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| The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Sept. 21, 2021 If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here. Sponsored by Welcome to The Node.
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–Daniel Kuhn
Today's must-reads Top Shelf FIRST SANCTION: The U.S. government has sanctioned a cryptocurrency exchange for the first time as part of its ongoing fight against ransomware attacks. The Treasury Department announced Tuesday it is adding Russia-based Suex.io to its list of “specially designated nationals” for its alleged role in facilitating cryptocurrency transactions for ransomware attackers – placing it in a category with suspected terrorists and drug traffickers. CAPITAL CONTROLS: A forum of some of the largest U.S. and European banks has urged modifications to rules proposed by the world’s central banks and regulators for capital requirements on bitcoin exposure. The Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA), which includes JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank, in a Sept. 20 letter opposed the rules set out in June by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision.
MAJOR RAISES: London-based open banking startup TrueLayer has raised $130 million in funding in a round led by Tiger Global and Stripe. The round values the link between bank accounts and crypto platforms at more than $1 billion, thus giving it “unicorn” status. Meanwhile, former head of ConsenSys Ventures Kavita Gupta has launched the Delta Blockchain Fund, with a target size of $50 million to $100 million. Oversubscribed at press time, the new female-led fund will target non-fungible tokens (NFTs), decentralized finance (DeFi) and the “multi-chain” ecosystem. SECOND ATTACK: Vee Finance has been hit for an exploit of around $35 million in the second major attack of an Avalanche platform. The platform was attacked for a total of 8804.7 ETH (around $26 million) and 213.93 BTC (around $9 million) on Sept. 20, Vee Finance announced Tuesday, adding that the stablecoin section was not affected by the attack.
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV... Sound Bites “The reality is that the regulatory state in the U.S. has a hammer and everything in crypto looks like a nail right now.”
What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals Treasury, Fed fear ‘stablecoins’ could disrupt financial system (Victoria Guida/Politico) BitClout’s creator didn’t raise $200M for a ‘new’ blockchain — it’s the same old s**t (Protos) Bitcoin-first company Compass Mining announced today the launch of At-Home Mining (NAMCIOS/Bitcoin Magazine) Former Monero lead maintainer Riccardo Spagni released from jail (Tim Copeland/The Block) Coinbase Ventures, ArringtonXRP, OKEx and others have invested in Portal’s vision of "DeFi built on Bitcoin” (Liam Frost/Decrypt) Over $1 Billion in Crypto Futures Liquidated Amid Evergrande Concerns (Liam Frost/Decrypt)
A message from ADALend Cardano native DeFi protocol ADALend sells out seed round in 1 hour
ADALend protocol based on Cardano will power flexible finance markets by providing for a larger instant loan approval, automated collateral, trustless custody and liquidity.
ADALend seed round was 400% oversubscribed. Those who did not make it into the seed stage have been white listed for the private sale.
Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway Can Crypto Go From Movement to Campaign? Cops like pulp fiction, too. Yesterday, choosing one of the most high-profile crypto conferences of the year, an agent for the U.S. Securities and Enforcement Commission (SEC) reportedly subpoenaed a crypto founder as he was preparing to take the stage.
The plot point would certainly fit the narrative: Crypto, a movement fighting for freedom and equal access in finance, was being curtailed by the state. The latest chapter of this familiar story allegedly played out at the top of an elevator shaft at the Marriott Marquis in Manhattan.
No reporter has yet to verify the details of the incident. But Ryan Selkis, founder of the Messari media company which organized said Mainnet 2021 conference, gave credence to it when announcing his run for U.S. Senate. “If you’re wondering when I actually decided to run for Senate, it was when these [redacted] came to my event, didn’t buy a ticket and served one of the speakers a subpoena,” Selkis tweeted yesterday.
How’s that for hard-boiled?
No one is sure if Selkis is serious. Asked about his run, Selkis told CoinDesk, “no comment.” It’s all very fitting for the novelization of crypto. Yet, in announcing his bid for office, Selkis is bringing crypto into a new era of political action – distilling a movement into a campaign.
This is a significant turn for an industry that reads like fiction, and a chance for crypto to get clear about its goals. Selkis is a vocal proponent for crypto to start lobbying and electing individuals favorable to the industry. Although there are “hodlers” in office, or those that would like to be, it isn’t clear yet what it means to be a “bitcoin candidate” beyond saying vague approving things about the industry. In his 1995 essay “Movements and Campaigns,” philosopher Richard Rorty outlined how the 20th century’s great political dramas might be better understood as a smaller history of discrete events, individuals working towards specific goals, rather than systemic processes. Campaigns, Rorty writes, are finite things, “something that can be recognized to have succeeded or to have, so far, failed.” In contrast, movements – like Marxism or Christianity – are “too big and too amorphous to do anything that simple.”
Crypto is a movement. Bitcoin is at the center of a generational conflict looking to re-architect everything from money to the internet to people’s diets. It has millions of invested players and an infinite amount of contradictory ambitions. It’s a brand. It’s a way of life. It’s a story that we’re telling.
It’s like what Irving Howe said of modernism, calling it “one of the major turnings in the cultural history of the West.” Howe was the lens Rorty used to make his point. In his younger years, Rorty wrote, Howe was embroiled in the world historical attempt to establish socialism in the United States. He was a believer in the modern human spirit and founded a magazine, Dissent, to tell its story through literature and criticism.
Like others of his ilk, Howe grew disillusioned with grand political machinations. But he never lost sight of the achievable goals of socialism: using Dissent to campaign for workers rights, for free speech and egalitarianism. Howe was a “warrior saint,” but he didn’t win all of his battles.
That’s for the better, Rorty thinks. “Movements can go rancid,” he wrote. They can, and are often, replaced (modernism lost to high modernism which lost to postmodernism.) These grand narratives set up good versus evil but are never clear about what it means to succeed.
Specific campaigns can be won or lost, but it’s about conscious attempts at transformation.
One of the major conflicts in crypto right now is the lack of regulatory clarity. Rarely are people clear about what they want from the government. People are content to build in the shadows and occasionally bask in the spotlight of a conference stage. Up until the moment a process server comes by.
Selkis’ run for Senate could offer crypto a new platform to stand on and get straight about the actual political ends it’s striving for. The SEC is pursuing concrete goals: They’re targeting founders and protocols, filing lawsuits and speaking regularly about the industry. There’s a question about whether crypto will ever go out and vote, but it’s worth it for Selkis to run. The industry cannot keep telling itself the same story, it has to get real. As Rorty said of Dissent (in a perfect world):
“It would never occur to such a person to ask whether Dissent was central or marginal to the cultural or political life of its day. She would only ask whether Dissent did some good, whether it contributed to the success of some of the campaigns in which it took part.”
–Daniel Kuhn
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