December 15, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • A bug on CoinMarketCap showed the price of a single Bitcoin as $789 billion yesterday afternoon.

  • NYDIG announced a funding round of $1 billion at a valuation of $7 billion.

  • Tesla is making “some merch” buyable with DOGE, according to Elon Musk.

  • The IRS finalized its crypto question on Form 1040.

  • USDC is now available to trade on Avalanche.

  • A Senate hearing on Tuesday morning discussedstablecoins.

  • Infinite Assets, a metaverse company, is going public via a SPAC at a valuation of $700 million and will trade under the ticker “JPG.”

  • Solana Ventures announced a $150 million fund for blockchain gaming,

  • Switzerland’s largest online bank plans to open a crypto exchange in 2022.

  • Robinhood acquired Cove Markets, a cross-exchange crypto trading firm.

  • FTX is partnering with the Golden State Warriors in an NFT deal.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Let’s Talk About Brokers

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen received a letter from a bipartisan group of senators seeking clarification on how the regulator will define “broker” for crypto tax reporting purposes in light of the language found within the recently passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

The letter was penned by senators Rob Portman, Mark Warner, Mike Crapo, Kyrsten Sinema, Pat Toomey, and Cynthia Lummis, describing their apprehension at the vague definition of a “broker” found within the bill.

“Some market participants have expressed concern that an overly-broad interpretation of this provision’s definition of “broker” could capture certain individuals who are solely involved with validating distributed ledger transactions through mining, staking, or other methods, and entities solely providing software or hardware solutions enabling users to maintain custody of their own digital asset wallets” explained the letter.

Based on a previous conversation between Senator Portman and Warner on the floor of the Senate, the senators believe the understanding is that the reporting requirements found within the infrastructure bill only cover brokers who enable the transfer of digital assets. Entities who are “ancillary” to the process would not be considered a broker.

The senators “urge” the Department of Treasury to provide “information or informal guidance” within a year.

The move from the bipartisan group comes after multiple failed attempts at changing the language in the bill during its time in the Senate.

Recommended Reads

  • The Generalist on decentralized countries:

  • Real Vision’s Raoul Pal on digital assets:

  • Variant Fund’s Spencer Noon on evaluating smart contract platforms:

On The Pod…

How Yield Guild Games Is Revolutionizing the Future of Work and Investment

Gabby Dizon, cofounder of Yield Guild Games, discusses his background in gaming, why he started Yield Guild Games, the performance of Axie Infinity, and more. Show topics:

  • how Gabby fell down the crypto rabbit hole
  • what inspired Gabby to co-found Yield Guild Games
  • what Yield Guild Games does
  • how blockchain games improve upon games in the traditional world
  • a real-life story of Yield Guild Games improving a player’s life
  • why it’s difficult for Yield Guild Games players to cash out earnings and how Yield Guild Games is trying to solve this issue via a partnership with XLD
  • why Gabby thinks the value of $SLP in Axie Infinity is dropping
  • what sort of game and tokenization mechanisms work best for blockchain games
  • why Gabby wants a new Ethereum token standard
  • what Gabby thinks makes an in-game NFT valuable
  • why Axie Infinity is popular in the Philippines and Venezuela
  • where Yield Guild Games is attempting to expand next
  • how Yield Guild Games built out the tokenomics for YGG, the guild’s native token
  • what Gabby thinks about P2E games on chains outside of Ethereum
  • how Yield Guild Games is decentralizing
  • how blockchain games are changing the nature of work
  • what sort of jobs exist in the metaverse
  • why Gabby buys NFTs
  • Gabby’s crypto prediction for 2022

Book Update

My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, is now available for pre-order now.

The book, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, comes out Feb. 22. Pre-order it today!

You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians