Bitcoin To The Moon!
Fly Me To The Moon!
Spin that Frank Sinatra tune, pop some champagne, and get ready to play among the stars because bitcoin broke its all time high this week! The price of BTC soared to $66,832.65 according to coincap.io, past its previous high in April of almost $65,000. This came after the launch of the U.S.’s first approved bitcoin ETF.
Proshares (ticker: BITO) went live on Tuesday, ringing the bell at the New York Stock Exchange with an ETF that offers exposure to bitcoin futures contracts. It had one of the most successful ETF launches of all time: Bringing in more than $1 billion of assets in just two days, it was the fastest ETF to hit the milestone. The ETF is certainly bullish news for bitcoin: The crypto community has been waiting for almost a decade for an ETF to be approved. The approval and launch of BITO suggests that if regulators are getting comfortable with the idea of derivatives tied to bitcoin then they’re probably getting more comfortable with the underlying asset itself.
Now just a few days later, Valkyrie Investment has just released their own bitcoin futures ETF, which started trading this morning after getting the green light from the SEC earlier in the week. The Valkyrie fund is officially called the Bitcoin Strategy ETF, and has the ticker BTF, although they initially wanted their ticker to be BTFD.
Apparently VanEck’s is also slated to launch their own bitcoin futures ETF early next week.
We’ve come a long way since bitcoin was magic internet money purely by nerds.
Now they’re probably rich nerds.
Martha the Mogul
When you were growing up, your childhood probably involved Martha Stewart in some capacity, even if only as a vague memory of visiting craft stores and seeing her face everywhere as you were dragged through JoAnn Fabrics by your Grandma. When you got older, you probably did a double-take when she went to federal prison for insider trading. And now that you’re grown up, you might come to associate her with a nice quiet afternoon-in as you chill and watch her bake with Snoop Dogg. Whatever your association, there is one indisputable fact: Martha Stewart is a badass.
At 80 years old, she just announced that she is entering the NFT game with plans to release digital images of her collected works. These include home decor, recipes, clothing, and plethora of other home economics standards and originals made by both herself and artists who have received her blessing to create on behalf of her brand. The images will be timed to coincide with holidays and festive seasons, starting off with a collection of Jack O’ Lanterns for this Halloween, entitled, “Carved Collection”. When asked about how she got into the NFT game, Martha said that she consulted with her banker (whom she describes as “enthusiastic about Ethereum”), Galaxy Digital Holdings Ltd CEO Mike Novogratz (with whom she sits on the board for Hudson River Park Friends), and her good friend, Snoop Dogg (presumably where she gets her chill).
None of us saw this coming, but in retrospect it was everything that we needed.
NY AG is Out For Blood
Attorney General of NY, Letitia James, has taken action against cryptocurrency platforms in an effort to ensure “industry players do not take advantage of unsuspecting investors”. In an official statement released on October 18th, James ordered two unnamed platforms to cease operations, citing them as “unregistered and unlawful”, and ordered three more to “provide information about their activities and products”. James, like many government officials, holds to the position that cryptocurrency platforms should be heavily regulated, and that crypto lending platforms are securities and therefore have to register with the Office of the Attorney General (OAG) if they are operating or offering products and services in New York.
This is not the first time that James has taken a tough stance on crypto. In September she shut down Coinseed, a crypto platform which allowed users to invest their “spare change” in various cryptocurrencies, leaving nothing but their last few tweets in existence. Though Ms. James’ statement did not name either of the crypto platforms targeted this time around, some suspect that Celcius and Nexo were implicated, because their names appeared on cease and desists published by the NYAG’s office that were incorrectly redacted. Nexo responded to the allegations via a tweet:
In the NY Attorney General’s letter, James says that she is “protecting” New York investors “from exploitation by high-risk virtual currency schemes.” There is a big presumption that anyone involved in a high-risk virtual currency project is being exploited. Perhaps some people actually want to be involved in these lending platforms because they’re some of the very few ways to earn interest on your savings right now to actually keep up with inflation. It seems that instead the NYAG is just taking away opportunities from NY residents.
As always, it’s about control, not protection.
“Let There Be Dark”
In probably the most Cypherpunk manifesto we’ve read in a while, Dark Wallet creator and hacktivist Amir Taaki just dropped the most recent update of his DarkFi project, which has been in development for four years and counting.
“DarkFi is a base layer for anonymous applications and smart contracts that is multi-chain interoperable.”
Those who have been following crypto on the tech and privacy side since the beginning will be very familiar with Taaki’s involvement, where he has had leadership roles in projects such as Britcoin, Intersango and DarkWallet, all of which were aimed to anonymize Bitcoin transactions. He was also the co-creator of Dark Market, which formed the basis for what would become Open Bazaar.
Taaki said in his manifesto:
“Everybody feels that there will [be] a huge macro political or economic event in the next 5 years. Everybody is deeply discontented with the power and capital monopolies ruling over us.”
He describes DarkFi as, “a democratic economic experiment, an operating system for society”, saying he would like to have a whole “world-building adventure”, and he encouraged developers to join and help grow this ecosystem.
He also talks about the bifurcation of crypto, splitting into the regulated world and the free world:
“Luckily we have been gifted agorist counter-economics, not just as a philosophy but as a powerful agent of change. Wield that power, make things happen. The regulators are coming for us. They see us as children with boots too big for our feet. We need to be put back in our place.
…
Crypto will split into two. RegFi will be unusable and bolted down. It will be toothless. The other side will be the underground DarkFi. It will have bite.
DarkFi is not a project or a company. We are a community and a movement.”
For more information on the technical specs, visit the DarkFi Github to view the code.
“Let there be dark” on The Hash
Politicians REALLY Don’t Want a Facebook Stablecoin
After more than 2 years since it was first announced, Facebook has rolled out its new secure digital wallet, Novi. Being referred to as a “pilot” program, David Marcus, head of Facebook Financial (F2) explained this week that the launch is meant to “test core feature functions, and operational capabilities in customer care and compliance”. He tweeted:
The wallet is currently only live in the US and Guatemala, and uses only the Paxos stablecoin to send and receive payments, while it waits for the Facebook-made Diem currency (which is still in development) to be released.
Those who were following Facebook’s foray into the crypto-verse may remember another name for the planned currency — Libra. Back in 2019 when it was announced, Facebook was immediately ordered to stop development on the Libra network, and were shouted at by angry politicians who didn’t understand cryptocurrency.
The 2019 Libra Hearings
Although Facebook is still indeed waiting for government blessing before releasing their revised vision of the stablecoin, in the form of the “Diem”, they are once again being shouted at by angry politicians who don’t understand cryptocurrency.
In an open letter, U.S. Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tina Smith (D-Minn.) ordered Facebook to immediately end its work on the diem stablecoin and “discontinue the company’s pilot of Novi”.
The politicians said that Facebook cannot be trusted to launch a digital currency.
…but the government can be?
By Will Sandoval NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell