The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day | | | Elon Musk Considered a Blockchain-Based Social Media Play Before Bidding on Twitter: A series of text messages released as part of ongoing litigation over the Tesla CEO's fraught Twitter deal reveal the billionaire's vision for a social media platform that would charge users to put short messages on a blockchain. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was also apparently interested in Musk's plan to take Twitter private, the texts show. - "I think a new social media company is needed that is based on a blockchain and includes payments," Elon Musk said in a text message just days before he offered to buy Twitter for $43 billion back in April. Those plans, much like the ultimate decision to buy Twitter, were apparently scuttled.
California Moves Forward to Allow Vital Records to Be Issued on Blockchain: Californians will have the option to keep a record of documents like birth and marriage certificates on a blockchain-based app, after a recordkeeping law passed this week. This comes days after the state's governor vetoed a crypto licensing and regulation bill that would have created a West Coast version of New York's BitLicense. Bitcoin Could 'Double in Price' Under CFTC Regulation, Chairman Behnam Says: Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) Chairman Rostin Behnam said Wednesday that regulation would benefit the crypto industry as institutions waiting on the sideline would rush into bitcoin and other digital assets. - "Non-bank [crypto] institutions thrive on regulation, they thrive on regulatory certainty," Behnam told attendees during a fireside chat at New York University School of Law.
Celsius Creditors Subpoena Equities First for $439M Collateral Repayment: Creditors of crypto lending firm Celsius Network have moved to subpoena Equities First, a lending firm which is unable to pay back a $439 million collateral to Celsius. The move comes after Celsius' former CEO Alex Mashinsky declared his company had borrowed money from Equities First. - Celsius, which declared bankruptcy last spring, was looking at a number of ways to pay back its debt to customers and institutions, including IOU ("I Owe You") tokens and selling off its stablecoin holdings.
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Get started on Nexo Pro today, and profit more by getting the best possible prices on all your trades. | | | Putting the news into perspective | | | Deglobalization Is Happening. Crypto Is Part of the Answer We woke up this morning to two very different yet deeply related pieces of news. In the Baltics, President Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would annex four regions of Ukraine, signaling the continued intensity of the war there. And in Florida, a hurricane, Ian, has inflicted catastrophic damage, unprecedented even for that perennially hurricane-prone state. In different ways both events highlight the need to reshape the fundamental infrastructure of human society into something more robust, transnational, individualized and fluid. That includes the need for financial networks that can't be cut off by autocratic leaders or destroyed by natural disasters. These points were perhaps less obvious when the Bitcoin project was launched in 2009. Russia was still plausibly on a path to Western-style liberalization, and more generally there was a sense that democratic politics and market economies would become the universal standard. And while events like 2005's Hurricane Katrina had already provided plenty of warning about the impacts of climate change, many were still in denial. Americans in particular still thought they were living in the capitalist utopia of Francis Fukuyama's "End of History," or its far more simpleminded cousin, Thomas Friedman's "Flat" world. | (Contributor#8523328/Getty Images) Of course, Friedman wasn't entirely wrong. The world has "flattened" in the sense that we can now communicate across long distances far more effectively than was possible even two decades ago. But in many cases that only offers a better view of unfolding tragedies. Globalized communication, for instance, has allowed us to see far more clearly the disconnect between Russia's kleptocratic leadership and its people, who are as divided and diverse as any other population on Earth. Vast numbers of Russians loathe Putin and everything he stands for, but nonetheless find themselves at risk of being disappeared from the international community by forces effectively beyond their control. Regardless of the outcome of Putin's aggression, individuals running businesses in Russia are likely to have far less access, above all, to international logistics systems including payments, shipping and transportation. These systems have become vastly more open in the past half-century, but there are still choke points at the nation-state level. SWIFT, the network that connects banks across borders, has kicked out at least seven Russian banks, for instance. Read the full story here. – David Z. Morris | This study examines why no existing decentralized storage is suitable for storing personal data, from a legal and ethical point of view, and what negative consequences the development of blockchain technologies may have for society without taking this crucial factor into account. We take a closer look at various aspects of this problem: - social
- legislative
- technical and technological.
Followed by an in-depth comparison of existing decentralized storage projects. We list technical requirements for new solutions that will replace the current ones. | Overheard on CoinDesk TV... | "It is a national security imperative in the U.S. to foster innovation." – Inca Digital CEO Adam Zarazinski, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover" | | | -
Stablecoin Markets Shift as Binance Begins USDC Conversions (Decrypt) -
SEC Turns the Screws Again With Crypto Market Manipulation Case (The Defiant) -
Is Ethereum Censorship a Concern Post-Merge? (Blockworks) -
Told you so: Crypto-loving Bukele rips BoE over struggling pound (Protos) | | | The Investing in Digital Enterprises and Assets Summit reveals the most scalable and fastest-growing market opportunities in blockchain, digital assets, Web3 and the metaverse for traditional asset managers and institutional investors. Learn directly from the founders and developers pioneering breakthrough innovations that will drive large-scale adoption. Use code TN_20 for 20% off the General Pass. Register now. | | | |
Elon Musk Eyed Crypto Social Media, Texts Reveal