BitGo: Crypto Water Cooler — Sep 18
GM. It’s Wednesday, September 18.?
Breaking News:?BitGo Introduces a New Standard for Stablecoins: Meet USDS
Newsmakers
Is Crypto “Lindy” Now?
True believers have long predicted that Bitcoin would be the future of money while naysayers said it would go to zero. Neither has yet come to pass. Instead, Bitcoin has led digital assets on a steady path to integration into the traditional financial system. At this point, it may be safe to say the Lindy Effect —which posits that, the longer something has been around, the more likely it is to stay around—now applies to digital assets. Consider the following:
?According to a Deutsche Bank survey of 3,600+ consumers in the U.S., UK, and Europe, only 1% of U.S. consumers said they believe that crypto is a fad. Over half of all surveyed said it is an important asset class.?
According to the Chainalysis Global Crypto Adoption Report , between Q4 2023 and Q1 2024, activity increased substantially, surpassing the highs of the 2021 bull market.?
ETFs launched on major asset exchanges in the U.S., Hong Kong, and Australia this year got a warm reception from retail investors. And in August, Morgan Stanley decided to allow its 15,000-person broker network to recommend the BlackRock and Fidelity ETFs. “It is now unacceptable not to do due diligence and the work of understanding these products,” said John Hoffman, head of distribution and partnerships at Grayscale.
Per data from FINRA, (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority), some 400 broker-dealers in the U.S. are engaged in crypto activity. The number of firms approved by FINRA has increased from 24 in 2022 to 37 .
?On September 10, Ethereum Name Service (ENS) announced it is partnering with PayPal and Venmo to make ENS domain names to their over 500MM customers worldwide.?
?The global community, established infrastructure, and historical resilience all indicate that digital assets are here to stay. But, if you want to engage in a thought exercise , Stephen Katte lists on Cointelegraph all the things that could take Bitcoin to zero: quantum computing cracking its cryptography; global governments coordinating a ban; and a fatal bug or exploit—though, if the latter happened, it would likely live on via a fork.??
Read More →CoinDesk ?
SEC Commissioner Uyeda Proposes an S-1 for Digital Assets
?As of June 2024, the U.S. SEC has labeled sixty-nine cryptocurrencies as securities. Companies offering securities must register with the agency using an S-1 form per the Securities Act of 1933; information about the investment then becomes publicly available. Only a handful of cryptos, though, have ever registered. Most insist the rules don’t apply to it; the SEC insists they do and has issued a raft of enforcement actions involving unregistered cryptos.?
?SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda recently suggested a different path : a new S-1 for digital assets. The current form, which dates to the Securities Act of 1933, was designed for firms in an industrial economy. Even if crypto firms could provide the information required, a lot of it isn’t relevant—while information that is relevant isn't covered. That could include details about the code; security audits; token distribution; custody, and governance.?
?Such an approach would seem to make sense for the regulator whose main focus is protecting consumers through disclosures, and for those in the industry who want to play by the rules but want them to be clear and reasonable. But it won’t be cheap. Even though the S-1 filing fee is just $147.60 per $1,000,000 offered, the legal, accounting, and other costs of bringing a new offering to market could add up . Then again, so can the costs of battling enforcement actions.
?Change is not coming any time soon. Even if the SEC began to work on this new disclosure system today, Axios predicts that it would take up to two years to develop and would likely be followed by lawsuits from dissatisfied parties. A better route: congressional lawmaking.
?Read more →Axios
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Humpy the Whale Lays Bare Governance Issues Facing DAOs
DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) use blockchain technology and smart contracts to codify and enforce rules and govern themselves. That’s supposed to result in efficient, low-bureaucracy democratic governance by token holders, but the proposition is turning out to be messier than it sounds.?
?Because voting power is based upon the amount of tokens a person holds, and participation is low, DAOs can favor activist whales, leading to centralized control, especially when inactive whales don’t use their voting power, which is frequently the case. According to CoinTelegraph, a whale with $17MM in tokens can leverage their influence to “attack” protocols with $2B+ in funds because so few stakeholders are engaged.
?The most egregious example took place at Compound Finance in July when a whale called Humpy tried to get the DAO to allocate $25MM to a yield-bearing protocol connected to his group, the Golden Boys. He made three tries, finally succeeding on a low turnout weekend vote. That could have qualified as a “governance attack,” but the proposal was then canceled and, in a negotiated compromise, funds were allocated to a yield-bearing product controlled by Compound.
?Humpy, who has made similar governance moves at DeFi protocols Balancer and Sushi, had accumulated 325,333 COMP tokens. VC firm a16z, which holds 361,000 COMP tokens, sat on the sidelines.
?DAOs as large as MakerDAO and as small as Nouns DAO and Aragon DAO have had similar experiences. In the former, whales thwarted a proposal to institute more checks and balances on the DAO. In the latter two cases, “hacktivists” aka “DAO raiders” quickly amassed governance tokens and took control. They extracted $27MM from Nouns; Aragon emerged as a non-profit.
Just three U.S. states—Vermont, Wyoming and Utah—regulate this emerging form of organizational governance. New Hampshire is also working on legislation. Rules include classification systems for different types of DAOs, accountability regimes, and protections for participants.
?Meanwhile, DAOs are trying to figure it out, largely through trial and error. Prosperi and M^O dilute the voting power of non-participating token holders. Other suggestions: delegating tokens to trustworthy active voters who can vote on the inactive holders’ behalf; quadratic voting ; and temporarily locking token transfers to prevent large quantities from being obtained by whales.
?Read more →CoinTelegraph
News In Brief
Business of Crypto
Regulation and Security
DeFi and Web3?
Midweek Market Pulse
Total Market Cap: $2.11T – 7-day change as of Tuesday 9/17/24 12 PM EST: +5.5%
The global crypto market cap rose ahead of today’s highly-anticipated Federal Reserve interest rate decision, rallying 5.5% to $2.11T.?
?With a rate cut widely anticipated, Bitcoin (BTC, +8.1%) picked up momentum, and the rising tide even lifted Ethereum (ETH, +2.7%), which reached a 41-month low versus the price of Bitcoin on Monday. Some of the underperformance is being attributed to the lackluster performance of ETH ETFs. Sales of ETH by the Ethereum Foundation and by a wallet affiliated with co-founder Vitalik Buterin added to the malaise. According to Lookonchain, the wallet associated with Buterin has sold 950 ETH since August 30th. Buterin stated he hasn’t kept the proceeds from any sales since 2018 and that any sales are to support the development of projects within the Ethereum ecosystem or charitable causes more broadly.?
Other major layer-1s including Solana (SOL, +0.1%), Tron (TRX, -0.9%), and Cardano (ADA, -0.5%) lagged the more macro-sensitive Bitcoin.?
?Sui (SUI, +25.9%) continued its strong run, buoyed by news that Circle, the second largest stablecoin, will launch USDC (USDC, +0.0%) on Sui. This follows last week’s launch of another stablecoin, Agora (AUSD, +0.0%), on the Sui network. The influx of stablecoins should continue to increase liquidity on the network and support DeFi applications.
The Last Word
Quadratic Voting?
: A rated voting method that allows voters to express the degree of their conviction
/ Quadratic voting allows voters to “pay” for additional votes in some manner.
About BitGo
BitGo provides the most secure and scalable solutions for the digital asset economy, offering regulated custody, borrowing and lending, and core infrastructure to investors and builders alike.
Founded in 2013 — the early days of crypto — BitGo pioneered the multi-signature wallet and later built TSS to improve upon other companies’ MPC offerings. Between multi-sig and TSS, BitGo offers the safest technology on the market and safeguards over 600 tokens across a wide variety of blockchains.
Over the years, BitGo has expanded from offering wallets into providing a full-suite solution that lets clients hold assets safely and then put them to work.
BitGo launched BitGo Trust Company in 2018, providing fully regulated, qualified cold storage to complement BitGo Inc’s original hot wallet solution. In 2020, BitGo launched BitGo Prime, which allows its clients to trade, borrow, and lend. Moreover, BitGo also provides access to DeFi, staking, NFT wallets, and beyond, and serves as the world’s sole custodian for WBTC, or wrapped Bitcoin.
Today, BitGo is the leader in digital asset security, custody, and liquidity, providing the operational backbone for more than 700 institutional clients in over 50 countries — a list that includes many regulated entities and the world’s top cryptocurrency exchanges and platforms. BitGo also processes approximately 20% of all global Bitcoin transactions by value.
For more information, please visit www.bitgo.com .
?2024 BitGo Inc. (collectively with its affiliates and subsidiaries, “BitGo”). All rights reserved. BitGo Trust Company, Inc., BitGo Inc., and BitGo Prime LLC are separately operated, wholly-owned subsidiaries of BitGo Holdings, Inc., a Delaware corporation headquartered in Palo Alto, CA. No legal, tax, investment, or other advice is provided by any BitGo entity. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professional for questions about your specific circumstances. Digital asset holdings involve a high degree of risk, and can fluctuate greatly on any given day. Accordingly, your digital asset holdings may be subject to large swings in value and may even become worthless. The information provided herein is not intended for distribution to, or use by, any person or entity in any jurisdiction or country where such distribution or use would be contrary to law or regulation. BitGo is not directing this information to any person in any jurisdiction where the publication or availability of the information is prohibited, by reason of that person’s citizenship, residence or otherwise.
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2 个月Jamal El Ouafi EL OUAFI COOIN YOUTUBE
16+ Years' Recruitment Experience for India & Africa | Executive Resume Writer | Talent Acquisition Expert since 2007 | Unstop Top Mentor | Podcast Host - Expert Talk by Vipul The Wonderful | Top 1% Mentor at Topmate
2 个月Very informative