Meta’s Metaverse

October 29, 2021       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• The Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global anti-money laundering watchdog, published its finalized guidance for regulating the crypto industry.

• The SEC will not be approving a leveraged bitcoin futures ETF.

• MicroStrategy added 9,000 BTC to its holdings during Q3.

• Coinbase once again reached #1 on the Apple App Store rankings of the most popular free apps in the US.

• Wharton, the business school at University of Pennsylvania, is accepting crypto as payment for a class titled “Economics of Blockchain and Digital Assets” (where I will be making a guest appearance).

• Alchemy, a blockchain infrastructure company, is raising$250 million fundraising round at a $3.5 billion valuation.

• The constructive sale rule could soon apply to cryptocurrency investors.

• India is likely to start regulating crypto via taxation of transactions and gains.

• The NBA’s Dallas Mavericks struck a sponsorship deal with Voyager Digital, a crypto brokerage firm.

• A CryptoPunk sold for $532 million — but on-chain analysts say it might be a publicity stunt.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

The metaverse just went mainstream.

On Thursday, the social media giant Facebook announced a complete brand overhaul. The Mark Zuckerberg-led company will now go by “Meta,” in a nod to the company’s new infatuation with the metaverse. (Disclosure: I write a Facebook Bulletin newsletter.)

“I think we’re basically moving from being Facebook first as a company to being metaverse first,” Zuckerberg told The Verge after Meta’s formal announcement.

What is the metaverse? Well, that remains to be seen, but Zuckerberg hinted to The Verge that NFTs most likely fit into Meta’s, ahem, metaverse.

“One of the big questions that people are going to have about virtual goods in the metaverse is, ‘Do I really get to own this thing? Or is it just content that someone can basically just take away from me in the future?’ And I’m pretty sensitive to that given all the pressures that we’ve had to try to navigate around censorship, and what’s the definition of something that’s harmful versus when you have to get in the way of people being able to express something.”

According to a report from Axios, Facebook is investing billions into its metaverse push. The current plan seems to be spurring the creation of virtual and augmented reality applications. Meta has already announced a $150 million fund to promote the usage of such tools and features.

In another metaverse-centric move, the company’s stock will begin trading under the ticker MVRS starting Dec. 1.

Recommended Reads

• Marc Boiron, general counsel at dYdX, on the FATF’s guidance:

• Security researcher Mudit Gupta on the Cream Finance hack:

• Synthetix founder Kain Warwick on DeFi:

On The Pod…

Why Terraform Labs Cofounder Do Kwon Is Unfazed by US Regulators

Do Kwon, co-founder of Terraform Labs, was recently served subpoenas by the US Securities and Exchange Commission during Messari’s mainnet event, leading Kwon and Terraform to preemptively sue the SEC. On Unconfirmed, Kwon discusses:

• what Terraform Labs does and how it is building its DeFi ecosystem around TerraUSD ($UST)

• why Terraform Labs created its synthetics protocol, Mirror, and how it works

• what Do thinks about the SEC’s investigation into Mirror

• what happened to Do at Messari’s mainnet event

• why the SEC’s approach to crypto regulation does not impact Do very much

• what Do thinks about how US regulators are treating crypto companies

• how Do would regulate the crypto industry

• why he believes the current state of crypto regulation doesn’t work in a global context

• why he says the SEC couldn’t do anything to TerraUSD — even if it wanted to

• what two characteristics are critical in building a decentralized protocol

• how the crypto industry could improve security in light of the $130 million Cream Finance hack

Book Update

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