March 1, 2022       /       Unchained Daily       /       Laura Shin

Daily Bits ✍️✍️✍️

  • The Israeli Defense Ministry ordered the seizure of 30 digital wallets allegedly intended to fund Hamas, a terrorist group.

  • Pixelmon, an NFT project with a $70 million mint, had an “unacceptable” art reveal, according to its founder Syber.

  • MetaMask does not want its token launch to be a “cash grab.”

  • There is now 50 billion in the stablecoin USDC circulating the metaverse.

Today in Crypto Adoption…

  • eBay CEO says the firm is considering accepting crypto as a payment option.

  • KPMG Canada purchased a World of Women NFT and an ENS Domain Name.

  • AMC theaters will accept DOGE and SHIB via BitPay.

The $$$ Corner…

  • FTX pledged to invest up to $1 billion into projects that will “improve humanity’s long-term prospects.”

  • FriesDAO raised $5.4 million in an NFT sale and plans to buy a fast-food restaurant in its first year.

  • Hack VC announced a $200 million fund to focus on early-stage startups in crypto.

What Do You Meme?

What’s Poppin’?

Ukraine Wants All Russian Crypto Accounts Frozen

Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation sent letters to eight cryptocurrency exchanges in a request for them to stop servicing Russian users, according to a report from CoinDesk.

The move gave more weight to Sunday’s plea from Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, asking all major crypto exchanges to block the addresses of Russian users, be it politicians or ordinary citizens, on Sunday.

Additionally, the US Treasury Department asked crypto exchanges (Bloomberg reports that Treasury has already asked Binance, FTX Trading, and Coinbase specifically) yesterday to not facilitate transactions for addresses associated with entities and individuals listed on its latest sanctions list.

For now, it does not appear that major exchanges plan to cooperate. Binance told Reuters that it would block only officially sanctioned addresses of Russian users but has no plans to freeze ordinary accounts. Kraken CEO Jesse Powell reiterated Binance’s stance, explaining on Twitter that Kraken “​​cannot freeze the accounts of our Russian clients without a legal requirement to do so.” However, he did add that such an event could be coming soon: “Russians should be aware that such a requirement could be imminent.” Coinbase also declined, telling Decrypt that it “will not institute a blanket ban on all Coinbase transactions involving Russian addresses.” The exchange’s spokesperson did add that “We will continue to implement all sanctions that have been imposed, including blocking accounts and transactions that may involve sanctioned individuals or entities.”

However, it appears that some exchanges will do as Fedorov and Ukraine ask. DMarket, a “Ukrainian-born startup,” is one such example and has, according to its Twitter account, frozen the accounts of all Russian and Belarusian users.

The news comes as the Russian ruble is in free fall, declining20%+ yesterday compared to USD. Notably, Bitcoin volume in the ruble is skyrocketing to a nine-month high, according to data from Kaiko.

Recommended Reads

  1. Coin Center’s Jerry Brito on why crypto is most likely not going to help Russia get out of sanctions (must read):

  1. Arca on Canada, Russia, the Fed, and crypto:

  1. Multicoin Capital’s Kyle Samani on crypto x music:

On The Pod…

Is Code Law? Should the Hacker Be Punished? The DAO Creators Disagree

During my research for The Cryptopians, I found information that I believe identifies the perpetrator behind The DAO hack on Ethereum. Three founding members of The DAO and Slock.it (Christoph Jentzsch, Lefteris Karapetsas, Griff Green) discuss how and why they created The DAO, how they helped save the funds being siphoned off by black hat hackers, their personal feelings about The DAO, along with their reaction to the news about who I believe was The DAO attacker. Show topics:

Part 1: Background on The DAO

  • Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s background and how they came to Slock.it

  • what Slock.it was and why the Slock.it team decided to create The DAO

  • what The DAO has to do with venture capital funding

  • why the Slock.it team did not cap The DAO sale

  • what made The DAO such a popular investment vehicle

  • why The DAO developers were scared at the amount of money they raised

Part 2:

  • what Christoph, Lefteris, and Griff’s initial reaction to The DAO was

  • saving funds from The DAO via a hard fork versus white hat hacking

  • whether they thought Ethereum Classic would survive a hard fork

  • how the Ethereum community has treated Christoph, Griff, and Lefteris in the wake of The DAO attack

Part 3:

  • why they disagree on whether code is law

  • their reaction to my naming Toby Hoenisch as The DAO attacker

  • which actor would play them in a movie about The DAO attack

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