Exploring transformation of value in the digital age By Michael J. Casey, Chief Content Officer Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. |
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Both this week's “Money Reimagined” podcast and today's column are are focused on the all-important trade-off between privacy and security. The column explores what I say is the problematic intransigence on both sides of the equation: hard-nosed, uncompromising regulators on one side and hard-nosed, unwavering crypto privacy advocates on the other. There are some excellent self-sovereign, privacy-enhanced identity systems that could be deployed now but aren’t gaining traction because of these obstinate positions. In the podcast we dive into the details of where advances in this identity tech now stand, with the excellent Gregg Kidd of GlobaliD and Hard Yaka. Have a listen after reading the newsletter. |
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Launched in September 2017, KuCoin is a global cryptocurrency exchange with its operational headquarters in Seychelles. As a user-oriented platform with focus on inclusiveness and community action reach, it offers over 700 digital assets, and currently provides spot trading, margin trading, P2P fiat trading, futures trading, staking, and lending to its 20 million users in 207 countries and regions. In 2022, KuCoin raised over $150 million in investments through a pre-Series B round, bringing total investments to $170 million with Round A combined, at a total valuation of $10 billion. KuCoin is currently one of the top 5 crypto exchanges according to CoinMarketCap. Forbes also named KuCoin one of the Best Crypto Exchanges in 2021. In 2022, The Ascent named KuCoin the Best Crypto App for enthusiasts. |
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Hardliners Stymie Online Identity Innovation |
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(Rachel Sun/CoinDesk) I fear I’m going to upset a few people with this column. That’s because I’m going after both sides in the divisive debate over identity in crypto and finance: blinkered monetary regulators on the one hand and blind crypto idealists on the other. In their own way, each is obstructing progress on sensible cryptographic identity systems, the kind that would give us solid online privacy while also enabling the secure, sustainable expansion of digital innovation in the public interest. The type of regulator I’m targeting is unable to think outside the business-as-usual box of bureaucracy. This person resorts to knee-jerk demands that everyone – be they person, company or software platform – submit to invasive demands to report identity and transactions at every step of their financial lives. They don’t seem to care that this effectively restricts financial participation for many – for the poor, especially, but also for leaders of vaguely undesirable but entirely legal businesses such as cryptocurrency service providers. Nor do they worry they are facilitating the unholy bargain between the state and banks that we discussed last week. The crypto idealists are trapped by a mix of narrow self interest, utopianism and bone-headed intransigence. They treat any workable, consumer-friendly self-sovereign identity system as a slippery slope to a totalitarian hellhole. In stirring up outrage among their followers, they make it hard for practical-minded developers to deploy such tools in real-world settings and confirm the regulatory community’s ill-informed biases that crypto is dominated by anarchists and criminals. The result: the perpetuation of a stupid incumbent system and a cohort of policymakers encouraged to build ever more invasive surveillance systems into the digital money systems of the future. I was led to this conclusion by three conversations on the sidelines of CoinDesk’s I.D.E.A.S. summit in New York this week. Read the full story here... |
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Off the Charts: Fall is Crypto Spring for Hackers
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A story lifted from Chainalysis’s data grabbed people’s attention last week: Just 13 days into October it was already the worst month in history for crypto hacks, at least in terms of the amount of dollars lost, making it almost certain that 2022 will go down as the worst year in history. For today’s chart, I asked Chainalysis for an update on what they’d produced a week ago. Here is their updated monthly chart: |
And here is their updated annual chart: |
Total value lost in October now stands at almost $730 million, up from $718 million last week. And, just as worrying, the number of hacks is now at 18, up from 11 a week ago Yes, privacy is vital. But if there’s one thing this data is telling us it’s that so is security. |
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The Conversation: Tweet Thread as NFT Gallery
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To appreciate the value of this week’s tweet choice you have to click on the tweet itself and read the replies. With this one request, non-fungible token influencer @seedphrase gave rise to a unique showcasing of the great variety of digital art people have collected as NFTs. |
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Relevant Reads: Aptos’ Less-than-apt Debut |
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There’s only one thing that crypto types love to hate more than Meta, the social media platform formerly known as Facebook. And that’s crypto projects founded by former Meta staffers. At least that’s the impression given by the schadenfreude that seemed to be on display when the well-funded Aptos platform, built by former Meta devs, had an ignominious launch this week. Here’s CoinDesk’s coverage of the launch. |
| Danny Nelson and Liz Napolitano set the stage Monday with this opening piece on what the buzz was all about as the Aptos blockchain moved to mainnet. As Aptos belatedly revealed its tokenomics model, Shaurya Malwa explained why many people were upset with the large number of tokens locked up with private investors, who potentially stand to gain while the rest of the token supply takes 10 years to be released. The token was listed on exchanges on Wednesday and immediately came under selling pressure. Danny Nelson and Sam Reynolds had the story. The Aptos sell-off stood in contrast to that of Apricot, a completely unrelated token that rose out of an apparent misconnection by some traders between the latter and the former, as reported by Shaurya Malwa. As things settled, Daniel Kuhn offered up a defense for the much maligned project, noting, among other elements, that the tokenomics model is not that different from other layer 1 blockchain protocols such as Solana, Near and Flow. |
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