Happy America’s 250th Birthday! Hopefully everybody had a good holiday and came out of the firework celebrations with all their fingers and toes. With Congress gone most of last week, there weren’t a ton of legislative developments while the move towards passing Clarity continue with some law enforcement groups who previously opposed the bill coming out as neutral hopefully removing one impediment to passage (with ethics language still looming in the background). In the meantime, a major fintech platform went live on its own purpose built blockchain while a consortium of major financial players announced a stablecoin plan.
Here’s everything that happened last week in crypto law:
OTHER STORIES
Data Center Shenanigans: I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next guy, but I really do believe there is merit in this excellent reporting from Bitcoin Policy Institute that the outrage against data centers in the U.S. is being driven by foreign adversaries. So many of the tropes about water, sound, and surrounding energy prices are easily disprovable (I know, I was a part of the litigation team on perhaps the largest data center trade secret case in history so I know entirely too much about data center construction and function). This is an logical explanation on why those falsities persist in the media.
New Stablecoin Consortium: A new stablecoin consortium dropped this past week with a ton of big names like Visa and Mastercard as well as crypto-native firms like Coinbase (interesting considering their ownership stake in Circle). But less than a week later some of the listed members are apparently confused about how they got included? Either way, seemingly a big move by some of the biggest names in finance to get into the stablecoin game.
AI and Crypto Unicorn: Erik Voorhees’s combination crypto/AI startup Venice has reached Unicorn status with its Series A raise. Which brought up a ton of questions regarding equity vs. token sales which is an interesting debate to VCs and crypto nerds but nobody else, but since I fall in one of those groups I wanted to include it as well. Either way, great to see funding going to an OG’s venture like Voorhees who is a voice that still carries a ton of weight in the space.
Vaults Stay Hot: Standard Chartered has added Morpho to its asset coverage list and are projecting explosive growth in the new few years. Stablecoins, Prediction Markets, Tokenized Equity, and Vaults to deploy them all are the things I have been preaching for a while are the immediate product/market fit use cases for blockchain tech. I also am still waiting on mainstream adoption of NFTs, but that seems more “slowly, then all at once” than the rest that I think will continue to have sustained/consistent growth.
Ethereum for Government: While there is a new foundation in town set up by private actors to support the Ethereum ecosystem, the ETH Foundation classic is still putting out great info including this recent whitepaper on why governments and institutions should deploy their products and services on the Ethereum network.
Robinhood Chain: Robinhood chain launched this week as the tech giant prepares for tokenized equities trading through its FinTech platform. While I have long said we have enough general purpose layer-2’s, corporate chains like this that have control over the L2 while the security of Ethereum mainnet make sense. Love to see it.
Law Enforcement for Clarity: The first major law enforcement group has come out in favor of Clarity while others are moving from opposed to neutral. It made no sense for law enforcement to be opposed to a bill that gives them a ton of new powers and tools to fight crypto crime, but glad to see cooler heads prevail either way.
ENS Drama: Lots of people are dropping their .eth tags on social media after disputes over recent leadership changes as well as controversial governance decisions. I will keep my .eth addresses and think digital native addresses still have a ton of utility, but this was a bummer to see play out.
No Yield, No Problem: The debate over stablecoin yield was always silly because FinTechs will continue to pass yield down to holders like MetaMask announced it will and like is available through X Money accounts. Stablecoin issuers aren’t your competition, banks. FinTechs are.
CONCLUSION
If you have any questions or would like me to write about anything else, let me know on Twitter (X?) or Farcaster. Any typos or errors are intentional to prove I am not AI. As always, I am an attorney, I am not your attorney. For legal advice, you should always consult (and pay for) an attorney.
Outro/Disclaimer: In late 2022, while I was at Polsinelli, I started preparing weekly updates for attorneys at the firm to stay abreast of the latest Web3 legal developments. I now post the weekly updates on my personal blog every Tuesday, where I also provide links to more obscure legal developments and otherwise discuss industry trends and stories. Please note, the views and opinions I express are solely my own. They do not reflect the official stance or endorsement of the Digital Chamber or any of its members.
The NFTtorney 