatly rejected the country’s request for assistance.Potential World Bank implications of the Bitcoin LawAlthough the World Bank is refusing to assist with the Bitcoin Law, an informative article by Martin Rivers suggests that the legislation may force the World Bank to accept Bitcoin. Specifically, the World Bank’s International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is governed by its founding document, its Articles of Agreement. Section 12 of Article V states that in lieu of accepting a member’s currency in certain cases, the Bank “shall accept […] notes or similar obligations issued by the Government of the member or the depository designated by such member.” Thus, the World Bank’s articles would require it to accept a note issued by El Salvador that is backed by its Bitcoin reserves. Section 9 of Article II further states that when the par value of holdings in a member’s currency appreciates, the World Bank must pay the gains back. If the opposite happens, the member must contribute additional currency to maintain the par value of its holdings. Consequently, if Bitcoin is deemed a local currency of El Salvador, the World Bank could be accumulating Bitcoin or paying El Salvador Bitcoin gains depending on cryptocurrency’s price action.The Central American Bank for Economic Integration expresses supportRegardless of the World Bank’s position on the Bitcoin Law, other banking organizations focused on Central America are offering to help implement it. For example, Dante Mossi, executive president of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration (CABEI), stated that the bank will give El Salvador technical assistance in implementing the Bitcoin Law.The CABEI has 15 member countries and…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This Week New data hints why Bitcoin price action has spent two months at $30KBitcoin (BTC) posted another week of range-bound price action. Bitcoin has traded in a fairly tight range over the past several days, acting more like a volatile stablecoin than the bullishly tilted turbulent cryptocurrency folks know and love. Bitcoin has largely been stuck in a price range between roughly $30,000 and $40,000 for weeks. Nunya Bizniz, a Bitcoin-focused Twitter personality, noted $30,000 as a potential key level on Bitcoin’s price chart, citing a number of reasons, including a Fibonacci level.  Will Bitcoin head north or south next? No one knows for sure, but data from Glassnode revealed folks stocking up on BTC off centralized exchanges, with roughly 2,000 Bitcoin leaving those platforms each day over the past fortnight. Such data rhymes with activity seen in April, when Bitcoin rose to nearly $65,000 per coin. On the bearish front, trader Michaël van de Poppe noted a potential price fall for Bitcoin down to around $29,000 and then $24,000 if support around $31,000 broke down. SEC delays decision on Wisdom Tree Bitcoin ETFAn approved Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) continues to elude the United States. This week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, postponed its decision on Wisdom Tree’s Bitcoin ETF, looking for comments from the public on the product — something the commission has done in the past regarding Bitcoin ETF proposals. “The Commission requests that interested persons provide written submissions of their views, data and arguments with respect to the issues identified above, as well as any other concerns they may have with the proposal,” the SEC detailed in a public document. Binance stops stock token sales, ‘effective immediately’More Binance headlines flowed in this week as the exchange decided to halt stock token trading offerings. The company gave no rationale for the move. Folks with current positions in the platform’s stock tokens are allowed a 90-day window to exit their trades. Over the past couple of weeks, Binance has faced regulatory resistance on a number of fronts. This week brought further regulatory news regarding Binance. Italy jumped on the bandwagon of national regulators concerned with the exchange. Binance lacks approval for providing crypto trading in the region, according to a warning sent out from the Italian Companies and Exchange Commission. US government delves deeper into crypto accountability with $10M bountyUnited States government agencies have not been shy about regulating the burgeoning crypto industry. Thursday news detailed that President Biden’s team plans to further track crypto asset usage. In part, the team is focused on looking for any ransomware ties to crypto usage. Folks who help the government track down nefarious characters involved in certain online attacks could find themselves rewarded with as much as $10 million in bounty. Crypto community divided on whether Bitcoin is an inflation hedgeFor many in the crypto community, Bitcoin is considered a potential hedge against inflation. Bitcoin’s recent price action, however, has given less evidence for such classification as inflation surges to decade highs in the U.S. Some folks doubt the asset as a hedge, while others argue the opposite. Meanwhile, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has slightly altered his take on BTC. “The first part of it is I think the underlying technology of blockchain is really incredible and has lots of different things, particularly in fintech and finance,” he told CNBC. “I think as it relates to Bitcoin — if people want to buy Bitcoin as a substitute, no different from buying gold or some other asset — it’s fine.”Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $31,895, Ether at $1,911 and XRP at $0.59. The total market cap is at $1.30 trillion, based on CoinMarketCap data. Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Axie Infinity (AXS) at 57.38%, Flow (FLOW) at 30.36%, and NEM (XEM) at 17.86%. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Telcoin (TEL) at -31.02%, 0x (ZRX) at -24.41%, and Theta (THETA) at -23.42%.For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.  Most Memorable Quotations “We’re trying to be the fastest tortoise in the race. The long game pays off over time.”Cameron Winklevoss, co-founder of crypto exchange Gemini “The issue isn’t #Bitcoin, #Ethereum, or other crypto protocols — they’re just fine. The risk comes from the banks’ operational processes.”Caitlin Long, Avanti Bank & Trust CEO and founder “I think the regulatory pressure is stronger than before but it will get a lot of bad actors out of the industry and make sure that the industry’s reputation is much better than without it. So, I think this kind of a crackdown may be a good thing for the industry in the long term.”Jihan Wu, Bitmain co-founder and ex-CEO “Market intelligence suggests cryptoassets are largely held by retail investors, with institutional investors having limited exposure at present. However, there are some signs of growing interest in cryptoassets and related services from institutional investors, banks, and key payment system operators. These developments could increase the interlinkages between cryptoassets and other systemic financial markets and institutions.”Bank of England, the United Kingdom’s central bank “If we are the biggest exchange, [buying Goldman Sachs and CME] is not out of the question at all.”Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX CEO “The easiest industry to reduce overnight was a gray area industry. Some 68,000 gigawatts of power was removed instantly from China just by saying no to Bitcoin mining.”Phil Harvey, CEO of Phoenix Store “Certainly Bitcoin has been a great performer over time. But most of the gains have occurred during a great global deflationary period in which all risk assets rose. Now that inflation is picking up for real, for the first time since Bitcoin’s inception, it’s drastically underperforming.”Mati Greenspan, founder of a firm known as Quantum Economics “You wouldn’t need stablecoins, you wouldn’t need cryptocurrencies if you…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This Week US financial regulator FinCEN hires its first-ever chief digital currency adviserThe United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN, filled a new role — that of chief digital currency adviser, unveiled on July 6, recruiting Michele Korver for the job. Korver has an array of experience in crypto regulation, including serving as digital currency counsel for the United States Department of Justice.“Ms. Korver will advance FinCEN’s leadership role in the digital currency space by working across internal and external partners toward strategic and innovative solutions to prevent and mitigate illicit financial practices and exploitation,” said a public statement from FinCEN describing the new chief digital currency adviser position.  In other regulatory-related news, Wyoming, a U.S. state that has been highly favorable toward the crypto and blockchain industry, officially named the American CryptoFed DAO a legal entity — a first for any decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. Additionally, China has continued its regulatory crackdown on crypto.  Bitcoin price dips below crucial $33K support as Bitfinex shorts jump by over 5,000 BTCBitcoin (BTC) had another range-bound week, falling under the $33,000 mark on July 8, down from near $35,000. Short positions also became significantly more prevalent on crypto exchange Bitfinex, indicating bearish sentiment. Although Bitcoin fell below $33,000, the asset once again broke above the level on July 9. BTC analyst Willy Woo noted that the current environment appears similar to that of the pre-Bitcoin breakout in the latter portion of 2020. The analyst noted metrics that show BTC being pulled into longer-term holdings, which could, in turn, decrease the available coins in circulation. Data also exposed a notable influx of fresh users on the Bitcoin blockchain. Additionally, Bitcoin exchange withdrawals have increased and deposits have lessened.  Poland financial regulator issues public warning about BinanceRegulatory complications surrounding the Binance crypto exchange continued to surface this past week, with several news developments on the scene. In light of recent regulatory moves around Binance related to Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom, the ruling body of Poland’s finance scene, the Polish Financial Supervision Authority, or PFSA, cautioned Polish Binance users on their interactions with the exchange, as well as with crypto in general. “In view of the protection of financial market participants and the warnings of foreign supervisory authorities, the PFSA Office recommends special caution when using the services of Binance group entities and when trading cryptocurrencies and crypto assets, as it may involve a significant risk that may result in the loss of funds,” the PFSA said in a public statement on July 7. Earlier in the week, Binance suspended the ability to send euros from bank accounts to its exchange platform, citing no firm explanation on its rationale for the move. “Due to events beyond our control, we are temporarily suspending EUR deposits via SEPA Bank Transfers from 8 am UTC on July 7, 2021,” Binance noted in a July 6 email to exchange users. Additionally, Binance users came forward with a class-action lawsuit against the trading platform, demanding significant compensation for losses they allegedly incurred due to the platform suffering outages during times of important price action. Participants claimed they did not have access to their accounts during pivotal periods of time. Barclays bank also ceased payment card transactions to Binance. The exchange responded to the development with displeasure, saying the decision seemingly stemmed from a misunderstanding. In late June, the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority demanded that Binance Markets Limited, or BML, cease all domestic operations. Binance claims that BML is a separate legal entity. In a separate story on July 7, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expressed positivity toward crypto industry regulation in general via a July 6 letter posted on Binance’s blog. He noted a lack of regulatory clarity still exists and that Binance desires to work alongside regulators.   Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer ‘quite bullish’ on crypto market prospectsAlthough digital asset prices have fallen in recent weeks, Cornell University professor and Avalanche founder Emin Gün Sirer retains positive expectations for the industry, citing increased interest in crypto assets from a bevvy of entities. “I have been getting contacts from retirement funds, not hedge funds, but retirement funds,” he told Cointelegraph China. Sirer foresees further ranging for crypto over the next several months, with things picking up in the fall.  Stablecoin firm Circle to go public in $4.5B blank-check dealCircle, the firm behind the $26 billion market cap stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), intends to take its operation public through a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company. Its ticker will be CRCL and the stock will trade on the New York Stock Exchange if all goes according to plan. “Circle to become public via a business combination with Concord Acquisition Corp (NYSE: CND), a publicly-traded special purpose acquisition corporation with $276 million in trust,” Circle said in a public statement on July 8. Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $33,499, Ether at $2,131 and XRP at $0.63. The total market cap is at $1.39 trillion, according to CoinMarketCap. Among the largest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are Axie Infinity (AXS) at 147.51%, KuCoin Token (KCS) at 80.82%, and Synthetix (SNX) at 76.67%.The top three altcoin losers of the week are Telcoin (TEL) at -21.46%, Celo (CELO) at -15.37%, and Hedera Hashgraph (HBAR) at -9.71%For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.   Most Memorable Quotations“Ransom payments are the fuel that propels the digital extortion engine, and […] the United States will use all available tools to make these attacks more costly and less profitable for criminal enterprises.”Lisa Monaco, DoJ deputy attorney general “A shift of crypto mining operations out of China will be a huge opportunity for Canada. The Toronto Stock Exchange recently listed the world’s first Bitcoin ETF, so the nation is…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This Week Bitcoin mining difficulty just fell by a record 28% — but will this help prices recover?Bitcoin has recorded its biggest mining difficulty drop of nearly 28%, but one model suggests prices will not bottom until October.The drop is in response to the ongoing miner migration out of China and the subsequent loss of hash rate — and this could deliver a profit boost for the miners still at work.Bitcoin has now closed its third red monthly candle in a row, meaning BTC/USD is now the furthest away from its stock-to-flow model estimates in more than two years. Data shows the world’s biggest cryptocurrency fell 40.36% in Q2… the biggest quarterly plunge in over three years.Plan B said the next six months will be “make or break” for the stock-to-flow model, adding: “Even for me it is always a bit uneasy when Bitcoin price is at the lower bound of the stock-to-flow model.” Binance faces regulatory upheaval as lawmakers target ‘global’ exchangesRegulatory woes are piling up for Binance. Japan has accused the exchange of operating without proper registration, and toughened measures in the Canadian province of Ontario have prompted Binance to announce that it plans to cease all operations there.Monday saw Binance suspend the use of Faster Payments in the U.K., meaning that it would take longer for British customers to withdraw pounds from the exchange. This came days after the Financial Conduct Authority told the exchange to cease all regulated activities in the country. However, this was later reinstated.Thailand’s Securities and Exchange Commission and the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority are the latest financial regulators to announce a regulatory crackdown on Binance.As a major global exchange, the exchange has been struggling to find the right jurisdiction for operating its business.  Bitcoin.org blocks access to Bitcoin software download in the UKBitcoin.org has blocked U.K. visitors from downloading Bitcoin Core software, as well as the whitepaper authored by Satoshi Nakamoto. It comes days after a British court ruled in favor of self-proclaimed Bitcoin creator Craig Wright.He had accused Bitcoin.org and its current operator Cøbra of copyright infringement for hosting the BTC whitepaper in the U.K.Cøbra elected not to mount a defense in order to protect their anonymity — and was also ordered to pay interim legal costs of £35,000 (about $48,600.)The judgment is the latest salvo in Wright’s assault on people who dispute his claim of being Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto.  Strike to offer ‘no fee’ Bitcoin trading, taking aim at Coinbase and SquarePayments platform Strike has announced that it will allow U.S. customers to buy and sell Bitcoin with almost no trading fees — taking on the likes of Coinbase, Square and PayPal.Strike’s founder and CEO Jack Mallers says his platform is setting out to be the “cheapest and easiest place on the planet to acquire BTC.”Mallers has taken aim directly at Coinbase too, describing Coinbase’s fees as “asinine.” He added: “Make no mistake, when you buy Bitcoin on Coinbase, you are supporting shitcoins.”In other developments, Coinbase has revealed that it plans to list digital assets on its exchange faster than it does now. And as the exchange seeks to bolster its global presence, it’s going to launch a crypto app store offering products developed by third parties.Meanwhile, Robinhood has filed an application with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. That application came a day after regulators ordered the company to pay a $70 million penalty, amid allegations it caused “widespread and significant harm” to thousands of users. Elon Musk’s latest attempt to pump Dogecoin fails miserablyDogecoin prices surged but did not skyrocket after receiving another endorsement from Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Thursday.Musk’s first tweet declared “Release the Doge!” — sending the joke cryptocurrency up 8.42% to $0.261. A sell-off followed suit, taking DOGE/USD down to $0.247.Less than an hour later, Musk tweeted a rather unusual message that said: “Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, Baby Doge, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, Baby Doge.”DOGE/USD subsequently rose 5.22% to $0.26 after the second tweet.This is modest compared with the wild gains we’ve seen after Musk’s tweets in the past.Winners and Losers  At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $34,544.52, Ether at $2,219.30 and XRP at $0.2469. The total market cap is at $1,433,529,255,589.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the top three altcoin gainers of the week are XinFin Network, Compound and Internet Computer. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Celo, Theta Fuel and Revain.For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.   Most Memorable Quotations“Make no mistake, when you buy Bitcoin on Coinbase, you are supporting shitcoins.”Jack Mallers, Strike CEO “I did suggest to the President that whatever Salvador chooses to do with regards to Bitcoin, you ensure that it is well regulated, that it is transparent and that it is responsible, and you protect yourself against malign actors.”Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department  “While I believe in the power of new technology, we also need to manage its impact on our economy and society.”Rishi Sunak, U.K. Chancellor “The ‘Rick Astley’ is the holder that keeps buying and never tends to sell much.”Willy Woo, Bitcoin analyst “140 free NFTs for 140 of you, besties.”Twitter “A good currency, in my view, is one that’s used to buy coffee, buy your house, buy a car, and on that count, Bitcoin has failed, and not just failed, it’s failed miserably.”Aswath Damodaran, New York University professor of financePrediction of the Week  44% of investors expect Bitcoin to drop below $30K in 2021: CNBC surveyA recent CNBC survey suggests 44% of portfolio managers and equity strategists think Bitcoin will be below $30,000 by the end of this year.Out of the remaining 56%, 25% predicted the price to shoot up and settle at $45,000…

The realm of metaverses is growing, with gaming, nonfungible tokens and contemporary performance art all contributing to create interactive and immersive digital-only ecosystems. “Welcome to Lobsteropolis District of Lobster Land” is the welcome notice that greets netizens upon entering Lobsteropolis city.Existing within the blockchain-based virtual world Decentraland, Lobsteropolis is a digital-only city based on British contemporary artist Philip Colbert’s Lobster Universe. The ambitious project offers arguably more than a glimpse into the emerging movement at the intersection of art and blockchain technology, more specifically, open-world spaces that allow people to interact with art inside a computer-generated environment. Welcome to Lobsteropolis; Philip Colbert’s digital pop art world set in the Decentraland. Born in Scotland and now living and working in London, Colbert is an alumnus of the University of St Andrews. Before coming about the idea of Lobsteropolis City in a metaverse, Colbert was already a name in the pop art world, with former Vogue editor André Leon Talley anointing him the “godson” of legendary pop art figure Andy Warhol.Colbert’s work, steeped in the pop art ethos of “high art” and “low culture,” has already attracted praise from major art world figures such as the famous auctioneer and curator Simon de Pury and Iraqi businessman and contemporary art collector Charles Saatchi. Fashion and style bible i-D Magazine once called him “the crown prince of pop art.”All are welcomeNonfungible tokens (NFT) have become significantly more popular in recent times, and NFT art is arguably a ubiquitous term even for those unfamiliar with the crypto and blockchain space. These days, almost anyone can “mint” an art piece and sell it on an NFT marketplace such as SuperRare.Disruption was and still is a major buzzword that comes up whenever blockchain is the topic of discussion. Perhaps it is not surprising then to see the novel tech serve as the base layer for innovative approaches to gallery exhibitions.Lobsteropolis City is home to Colbert’s first wholly digital art exhibition, with some of his popular works such as Lobster Fountain and Cryptofixtion on display. Visitors will also be treated to a few unseen pieces from Colbert as part of the NFT art auctions hosted by de Pury. Colbert’s lobster persona is ready to welcome visitors to Lobsteropolis One of these unseen NFTs is a hybrid artwork and musical performance titled Lob-Ster De-Vo created in collaboration with the American new wave band Devo. The rock band’s theme of devolution has often leaned heavily on multi-media expression that has perhaps become a staple in the emerging narrative of contemporary art in the 21st century.In Lobsteropolis, Colbert’s lobster persona is once again an “art protagonist” in a rendering that seems simultaneously to be an art show and an expression of the artist’s world. “Through my art, I’ve been building my own art world where my lobster persona is the key narrator, and the digital space enables me to explore this narrative in a new way,” he explains in a conversation with Cointelegraph Magazine.Colbert calls the digital city, three years in the making, a “labor of love”:“I have an amazing team who help me with the coding and the uploading to Decentraland, and the Vegas City team have been a huge help with the programming. The digital side of my work has been very much a labor of love — I have been building this infrastructure for some time.”Pop art becomes digitalLobsteropolis features composite elements of Colbert’s work from several international museum shows and exhibitions including his famous 2020 Saatchi Gallery exhibition. However, the city is not only an art exhibition but an interactive open-world space for digital interaction.Even before the onset of COVID-19, advancements in both virtual reality and augmented reality have been pushing the boundaries of digital interaction. Immersive gaming landscapes already exist where users can create avatars to experience and explore sprawling digital environments rich with features ranging from real-world digital natives to even more fantastical elements.Visitors to Lobsteropolis have a plethora of options to explore within the city. “One of the attractions is Lobster Lounge: a concert venue for avatar bands and an event space where avatars can hold talks,” Colbert says, adding:“There’s a strong gameplay aspect throughout Lobsteropolis City where avatars can interact with other people and create a layer of fantasy.”Set in Decentraland’s Vegas City, Colbert’s digital lobster land, of course, plays home to a casino. “There’s also a casino, where avatars get given lobster coins, and they can play blackjack and play slot machines and buy digital products in my supermarket,” Colbert says. Lobster City casino where visitors can play blackjack and slot machines with lobster coins. Colbert, by his own admission, is obsessed with the crossover of art and music. According to him, the NFT space is creating a platform for the synergistic melding of both art forms in a “revolutionary way.”Apart from co-creating the Lob-Ster De-Vo NFT piece, the music band will also perform a live DJ set at the Lobster Land Records store, which is adjacent to the Lobster Land Museum — the venue for the auction hosted by de Pury.Colbert’s collaboration with the band to create Lob-Ster De-Vo will be a central piece of the inaugural auction event on June 30. According to the artist, the Lob-Ster De-Vo NFT artwork explores the role of digital ideology in the emerging virtual-oriented era of human interaction.    For Colbert, the Lob-Ster De-Vo NFT is an examination of the role art plays as humanity appears to be moving toward a more mature digitized space. The piece also pays homage to Devo’s iconic 1981 hit “Through being cool” — especially the three crucifixions theme.Colbert recalls his early experimentation with NFTs and how that experience led him toward Lobsteropolis as a digital city: “The first NFT I made was called Cryptofixtion. I’d been wanting to make a lobster crucifixion sculpture, inspired by studying Dali’s paintings and engaging with the idea of technology as a new religion.” Venues like Lobster Mart and Lobster Land Records help users to create “a layer of fantasy” Modern-day philosophy is indeed replete with musings about the entanglement of technology…

John Paller is training a new generation of blockchain workers and giving them the tools to live free from the chains of full-time employment. After a chance conversation with a “Russian dude” wearing a weird T-shirt at a 2014 conference — Vitalik Buterin’s father, Dmitry — John Paller’s life was transformed by having a front-row seat for the birth of Ethereum. He went on to create the largest Ethereum hackathon and founded an initiative to help at-risk youth find job opportunities in the burgeoning crypto industry.According to Paller, the majority of workers in the United States will be independent and not tied to a particular employer within just a few years from now. But with so many of the necessities of life provided by employers rather than the government, he has set up a new token-based employment co-op to provide independent contractors with benefits, such as medical insurance and retirement plans.Purple state EthereumGrowing up in the predominantly Mormon state of Utah, which he describes as “a rather dogmatic society,” Paller remembers that as a child, he “always asked too many questions.” Not feeling like he fit in, he moved east — over the Rocky Mountains — to Denver, Colorado a few years after graduating from Southern Utah University with a business administration degree in accounting and finance in 1997.    Denver, according to Paller, is “more pragmatic politically — we don’t get caught up in political dogma as much as other states seem to do.” This, he surmises, is due to a mixture of geographical and cultural influences, with a libertarian wild west culture from Wyoming in the north merging with a more “liberal, progressive” approach from the south in New Mexico and west from California.“I think that Ethereum as a concept really relates well to this sort of egalitarian approach — building next-generation public infrastructure using smart contracts. We have a good tech scene here in Colorado.”He serves as the executive steward of ETHDenver, which started with monthly meetups of “a couple dozen people” before growing into the hundreds suddenly in 2017. This rapid growth inspired him to organize a hackathon in February 2018, a project for which he called up various industry players, such as Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, cryptocurrency entrepreneur Erik Voorhees, and dozens of other top projects and luminaries.“We were hoping for 401 people, and the reason for that was because ETH Waterloo in the fall of 2017 had 400 people, and we wanted to be the biggest one ever,” he says.The first event, which Paller describes as “part Burning Man, part SXSW, part DevCon, and part Hack the North,” was a huge success with 1,500 participants. With four years running so far, the event has become a home turf of the Ethereum movement. “This year, we did a fully virtual event, and we hosted over 31,000 people from 94 countries,” Paller explains proudly, adding that ETHDenver is transitioning into a true community-owned ecosystem called SporkDAO with a virtual launch party and NFT auction on June 26.Worker woesPaller’s background is in human resources and finance, and in 2002, he co-founded a staffing company called PeoplePartners to focus on recruiting in the financial sector. After some success, the company managed to buy and merge with another, Lakeshore, where Paller continued to serve as CEO, while the new firm focused on HR technologies in what he refers to as the “Uber-for economy” — where the firm was trying to create an app that would help companies find talent as quickly as Uber finds rides.Much of Paller’s vision for his HR firm revolved around a vague desire to help “democratize employment,” referring to what he saw as a lopsided social contract where employers have a huge amount of power over employees within U.S. society. Questions started to gnaw at him — Why is employment so disproportionate in power and value distribution? Why is healthcare in the United States tied to employment?It was while reading more broadly into economics and game theory, in hopes of answering these questions, that Paller came across Bitcoin from a friend working at a technology startup who told him it was the future of money. “I read the white paper, and I kind of didn’t get it, but I bought some,” he recalls.My name is Buterin, Dmitry ButerinBuying some Bitcoin on a whim was, however, not Paller’s only harbinger of blockchain destiny. While attending a small entrepreneurship conference in California in early 2014, he met Dmitry Buterin. “There was only probably like 30 people there, so it was a very intimate affair, and he was the interesting, you know, Russian dude with the weird T-shirts,” he says. As fathers, they connected over their families and because “politically speaking, we’re both libertarians.”Due to this chance connection, Paller had a direct line to Vitalik’s father, who made “social media posts on the Ethereum white paper and the ICO.” This meant that he had exposure to the project from an early stage and, in early 2016, asked Dmitry to connect him with his son, Vitalik, who “was kind enough to spend several hours with me talking about my ideas for use cases. In hindsight, he was very gracious because my use case ideas were terrible — I didn’t understand decentralization at all,” he recounts, adding that his mind was still stuck in the old world of centralized corporate structures.He eventually did have “the lights go on,” at which point he decided to do a full pivot in life. “It was almost kind of like my version of a midlife crisis,” he explains regarding his sudden decision to sell his business, effectively turning his back on a successful career.    Apprentio and the next generationIn 2018, Paller co-created Apprentio in collaboration with a local boys and girls club in hopes of providing at-risk youth with opportunities in the emerging blockchain ecosystem. Paller believes that the commonly prescribed path of high school/college/degree/job is not for everyone, especially considering that a four-year college degree in the U.S. can easily result in $100,000 of debt,…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This Week Hawkish Fed comments push Bitcoin price and stocks lower againThe crypto markets had started the week with a spring in their step.Last Sunday, Elon Musk revealed that Tesla would be prepared to accept Bitcoin as a payment method again — once it could be proved that 50% of the energy used by miners comes from clean, renewable sources.Traders reacted positively to the tweet, and there were green candles aplenty. Upbeat sentiment helped drive Bitcoin above $40,000 for the first time in over a fortnight. Unfortunately, though, it seems prices above this level were unsustainable.A new wave of selling reared its ugly head days later after Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell suggested that interest rates may rise in 2023 — a year earlier than planned. Other officials went further, indicating the first increase could happen in late 2022.Bitcoin wasn’t alone in suffering the sell-off. Stocks and gold also fell, eating away at the narrative that BTC is an uncorrelated asset.With prices falling as low as $35,000, there are now fears that a “death cross” may be forming for Bitcoin. Some traders are forecasting that $32,500 could be the next stop before BTC revisits the swing low at $30,000. World Bank refuses El Salvador’s request for help on BTC transitionAs determined as El Salvador’s president may be to introduce Bitcoin as legal tender, a series of unfortunate events this week showed that it’s harder than it looks.The World Bank has refused to assist the country in its transition, citing “the environmental and transparency shortcomings” associated with the digital asset.Although prominent Bitcoiners weren’t pleased with the World Bank’s refusal, it’s fair to say that they weren’t surprised either.One particularly sarcastic contribution came from Blockstream’s chief strategy officer Samson Mow, who tweeted: “BREAKING: WORLD BANK CANNOT HELP EL SALVADOR MAKE WORLD BANK OBSOLETE.” Miaow.Elsewhere, an El Salvadorean minister denied reports that the country was examining the possibility of using Bitcoin for salary payments, warning such talk was “too premature.”Economists have also been continuing to issue warnings about the potential ramifications of El Salvador’s move. Steve Hanke pulled no punches when he said going through with this law has the potential to “completely collapse” the country’s already fragile economy.Striking a cheery note, he said the politicians who backed President Nayib Bukele’s Bitcoin Law were “stupid,” adding: “You’re not going to pay for your taxi ride with a Bitcoin. It’s ridiculous. […] 70% of the people in El Salvador don’t even have bank accounts.”   Mark Cuban calls for stablecoin regulation in wake of Iron Finance “bank run” Billionaire crypto enthusiast Mark Cuban has called for stablecoins to be regulated after losing money in a dramatic “rug pull.”Iron Finance fell victim to a “historical bank run” that detailed the price of the IRON stablecoin. Consequently, the value of its native token TITAN crashed by almost 100% over two days — from all-time highs of $64.04 to a mere fraction of one cent.In an email sent to Bloomberg, Cuban wrote: “Even though I got rugged on this, it’s really on me for being lazy. The thing about DeFi plays like this is that it’s all about revenue and math and I was too lazy to do the math to determine what the key metrics were.”Crypto Twitter, already reeling from the U-turn performed by Elon Musk, wasn’t a fan of Cuban’s remarks.Kraken’s CEO Jesse Powell said a lack of regulation wasn’t the problem, tweeting: “Not doing your own research and YOLOing in to a terrible investment because your time was worth more than your money is your problem.” The death of NFTs? CNN, Fox, Mila Kunis (and the U.S. Space Force) don’t think soEarlier this month, some critics were sounding the death knell for nonfungible tokens after a Protos report suggested that sales had slumped by 90% since the peak in early May. However, things may not be as dire as they first appear.First off, let’s not forget that Sotheby’s auctioned off a rare CryptoPunk for $11.8 million earlier this month… setting a new world record in the process. Also, it’s worth noting that there’s no shortage of new NFT announcements.Here’s just a few that have emerged in recent days. CNN said that it’s planning to tokenize historic moments from the news. That came as Fox, another U.S. media behemoth, revealed it’s launching a $100 million fund for NFT content creation. Sotheby’s confirmed that it is going to auction off the source code for the World Wide Web in the form of a digital collectible. And not to be outdone, A-lister Mila Kunis is wading into the “very masculine” crypto space by launching her very own NFT project.Even the much-ridiculed U.S. Space Force thinks that NFTs are out of this world. Its tokens are literally going to the moon — paying tribute to Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the lunar surface.Given how all of these projects have the chance to capture the public’s imagination, it may be unwise to characterize NFTs as a passing fad that’s fading away. ‘I have nothing’: Imprisoned John McAfee claims his crypto fortune is goneStill behind bars in Spain as he battles extradition to the U.S., antivirus software pioneer John McAfee has told his one million Twitter followers that he doesn’t have hidden crypto.He wrote: “I wish I did but it has dissolved through the many hands of Team McAfee (your belief is not required), and my remaining assets are all seized. My friends evaporated through fear of association.”And, striking a defiant note, he added: “I have nothing. Yet, I regret nothing.”A Spanish court is set to make a decision on whether to approve McAfee’s extradition within days. The businessman is accused of tax evasion and failing to declare income from paid crypto promotions, consultancy work, and gains from his investments.During a…

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.Top Stories This Week Bill to make Bitcoin legal tender passes in El SalvadorEl Salvador has officially become the first country in the world to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender.A law outlining the proposals, introduced by President Nayib Bukele, passed with a “supermajority,” attracting 62 out of 84 votes.Under the so-called Bitcoin Law, merchants must accept Bitcoin as well as U.S. dollars — and they’ll be expected to present prices for goods and services in both currencies. The government is going to be releasing an official crypto wallet for consumers to use, but they can rely on private providers if they prefer.Permanent residency is going to be available for those who invest 3 BTC in the country, and now, a 90-day implementation period has begun.As the 90-day implementation period begins, the president has asked a state-owned geothermal electric company to examine plans “to offer facilities for Bitcoin mining with very cheap, 100% clean, 100% renewable, zero-emissions energy” — from its own volcanoes.Unsurprisingly, reaction from regulators hasn’t been overwhelmingly positive. One executive at the Bank for International Settlements has called El Salvador’s move an “interesting experiment” — but warned that BTC hasn’t passed the test of being a means of payment. The International Monetary Fund has also warned the decision could have significant legal and financial ramifications. New report: El Salvador Bitcoin pump failed to attract smart money, for nowEl Salvador’s plans were first announced during a keynote speech at Bitcoin 2021 in Miami, but the markets appeared to pay little notice.Things changed on Wednesday — the day Congress passed the legislation. Bitcoin logged its best daily performance since Feb. 8, the day Tesla announced that it had added $1.5 billion worth of BTC to its balance sheet.Although there are reasons to celebrate, Stack Funds’ head of research Lennard Neo has warned there was little in the way of bullish reactions from so-called “smart” investors.Bringing the bulls back down to Earth, he warned: “We should not expect a significant impact on Bitcoin for a country with a GDP per capita less than 7% that of the U.S., with its economy suffering the worst crash in decades last year.”Bitcoin’s seven-day high stands at $38,334.33. The strong move helped save the bulls during Friday’s options expiry, because any level below $34,000 would have wiped 98% of call options. MicroStrategy gets $1.6 billion in orders in junk bond offeringMicroStrategy has attracted $1.6 billion worth of orders in a recent junk bond offering — four times more than what the business intelligence firm initially sought.Junk bonds are debt offerings by companies without investment-grade credit ratings and typically offer investors higher returns while carrying higher risk.It comes days after the publicly listed company, which owns 92,079 BTC with a current market value of $3.2 billion, announced plans to spin off its crypto holdings into a new subsidiary called MacroStrategy LLC.Although this has been interpreted as bullish news, alarm bells started sounding after the junk bond offering was announced — the latest in a series of debt raises to buy more Bitcoin. MSTR stock fell after the news.MicroStrategy closed the week at $516.44, some way off the year-to-date high of $1,315 that was seen in February.In a recent article, analyst Juan de la Hoz said MicroStrategy would be at risk of bankruptcy if Bitcoin prices fell, adding: “MicroStrategy is a rare high-risk low-reward investment opportunity, and a strong sell.” Bitcoin 2021 attendees’ positive COVID-19 tests are going viralSome of those who attended Bitcoin 2021 in Miami have tested positive for COVID-19, leading to a wave of negative media coverage and speculation that it may have been a “superspreader event.”Thousands of people went to the two-day event, which did not require proof of vaccination or enforce the wearing of face masks. There was little in the way of social distancing either as people packed into crowded auditoriums.One influencer on Crypto Twitter, Mr. Whale, estimated that there were more than 50,000 visitors at the event. He noted that this was the first major in-person conference since the pandemic began, and said dozens of participants have tested positive. Vitalik Buterin has made $4.3 million from his $25,000 investment in Dogecoin… so farEthereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has revealed that he invested $25,000 into DOGE in 2016… and has made a pretty penny as a result.His first concern was how he would tell his mother — not least because “the only interesting thing about this coin is a logo of a dog somewhere.”Buterin told Lex Fridman’s podcast that he was caught off-guard by the speculative frenzy that resulted from Elon Musk’s fascination with the joke cryptocurrency.He recalled being in lockdown in Singapore when the price of DOGE shot up 775% from $0.008 to $0.07 over the course of a single day, thinking: “Oh my god, my DOGE is worth, like, a lot!”Buterin added: “I sold half of the DOGE, and I got $4.3 million, donated the profits to GiveDirectly, and a few hours after I did this, the price dropped back from around $0.07 to $0.04.”Assuming he held on to the remaining 50% of his DOGE stash, he would now be sitting on tens of millions of dollars in paper profits. Winners and Losers At the end of the week, Bitcoin is at $35,211.65, Ether at $2,318.90 and XRP at $0.81. The total market cap is at $1,493,755,186,500.Among the biggest 100 cryptocurrencies, the only two altcoin gainers of the week are Amp and Chiliz. The top three altcoin losers of the week are Internet Computer, THORChain and Synthetix.For more info on crypto prices, make sure to read Cointelegraph’s market analysis.   Most Memorable Quotations “Regulatory clarity enables companies like BlockFi to continue innovating. It enables consumers and investors to participate in this sector with the utmost confidence.”Zac Prince, BlockFi CEO “The ~$38,000 area for BTC is the one to watch right…

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and we throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes! This week, our 6 Questions go to Wes Levitt, head of strategy at Theta Labs.At Theta Labs, Wes works on corporate strategy, marketing and press relations, and analytics. He has been a speaker on blockchain topics at conferences including the New York Media Festival, Blockchain Connect and NAB Streaming Summit, among others. Prior to joining Theta Labs, Wes spent eight years in investment roles at Mosser Capital, a real estate private equity firm; and Redwood Trust, a mortgage real estate investment trust focused on securitized debt. Wes is a CFA charterholder and holds a BS in economics from the University of Oregon and an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. 1 — If the world is getting a new currency, will it be led by central bank digital currencies, a permissionless blockchain like Bitcoin or a permissioned chain such as Diem?If it’s only one, I would say CBDCs are more likely since governments are unlikely to give up the power of issuing their own currencies. But Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can exist alongside CBDCs and serve a different purpose. Even if Bitcoin never replaces the major fiat currencies (or their CBDC successors), it is hugely valuable by providing an alternative to them. The mere existence of Bitcoin, with its fixed supply and pseudonymous transactions, should force central banks to think twice about inflating their currency values away or forcing widespread surveillance on consumers.It’s true that we aren’t seeing that yet with rampant money creation in the U.S. dollar, euro, Japanese yen, etc. in the past year — but that’s partly a function of Bitcoin and other crypto markets just being too small to be a workable alternative yet. But that’s changing quickly — you are seeing companies like MicroStrategy, Tesla and Meitu add Bitcoin to their corporate treasury, which becomes more and more feasible as Bitcoin’s market cap grows. Eventually, Bitcoin should grow large enough to be investable even at the scale of central banks, as an alternative or supplement to their gold holdings. 2 — Does it matter if we ever figure out who Satoshi really is, or was? Why, or why not?I do think it matters, but that it’s best for Bitcoin if we never find out who Satoshi is/was. A real person will have a backstory, profession, country of origin, etc., which could only lead to division and bias in the crypto community. It’s better that Satoshi remain more of a legendary figure that people can interpret as they choose to. I think Satoshi himself realized this, and it’s why he chose to remain anonymous. 3 — What’s the silliest conspiracy theory out there… and which one makes you pause for a moment?For silliest, I’ll go with a tie between QAnon and “Bill Gates putting tracking chips in the COVID vaccines.” Both are so stupid that they’ve become useful as a signaling device. If someone believes in one of those things, I can safely ignore anything else they say and save myself the time.The one conspiracy theory I 100% believe is that David Stern regularly rigged the number-one pick in the NBA draft. Ewing to the Knicks in ’85, New Orleans getting Anthony Davis after Stern traded Chris Paul away, Lebron and Rose go to their hometown teams, the Cavs get three number-one picks in four years after Lebron leaves… way too many examples to have happened by accident! 4 — Other than the present day, in what time and in what country would you like to have lived?I would have enjoyed mid-70s England, mostly for the music. You had the punk scene emerging with the Sex Pistols, The Clash, and The Damned, and many others. Iron Maiden and Motorhead are just getting started along with the whole NWOBHM [new wave of British heavy metal] scene. Plus, if you stick around until the late 70s/early 80s, you’ve got XTC and Depeche Mode and the Police just around the corner. One of the best five or so years in music you can find for a single country. 5 — Have you ever bought a nonfungible token? What was it? And if not, what do you think will be your first?My first-ever NFT was purchased for just the price of some ETH for gas — I created it myself with Enjin back in 2018. This limited edition “Wes-branded” sword didn’t make it into any crypto games, sadly, but it was obviously a very cool concept, even if it was still a few years before the mainstream use of NFTs. The entertainment space is getting the most attention for NFTs right now, but the idea of taking legendary items with me between RPGs is still the use case that resonates with me the most. I’m not much of an art collector myself, but I could absolutely see myself ponying up for rare items that are interoperable between games — now, I can justify that this NFT purchase is an investment I could use across many different games in the future. 6 — What’s the unlikeliest-to-happen thing on your bucket list?I’d like to live long enough to see humanity establish settlements on the Moon or Mars or other potentially habitable moons like Europa, and to travel there myself once that becomes feasible at a commercial level (i.e., without having to go through astronaut training just to go!) This still feels like too far away for my lifetime — we are 52 years post-Moon landing and barely any closer to permanent settlement. But the pace of technological discovery is always increasing, so I hold out hope that it will be in my plans for 2050 or so! Stay positive, and keep building! Crypto goes through breakneck cycles of euphoria and despair — you have to take a step back and look at the big picture sometimes to keep your head on straight…

The pandemic has changed society forever — and in many cases, not for the better. But when historians look back in a few decades, will they see this period as a turning point in the transition from an economy dominated by corporations to a new crowdsourced model where participants are incentivized with tokens to grow a project and share in the profits?It may sound far-fetched given that mega-corporations dominate the present reality, but imagine a world in which Uber drivers and their passengers own and operate a decentralized rideshare network. Or one where Airbnb property owners, guests and even the cleaning staff share in the success of the cooperative business.“What has happened over the last 10 to 12 months would have probably taken 10 to 12 years had it not been for the pandemic,” explains Michael Anderson, co-founder of Framework Ventures. A VC fund, Framework Ventures has raised $115 million for two investment funds and is a major DeFi player, getting in early on Chainlink, Synthetix and Yearn.finance.Anderson says the concept of a decentralized collective effort has become normalized by working from home.“That kind of concept of working for a company where you show up every day, and there’s an office […] that’s kind of been broken down,” he says. “It forces people to have questions as to do we need that going forward?”The “Uber as a Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO)” concept has been around since at least 2016 when blockchain project Arcade City started talking it up in the wake of a successful fundraise for the ill-fated The DAO. However, it’s now finally beginning to capture the zeitgeist. This month alone, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman wrote a long discussion on the topic called “The Future of Work,” and Bloomberg’s Joe Weisenthal touched on it in his “There’s a New Vision for Crypto” piece. Meanwhile, tech billionaire Mark Cuban tweeted at the end of May that DAOs taking on corporations was the “ultimate combination of capitalism and progressivism.” The future of corporations could be very different as DAOs take on legacy businesses. It’s the ultimate combination of capitalism and progressivism. Entrepreneurs that enable DAOs can make $. If the community excels at governance, everyone shares in the upside. Trustless can pay— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) May 31, 2021 The DeFi sector has been at the bleeding edge of the rise of DAOs and Digital Organizations (DOs), which are similar but are less governed by code and aren’t autonomous. They enabled a cooperative model and collective ownership of protocols, becoming popular in DeFi as a form of governance and as a way to crowdsource development. Yield farming may have begun life with a poor reputation as guerilla marketing-meets-Ponzinomics, but it quickly became clear it was a great way to reward the most active participants in a community with tokens and often a share of the revenue. In turn, this incentivizes the best participants to help grow the protocol, bringing ever greater numbers into the project.“That ownership element is what has the power,” explains Anderson. “And the best communities are the ones where you’ve got the earliest adopters, brought in from the get-go, and they become your biggest supporters, they become customer support, they become business development.”Thinking biggerIf it works in DeFi, there’s no reason it can’t work in other industries and economies. Any marketplace could potentially benefit, and that doesn’t mean simply tokenized versions of eBay or Uber. Anderson uses the example of a clothing production line in which the sourcing of materials, the creation of clothing, distribution and sales could all be incentivized and organized through this new model.“I think what we’ve seen over the last few years is a peak of corporations. And what I think we now have with the formation of DAOs is almost as a replacement for a limited liability corporation or a corporation in general,” he says. “It’s a replacement of incentivization layers, like equity and stock options, with tokens.”“It’s mostly DeFi, but expanding beyond that, I think you can start to take this model into any marketplace. I think it ultimately becomes a really unique way of incentivizing participation.”  The model has plenty of advantages: being decentralized means that anyone, anywhere in the world who has an idea for building on top of the protocol — or who figures out a better way to do something — can jump in and reap the rewards. The process of iteration and evolution speeds up, too. No longer must you wait for the grinding gears of a corporation to grudgingly accept a new way of doing things. It simply happens via an efficient competition that produces the best outcome for a collective.“Ultimately, that makes things more efficient and scalable, but also more fair and open,” Anderson explains, adding that it enables anyone, anywhere, to compete with tech entrepreneurs in San Francisco or Silicon Valley, who previously had the advantage of being in close proximity to capital. “Breaking down those walls is really exciting, for the future of the world, but also the future of work.”“Community ownership, I think, is a fundamental difference and a fundamental innovation,” he says. “And that’s why I love tokens. It is a completely new design space; we’re just scratching the surface as to how we can use these in different and novel ways.”More equitable than equityIn a way, DAOs and DOs are a modern spin on older concepts around partnerships, co-ops and collaborations, made a thousand times more efficient by technology. And while our mental models for this sort of ownership currently look a lot like handing out equity, Anderson expects that to change as the use of tokens grows and evolves.According to Andersen, having a clear vision of the future — or a strong thesis about how things may evolve in the future — is one of the things that separates Framework Ventures from many other investors in the space. Unlike the short-term, price-oriented thinking that predominates in crypto, Anderson and co-founder Vance Spencer believe in looking at where digital finance is headed over a timeframe…

When the United States first began going after crypto companies for violating its economic sanctions rules, it didn’t exactly start with a bang.In December, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced a settlement with crypto wallet provider BitGo after the Palo Alto firm failed to prevent persons apparently located in the Crimea region, Iran, Sudan, Cuba and Syria “from using its non-custodial secure digital wallet management service.” The penalty for the “183 apparent violations” of U.S. sanctions? An underwhelming $98,830. This was “the first published OFAC enforcement action against a business in the blockchain industry,” according to law firm Steptoe, though six weeks later, the OFAC reached a similar settlement with BitPay, a payment processing firm, for 2,102 “apparent violations of multiple sanctions programs,” in which BitPay reportedly allowed persons in the same countries as in the BitGo case — but with the addition of North Korea — “to transact with merchants in the United States and elsewhere using digital currency on BitPay’s platform even though BitPay had location information, including Internet Protocol addresses and other location data, about those persons prior to effecting the transactions.” BitPay agreed to pay $507,375 to resolve its potential civil liability. But future violators may not be treated so leniently. It’s worth mentioning that economic sanctions are typically applied “against countries and groups of individuals, such as terrorists and narcotics traffickers,” according to the United States Treasury, typically “using the blocking of assets and trade restrictions to accomplish foreign policy and national security goals.”More enforcement actions are coming“The crypto industry should absolutely expect more enforcement actions from OFAC, and it can expect that there will be much larger penalties as well,” David Carlisle, director of policy and regulatory affairs at Elliptic, tells Magazine. “OFAC’s first two enforcement actions in this space were fairly simple cases, where the underlying violations were not egregious, and the fines were small. But the next cases could be different,” he says, adding:“There will undoubtedly be other cases out there that involve much more serious and egregious violations — and we can expect that OFAC will issue fines against crypto businesses that are much larger than those we’ve seen thus far.” Expect more enforcement actions like those targeting BitPay and BitGo, Doug McCalmont, founder of BlocAlt Consulting LLC, tells Magazine, as well as “the expansion of targeted individuals, such as coders linked to the technology.”Sanctions regimes have been applied extensively in recent years by the United States, as well as the European Union and United Nations, often targeting “rogue” nation-states, such as North Korea and Iran. One of the best-known early crypto cases involved Virgil Griffith, a former hacker, who was arrested in April 2019 after he spoke at a blockchain and cryptocurrency conference in North Korea, in violation of sanctions against that outcast nation, the U.S. charged.“Sanctions violations are a real problem,” says David Jevans, CEO of CipherTrace, whose crypto forensics firm recently found that more than 72,000 unique Iranian IP addresses are linked to more than 4.5 million unique Bitcoin addresses, “suggesting that sanction violations are likely rampant and mostly undetected by virtual asset service providers,” he tells Magazine.  It’s not only U.S. authorities who are concerned about “bad actors” using the nascent blockchain technology to dodge economic sanctions. Agata Ferreira, assistant professor at the Warsaw University of Technology, tells Magazine that authorities in Europe “are becoming more active and more focused. The crypto space is under increasing scrutiny, and I do think this trend will remain and accelerate.”Nor is OFAC’s recent crypto focus surprising, according to Robert A. Schwinger, partner in the commercial litigation group at Norton Rose Fulbright. The United States government has no choice but to rein in this new, cryptocurrency asset class because “not to do so would expose it to the risk that its sanctions regime could be rendered toothless by new financial technology. Players in the cryptocurrency space who ignore the restrictions imposed by U.S. international sanctions are being put on notice that they do so at their peril,” he wrote on Law.com. Is DeFi problematic?As crypto adoption grows, it seems only inevitable that its decentralized finance (DeFi) networks will push up against more nation-state prerogatives, including economic sanctions. But isn’t there something inherently problematic about cracking down on a decentralized exchange (DEX)? Does the exchange even have a headquarters address? Is anyone even home at home? And should it even answer to someone if it’s truly decentralized?Enforcing regulations in a decentralized world presents certain challenges, Timothy Massad, former chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission and now a senior fellow at Harvard University Kennedy School, tells Magazine, but U.S. regulators are “trying to figure it out.” Might the government eventually put more pressure on developers at DeFi firms, including decentralized exchanges? “Yes, they can build into the code some proper procedures… but it’s a lot easier to go after centralized intermediaries,” says Massad.“I think we’ll see DeFi developers come under real pressure to ensure their platforms can’t be abused for sanctions evasion — for example, by enforcing address blacklisting,” says Carlisle, adding, “There’s a lot of talk lately about [traditional] financial institutions taking interest in DeFi, but it’s hard to imagine major institutions participating in DeFi unless they’re confident it can be compatible with sanctions requirements.” DeFi projects are “decentralized, disintermediated and borderless — everything our legal and regulatory frameworks are not,” Ferreira informs Magazine. The latter are built around centralized, intermediated and jurisdiction-based architecture. “Therefore, this is a challenge and a learning curve for regulators, and not all proposed solutions will be optimal,” Ferreira adds.  The European Union is aware of the DeFi compliance challenge. Its recent Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) regulatory proposal “will force DEXs to have legal entities in order to transact with EU citizens, effectively banning fully decentralized exchanges,” Jevans tells Magazine. He adds, “Many so-called DEXs have very centralized governance, venture capital investors and physical headquarters, causing the FATF to categorize them as VASPs.” Meeting compliance demands for digital service firms like BitPay and BitGo will require some effort. “Trying…