Constitution Doh!
Visa No Longer Goes Where You Go. Better Bring Your Purse!
Amazon released a surprising announcement this week stating that they will no longer be accepting payment via Visa card in the UK, beginning January 19th, 2022. "As a result of Visa’s continued high cost of payments, we regret that Amazon will no longer accept UK-issued Visa credit cards," said an Amazon spokesperson, who cited that the costs to accept Visa credit card payments should be “going down over time with technological advancements, but instead they continue to stay high or even rise”. Credit card fees are a fairly common thorn in the side of many business owners, especially those who sell products that may cost less than the credit card fees themselves. This move could actually be in the best interest of the millions of sellers who may be struggling to keep their prices down and online shops open. Amazon is also rumored to be in talks with Mastercard to move its co-branded credit card over to their pond.
A Visa spokesperson pushed back, saying: "When consumer choice is limited, nobody wins.” A noble statement, but it rings hollow coming from the mouth of Visa, who frequently restricts consumer choice by shutting down services to disfavored businesses or groups.
“We have a long-standing relationship with Amazon, and we continue to work toward a resolution," they continued.
In the meantime, if users are stranded without a way to pay on Amazon in the UK, there are platforms that will allow you to pay for your items using crypto. Purse.io allows you to use Bitcoin (BTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH) for Amazon purchases, and you can save up to 33% doing so! You can also import your Amazon wishlists, and even earn Bitcoin by fulfilling shoppers’ orders. Definitely worth checking out.
The Crypto.com Arena
AEG, the long-standing owner of the naming rights for the LA-based Staples Center Arena, has sold the rights to the iconic location for $700 million dollars to Singapore-based Crypto.Com. An official press release from the Staples Center stated:
“Effective December 25, the multi-purpose arena, which hosts hundreds of annual marquee events and serves as the official home of the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and LA Clippers, the NHL’s LA Kings and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks, will be known as Crypto.com Arena. This agreement also makes Crypto.com an official cryptocurrency platform partner of the Los Angeles Lakers and the LA Kings”.
The new branding will be unveiled on Christmas Day and all Staples Center external signs are set to transition to the new name by June 2022.
We wonder if they paid for it in crypto.
President Biden Signs Infrastructure Bill into Law
On Monday President Biden signed the $1 Trillion infrastructure bill into law, and with it, the controversial cryptocurrency provisions. As we have reported previously, the law contains language that the crypto community considers disastrous, including but not limited to the following:
Many worry the definition of “broker” is too broad, and will capture miners, developers, and other entities that don’t actually facilitate transactions. Although a Treasury source stated they wouldn’t interpret the term “broker” too broadly, we can’t assume that this anonymous Treasury source defines "broad interpretation" the same way the crypto industry does, and we can’t presume that a future Treasury secretary won’t reinterpret the term more broadly than the current one.
One section of the law (§6050I) requires recipients of over $10,000 worth of crypto to verify the sender’s personal information, and report their Social Security number and the nature of the transaction to the government within 15 days. This will be almost impossible for much of the crypto industry to comply with.
The new crypto provisions will not take effect until Jan. 1, 2024 and a lot can happen by then:
Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming submitted a last-minute bill to better define “broker,” which would narrow the language to exempt blockchain validators, non-custodial hardware or software vendors, and protocol developers.
The Senate is set to begin working on a second major spending bill which could include an amendment for the crypto language, with Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon (who is a friend to crypto and co-authored the previous amendment to redefine the terminology along with Sen. Lummis and Sen. Toomey in August) as a Finance Committee Chair.
There’s also a slew of stand alone bills regarding crypto taxation that will be voted on over the next two years that could help the cause.
Further, Coin Center also argues that the §6050I individual reporting requirement is unconstitutional as it applies to both crypto and cash, and will be mounting a court challenge.
Let’s see if we can crush this before it crushes the crypto industry in the USA.
We want the Nic Cage Director’s Cut...
This last week an extremely rare 1787 print of the United States Constitution was thrust into the limelight when it was put up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York City. It is one of only 13 copies of the constitution created, out of which 11 have survived. The news of this auction sparked major interest from the crypto community, resulting in the creation of the ConstitutionDAO, which intended to purchase the iconic document through a major fundraising attempt. DAO stands for “decentralized autonomous organization”, and this particular DAO aimed to purchase the document as a symbolic gesture representing the will of the people. Momentum gained at breakneck speed, resulting in over $49 million in Ethereum donations collected over about a week.
If they placed the winning bid, the initial idea was that contributors to the ConstitutionDAO were going to hold fractional ownership of the document. That soon changed (presumably after fears of SEC retaliation), and it was decided that donors would instead receive “$People” tokens, putting contributors in charge of “governance” of the document rather than their contribution representing ownership or an investment.
All eyes were on the auction Thursday night, which was streamed live, as the spirited auctioneer channeled memories of every heist movie you’ve ever seen. Somewhere behind the walls, you just knew Nic Cage was lurking and waiting to stun the audience with a missing Constitution... But alas, there was no Nic Cage, and even more disappointing, the ConstitutionDAO lost the bid. Despite raising more than the winning bid of $43.2 million, The DAO representatives said that bidding any higher would mean they wouldn’t have enough money in their reserves to properly care for the document after auction.
As deflating as this outcome was — and definitely not the Hollywood ending of this story that we wanted to see — the larger takeaway is that, with the help of decentralized technology, the will of the people is getting louder and much harder to ignore.
Don’t Get Your Shorts in a Bunch
Crypto markets took a plunge this week, with the price of bitcoin dipping to $56,000 during the early hours of Friday before rebounding slightly. Numbers fell to values not seen since mid-October, and many theories circulated about the cause.
Some were prompted to believe that the dip was due to fear that the (eventual) Mt. Gox settlement will result in a supply glut.
Others said that comments made by Hillary Clinton at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum in Singapore were to blame: Hillary said that cryptocurrencies can “destabilize nations”. An odd endorsement of crypto, but ok.
Another theory was slightly more popular: According to Ki Young Ju, CEO of CryptoQuant, the drop was caused by traders taking short positions in the futures market. “The market sentiment was sell, according to the taker buy-sell ratio,” Ju said. In a corroborating statement, Senior crypto trader at Crypto Finance AG Daniel Kukan said, “We did not see big sellers at all; the move was derivatives driven.”
We probably side with Noelle Acheson, head of market insights at Genesis Global Trading, who said that the market correction had “the characteristics of a normal breather to a bull run and a healthy reduction of leverage.”
As of this writing, the markets have already began rising back up to their previous range, and bitcoin sits just short of $60k at time of publication.
By Will Sandoval, NBTV Associate Producer, and Naomi Brockwell.