August 10, 2021 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️
- Tether is backed by nearly 50% commercial paper, according to its latest attestation report.
- Poloniex agreed to a $10.4M settlement with the SEC for operating an unregistered exchange.
- Circle, the company behind USDC, intends to become a bank.
- Bitcoin hit $46,000 — a price not seen since May.
- Wormhole, a Solana bridge, launched its inter-blockchain messenger on Monday.
- OpenSea had issues handling bids during a PPLPLEASR x Fortune NFT auction.
- Shark Tank’s Mr. Wonderful is a fan of EIP 1559 (video).
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
A last-ditch compromise by Senators Lummis, Toomey, Warner, Portman, and Sinema to amend the crypto tax provision in the $1 trillion infrastructure bill was unsuccessful.
Early Monday morning, Lummis and Toomey announced the new amendment via a press conference, reporting that Democrats, Republicans, and the Treasury Department supported the compromise. According to Coin Center’s Jerry Brito, the amendment would have sufficiently tightened the definition of a “broker,” protecting protocol devs who write code, validators, and hardware/software wallet makers.
Senator Wyden also chimed in, noting that the new language had imperfections but was “better than the underlying bill.”
However, since the Senate had already decided to end debate concerning the infrastructure bill on Sunday night, the amendment could only be approved by unanimous consent — meaning a single Senator could defeat the compromise and move the bill forward to the House with the original language still intact.
And that’s exactly what happened.
The crypto compromise fell apart when Alabama Senator Richard Shelby attempted to add $50B in military spending via his own amendment, which Senator Bernie Sanders struck down. Senator Shelby then went on to object to the overall compromise.
The Senate will soon vote upon the infrastructure bill with the original wording regarding crypto taxes. If and when the bill is passed, it will move on to the House of Representatives, where the crypto industry will have another chance to get a new amendment.
For more content and analysis, check out…
- CoinDesk’s coverage by Nikhilesh De
- Ryan Selkis “lost his mind” (his words, not mine) over the infrastructure bill: here and here
- Kraken CEO Jesse Powell published a call to action for crypto execs
- Crypto support from the House of Representatives is promising: Patrick McHenry, Tom Emmer, Darren Soto
- Bankless’s “Now They Fight Us” recap
- Blockchain Association’s statement
- Sam Bankman-Fried’s play-by-play tweet thread
- Senator Cynthia Lummis on Washington “antics”
- Adam Cochran with a tweet thread on the risks America could face by stifling blockchain innovation
Recommended Reads
- Packy McCormick on NFTs as a social network:
- SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce on her frustration with the SEC’s crypto enforcement actions:
- Arca on what happened in the digital asset market this week:
On The Pod…
Is ETH on Its Way to Becoming Ultra-Sound Money? Yes, Says Justin Drake
Ethereum just went through its most complex upgrade ever. Justin Drake, researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, discusses what the upgrade, aka the London hard fork, means for ether’s future as what he calls “ultra-sound money.” At the end of the episode, he also drops a few Bitcoin hot takes. Show highlights:
- his background and how he got involved in crypto
- how EIP 1559 will affect Ethereum now that it is live
- why burning ether is good for the Ethereum economy
- what two concepts are crucial to understanding money
- what three ways ether is used as money
- why he believes ether will become “ultra sound money,” when gold and silver are just “sound money”
- what the main drivers of ETH’s value are
- how the merge from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake will happen for Ethereum
- how much more efficient Justin calculates proof-of-stake will be compared to proof-of-work
- why people are saying Ethereum is going through a “triple halvening”
- what factors influence how much Ethereum is issued and burned
- how Ethereum could become deflationary
- why net sell pressure is about to decrease
- what projects are burning the most ETH now that EIP 1559 is live
- why Justin is worried about Bitcoin’s future
- what Bitcoin could do to survive once it only subsists on transaction fees
- whether Justin considers himself a bitcoiner
- how ETH as ultra-sound money is becoming a meme
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 Jan. 18. Pre-order it today!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
