September 1, 2022 / Unchained Daily / Laura Shin
Daily Bits✍️✍️✍️
- Martin Köppelmann proposed a “shutterized Beacon chain” to improve Ethereum’s censorship resistance.
- Samir Shah resigned as the COO of Pantera Capital two months after joining the company.
- The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has not included NFTs in its cryptocurrency accounting project.
- Kyle Roche withdrew as counsel from several class action lawsuits against digital asset-related businesses.
- The developers of Helium want to migrate the protocol to the Solana blockchain.
- Arbitrum, a layer 2 scaling solution in Ethereum, launched a major upgrade in the network.
- “Cryptoqueen” accomplice Christopher Hamilton will be extradited to the U.S. over the OneCoin Ponzi scheme.
- crvUSD, a stablecoin to be issued by Curve DeFi protocol, could be ready to launch next month.
- Bitcoin experienced a 9.26% rise in mining difficulty, the largest since January.
- South Korean officers arrested sixteen people for allegedly violating foreign exchange regulations related to crypto transactions.
- A protocol upgrade accidentally froze cETH on Defi app Compound for one week.
Today in Crypto Adoption…
- Paraguay’s president vetoed a proposed regulation for cryptocurrencies.
- a16z crypto launched “Can’t Be Evil” NFT licenses to improve copyright vulnerabilities.
- Dapper Labs partnered with Ticketmaster to release tickets as NFTs.
The $$$ Corner…
- GoGoPool closed a $5 million round to provide decentralized staking on Avalanche.
- Live streaming platform Stacked raised $13 million in a round led by Pantera.
- Koop, a web3 community protocol, garnered $5 million in investments.
What Do You Meme?
What’s Poppin’?
Michael Saylor Accused of Tax Evasion
Michael Saylor and his company, MicroStrategy, are being sued for tax fraud in Washington DC.
Attorney General Karl A. Racine announced the allegations in a tweet, in which he called Saylor, a “billionaire tech executive who has lived in the District for more than a decade but has never paid any DC income taxes.”
In addition, MicroStrategy is also being sued for helping Saylor, the company’s founder and former CEO, with his alleged tax evasion strategies. The district authorities are claiming that Saylor evaded $25 million by stating Florida or Virginia as his place of residence, which have lower tax rates than DC.
According to a complaint filed last week, but made public yesterday, Saylor has allegedly lived in a “luxury penthouse and docked multiple yachts on the District’s Potomac riverfront from 2005 to present.”
“Florida is where I live, vote, and have reported for jury duty, and it is at the center of my personal and family life,” Saylor said in a statement. “I respectfully disagree with the position of the District of Columbia, and look forward to a fair resolution in the courts.”
MicroStrategy also denied the accusations against the company. “The Company did not conspire with Mr. Saylor in the discharge of his personal tax responsibilities. The District of Columbia’s claims against the Company are false.”
Racine’s office estimates that the back taxes and penalties for both Saylor and Microstrategy could total $100 million.
The markets reacted negatively after AG Racine’s tweet, as MicroStrategy shares (MSTR) fell 4%, closing the day at $231.56.
Saylor hasn’t been the most friendly person with tax authorities in the past, as he said they could “go f** themselves”.
Recommended Reads
- James Ho on Layer 2 season
- Greg Di Prisco on the Maker drama
- Arthur Hayes on liquidity
On The Pod…
Andrew Hinkes, partner at K&L Gates and adjunct professor at NYU, and Martin Koeppelman, cofounder of Gnosis, talk about the sanctions on Tornado Cash, how they will impact Ethereum on the base layer, and the likelihood of having two chains. Show highlights:
- the legal meaning of the OFAC sanctions on Tornado Cash and why it is causing complications
- how legislation is built for the fiat world, and how in DeFi and crypto there’s no clarity
- whether a proof of work chain or a proof of stake chain would be more censorship resistant
- whether laws apply to validators in a PoS chain
- the different entities involved in Proof of Stake
- how a user-activated soft fork works and the conditions in which a fork could happen
- whether social slashing is enforceable considering it is not in the protocol
- the likelihood of Ethereum becoming a permissioned system
- the role of Flashbots’ relay code and what it means for Ethereum’s censorship resistance
- how DeFi’s exposure to US-based institutions can affect the likelihood of the chain complying with sanctions
- why US-based companies will choose a conservative path, considering the lack of guidance
- the importance of educating the regulators
- how cash and crypto are the only remaining private payment methods
Book Update
My book, The Cryptopians: Idealism, Greed, Lies, and the Making of the First Big Cryptocurrency Craze, which is all about Ethereum and the 2017 ICO mania, is now available!
You can purchase it here: http://bit.ly/cryptopians
