April 13, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

• In March, inflation rose by 8.5% in the US compared to a year ago.

• Axie Infinity announced a bug bounty ranging from $1,000 to $1,000,000 in the wake of last month’s $600 million Ronin hack.

• P2E game Nyan Heroes released a cinematic trailer.

• A new token standard would allow users to return an NFT for its original value in a 14-day period.

• An Ethereum wallet address purchased $400,000 worth of assets that turned out to exactly match the latest batch of listings announced by Coinbase.

• ICHI dropped 90% in 24 hours due to cascading liquidations in Rari.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

• Robinhood listed SHIB, SOL, MATIC, and COMP.

• CoinDesk’s Nikhilesh De predicts that a spot bitcoin ETF is not likely to be approved this year.

The $$$ Corner…

• Circle announced a $400 million funding round and will be adding BlackRock as a strategic partner.

• Pantera Capital is set to close its first blockchain fund at $1.3 billion, doubling its target.

• Ignite Accelerator is launching a $150 million program to support the development of web3 projects.

• Genies, an NFT avatar company, raised $150 million at a $1 billion valuation.

• BloXroute, a DeFi infrastructure firm, raised $70 million in a round led by SoftBank.

• Glow Labs raised a seed round to build a no-code, gasless NFT launching platform.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

No Yield for U(S Citizens)

Many US crypto investors just lost another outlet to earn yield on their digital investments.

Celsius, a crypto rewards platform, announced yesterday that non-accredited US customers would no longer earn yield on deposits after April 15th.

“As we previously have acknowledged, Celsius has been working closely with regulators around the world. It is our intention to be as transparent with our community as possible,” Celsius wrote in a blog post. “More specifically, we have been in ongoing discussions with United States regulators regarding our Earn product. As a result, there will be changes to the way our Earn product will work for users based in the United States.”

With the update, Celsius customers who do not make $200,000 a year or have a net worth of $1 million will be barred from earning interest on the platform. Current Celsius customers and customers who deposit tokens before April 15th will be grandfathered into Celsius’s Earn program and can continue to obtain yield on their investments.

Such news is not exactly surprising. Celsius has been under scrutiny since the middle of 2021. By September of last year, the platform had already encountered regulatory obstacles in New Jersey, Texas, and Alabama.

Furthermore, Celsius’s major competitor, BlockFi, paid a $100 million fine to the SEC and state regulators for offering a lending product, which the SEC believes is a securities product, to US citizens without registering. Additionally, the SEC threatened to sue Coinbase after the exchange announced its intent to launch a crypto-interest-bearing product for US citizens.

Recommended Reads

1. CoinDesk on former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith’s 5+ year prison sentence:

2. Messari on Avalanche’s Q1:

3. @Cov_duk on finding NFT projects:

On The Pod…

Excited About Your Bored Ape or CryptoPunk? Make Sure You Understand Your IP Rights

Stuart Levi, co-head of the Technology Transaction and Intellectual Property Group at Skadden Arps, and Marta Belcher, general counsel and Head of Policy at Protocol Labs, break down the legal issues surrounding NFTs specifically in the context of Yuga Labs’ recent purchase of CryptoPunks and Meebits IP rights. Show highlights:

• the definitions and differences between copyrights, trademarks, and rights of publicity (name, image, likeness)

• how NFT projects have evolved in the past 12-18 months and what that means for the rights of NFT holders

• why NBA Top Shot’s licensing model is the best model for famous brands entering the NFT space

• how the popularity of PFPs and the open-source ethos of crypto has led to confusion regarding the commercial rights of NFT holders

• what you are getting when you buy an NFT (hint, it’s not copyright)

• the misconceptions surrounding Yuga Labs’ acquisition of CryptoPunks and Meebits

• why Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders most likely cannot use the Bored Ape Yacht Club brand or logo

• what issues web3 projects face in getting NFT holders to accept terms and conditions

• why web3 projects should protect their trademark

• what a Creative Commons license is, and how it can be used in the NFT space

• what sort of licenses exist in the NFT space

• why secondary sales and transfers of NFTs pose such massive problems for copyright and trademark owners

• how marketplaces are handling terms and conditions

• what NFT projects can do to help the transfer of copyrights and trademarks

Book Update

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