Crypto News Recap feat. The US Treasury, Taproot, Dogecoin, and more... - May 28 - June 4, 2021 -

Transcript

[Music] thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap first headline the us treasury is eyeing expanded crypto regulations last week the biden administration released its 2022 budget proposal tucked inside was an emphasis on expanding the irs in order to combat tax evasion specifically the us treasury highlighted crypto as an area to focus on saying quote tax evasion using crypto assets is a rapidly growing problem the global nature of the crypto market offers opportunities for u.s taxpayers to conceal assets and taxable income by using offshore crypto exchanges and wallet providers treasury's proposal looks to expand the reporting requirements of crypto brokers

to include the beneficial owners of accounts internationally which basically would force financial institutions to collect and verify information from customers holding or transacting in crypto assets according to the blog this new proposal is not quite as groundbreaking as it initially sounds as crypto exchanges are already expected to keep information on their clients however treasury is now focused on tracking information internationally the white house did not just stop at expanding the irs in combating tax evasion on tuesday in light of the recent ransomware attack against meat processing company jbs a white house spokesperson said quote expanding cryptocurrency analysis to find and pursue criminal transactions is part of its

strategic review on ransomware next headline the sec is filing charges against bitconnect for those who remember the heady and unsavory days of the last crypto bubble here's some overdue news the sec is filing charges against five individuals over their involvement with bit connect according to the sec's complaint bitconnect raised two billion dollars in unregistered securities from 2017 and 2018 through the use of a network of promoters lara charlev murabin the associate regional director of the sec's new york office said in a press release quote these defendants unlawfully sold

unregistered digital asset securities by actively promoting the bit connect lending program to retail investors she added we will seek to hold accountable those who illegally profit by capitalizing on the public's interest in digital assets bitconnect bcc was to put a bluntly ponzi scheme bcc was a cryptocurrency built on top of bitcoin with a simple premise trade your bitcoin for bcc lock in the instantaneous value of bcc for a set period and earn massive amounts of interest calculated daily on top of the too good to be true promise of daily compounding bitconnect also used a system of invites and referrals where users could invite friends to join the platform in exchange for business

bitconnect crashed in 2018 thanks to cease and desist orders from texas and north carolina with its token collapsing from over 470 dollars to below one dollar while it may seem that bitconnect is getting its due justice gabriel shapiro a partner at bsv law was skeptical tweeting quote this case could become a blueprint for action against non-fraudulent dows as the sec's case describes bitconnect as a quote unincorporated association next headline marathon will no longer censor bitcoin blocks marathon holdings a prominent bitcoin miner announced in a press release that the mining firm quote will be updating all our miners to the full standard bitcoin core

0.21.1 node including support for taproot the announcement comes about a month into fred teal's tenure as chief executive officer where he appears to be taking the minor in a slightly different direction than previous leadership the latest press release is important for two reasons one previously marathon had described itself as an ofac compliant pool meaning they would only mine blocks compliant with u.s regulations excluding transactions associated with sanctioned addresses from the blocks at mind from now on marathon will no longer censor transactions with teal saying quote marathon is committed to the core attendance of the bitcoin community including decentralization inclusion and no censorship

the next thing to note is that marathon will now be signaling in favor of taproot over the past month not all of marapol which is marathon's mining pole has signaled for taproot activation with half of the non-signaling blocks for taproot coming from mira this epic bitcoin's tap root update which jeremy and i just discussed at length should be should enable improvements to bitcoin's scaling privacy and custody software and it recently began its three months activation period miners who wish to adopt the update can signal support by adding what is called a signal bit in blocks they mine at the time of publishing miners have signals for activation at a ratio of 97.67 percent with 251 out of 257 blocks signaling

readiness for tap root however there is a long way to go before taproot is activated as 1562 additional blocks are needed for the protocol to lock in funding roundup vc giant a16z is doubling the size of its third crypto fund previously it was reported the fund was looking to raise 800 million to 1 billion dollars however according to blogger eric newcomer the fund has now ballooned to 2 billion which could lead to 50 billion in annual fees for a16z circle the payments company behind usdc raised a 440 million round led by digital currency group

fidelity and ftx at the time of publication usdc is the second largest stablecoin trailing tethers usdt one of coinbase's earliest backers union square ventures has invested in mirror.xyz a cryptic publishing tool at a valuation of 100 million dollars mirror uses ethereum to help writers leverage blockchain's unique advantage of p2p relationships between creator and consumer to crown fund its projects next headline mike novogratz's and christian anger myers firm cryptology asset group has committed to investing 100 million dollars into crypto venture funds over the next two years with a particular focus on first-time funds emerging managers and seed funds

next headline looking back at crypto statistics in may may was a brutal month for hodlers whether bitcoin maxi or hardcore ethereum in may btc finished the month down 35 its third worst monthly loss ever ethereum ended the month at about where it started which is somewhat underwhelming after eath skyrocketed past 4 300 on the 11th before landing back under 3k to round out may the news was not all bad even with the crypto industries market cap dropping from 2.2 trillion dollars down to 1.5 trillion dollars a 30 decrease the market still found a way to reach a few all-time highs all numbers here are courtesy of the block

crypto exchange volume topped two trillion dollars in may marking the fourth month in a row with volume over one trillion dollars for context in may of last year total crypto exchange volume was at 107 billion d5 protocols generated a record amount of revenue last month bringing in 370 million dollars not surprisingly uniswap took the lead producing 41 of total defy protocol revenue in another all-time high ethereum miners made 2.35 billion dollars increasing april's previous record by a whopping 42 percent the spike in minor revenue most likely stems from the fact that ethereum's on chain volume surpassed bitcoins for the first time

with ethereum hitting 666 billion dollars in volume and bitcoin sitting down at 407 billion dollars lastly stable coin supply suddenly topped 100 billion dollars for the first time with tether leading the market at a 63.3 share since the start of 2021 stable coin supply has increased 255 percent next headline coinbase pro is letting the doge out in a blog post on tuesday coinbase pro announced that it would begin accepting doge transfers and that doge trading would go live sometime on thursday depending on liquidity conditions the market immediately reacted as dogecoin jumped up roughly 32 in the 24 hours after the blog post

breaking 40 cents once again after the announcement coindesk asked several knowledgeable market participants for their take i'll highlight two bullish quotes and a bear edward moya a senior analyst at awanda noted quote people are still going to be cautious long term but this debut will eventually have some ability to attract traditional investors and not just the robin hood slash rabbit reddit army voyager ceo steven ehrlich said quote we've had consistent net buyers on dogecoin which indicates the general bullishness around it as it gains popularity across all demographics james butterfield of coin shares was hesitant to endorse doge saying quote when you invest in any

digital asset you have to look at the fundamentals behind it with dogecoin there's a lack of these next headline nfts are still a thing after a relatively quiet may in the realm of nfts it seems june has brought about a small resurgence in nft mania on thursday sotheby's a renounced art house began an online nft auction featuring the first nft ever minted kevin mccoy's quantum which was created in 2014 also on sale is crypto punk number 7523 one of nine alien crypto punks in existence two of which have already sold for more than seven million dollars ftx the crypto exchange announced its own nft marketplace where tokens from

both ethereum and solana can be bought and sold with ftx taking a five percent cut from both the buyers and sellers for now the nfts are stuck on ftx though customers will soon have the ability to withdraw their tokens one unique token for sale is sbf lunch redeemable for a 30 minute in-person chat with ftx ceo sam bankman-freed the latest bid is one hundred thousand dollars all right time for fun bits the uniswap queen nailed it this week's fun bits is visual so for our podcast listeners it's time to swipe on over to twitter and type in eva baylen e-v-a-b-e-y-l-i-n into the search bar once there go into

the media section and the first picture you see you should see is the most glorious set of fingernails in the crypto sphere predominantly white tipped with a sci-fi looking computer chips and adorned with two uniswap unicorns on the nails of the ring fingers ashley schapp the growth lead at unispot most certainly wins the competition for the most fashionable crypto protocol homage i have ever seen alright thanks for tuning in to learn more about jeremy and taproot be sure to check out the links in the show notes don't forget june 14th is the five year anniversary of unchained if you want to send in a question or comment for a next week's show which will be a mini ama the deadline to get your submissions in is thursday june 10th at 5 pm eastern 2 p.m pacific

send it via email to hello unchainedpodcast.com and write anniversary in the subject line and also let me know how to pronounce your name unconfirmed is produced by me laura shin without from anthony yoon mark murdock and daniel ness thanks for listening [Music] you