Cardano Rumor Rundown February 23, 2023

Hey Everyone!

Let’s go….

Newly Covered Today:

1. The February Cardano 360 is today (Feb 23). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aG06ojHyuY
2. The Coinbase 10-K says they have outstanding subpoenas from the SEC. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1628441057376575489
3. The Liqwid v1 audit is complete. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/fed-minutes-february-2023-minutes-show-fed-members-resolved-to-keep-fighting-inflation.html
4. In the class action suit against Dapper Labs (creators of CryptoKitties) alleging the NBA Top Shot Moments NFTs are securities, the court has denied the motion to dismiss. This is just the court saying that if all the factual allegations are taken as true, then there is a plausible claim for relief. This is not a ruling on the status of NFTs as securities or not. But, the judge did go through a pretty detailed analysis of Howey in the ruling which found horizontal commonality for prong 2. https://twitter.com/jeremyg2k/status/1628446270854672385
5. Fed Meeting Minutes are here. Page 11 of the minutes notes that a few FOMC participants favored a 50 basis point hike instead of the 25 basis points we got. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/22/fed-minutes-february-2023-minutes-show-fed-members-resolved-to-keep-fighting-inflation.html
6. Something mysterious is afoot at Coinbase. https://twitter.com/coinbase/status/1628444495821012997

Previously covered, but still interesting:

1. This is actually very big progress on the mainstream exposure front for Cardano courtesy of Lex Fridman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beZdNf_mO1o
2. The UK Treasury has released its long awaited proposal for crypto regulation. Looks like they’re trying to be technology agnostic and focused on a principle of “same risk, same regulatory outcome”. https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/future-financial-services-regulatory-regime-for-cryptoassets
3. The Fed has hiked the federal funds rate by 0.25% bringing the target range to 4.5-4.75% This is a much smaller raise than the 0.50% in December and the four consecutive 0.75% increases just prior to that. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/01/fed-rate-decision-february-2023-quarter-point-hike.html
4. Here’s a great thread from Sooraj of This Week in Cardano on the Cardano Settlement Layer (CSL) vs. Cardano Computation Layer (CCL) and Cardano Sidechains including the new Cardano Sidechain Toolkit from IOG. https://twitter.com/Soorajksaju2/status/1620564722515861505
5. Here’s an interesting new Cardano statistics site. https://peerreview.money/
6. Liqwid has launched on Mainnet (Feb 2). https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1621129278518890497
7. Cardano is now arguably “DeFi feature complete” depending on your definition. https://twitter.com/cardano_whale/status/1621092500093145088
8. Plus….Liqwid has dark mode on Day 1. Let darkness reign! https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1620985328118157313
9. The World Mobile exhibit (fan built) in Carda Station looks pretty good. https://twitter.com/JoyeousT/status/1621225742435745793
10. World Mobile says it’s going to increase its Youtube efforts. This will be good for visibility of a very large Cardano RealFi project. https://twitter.com/WorldMobileTeam/status/1621191509218365444
11. Paul did a great interview with DC and Florian of Liqwid today (Feb 2). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8F_f4rLipA
12. COTI has published a Djed launch recap. https://medium.com/cotinetwork/djed-launch-recap-b5ec293e20dd
13. Charlie Munger at 99 years old thinks we should ban Bitcoin. Also thinks the leader of the CCP is awesome. https://twitter.com/ODELL/status/1621151302838525952
14. There is now a proposal in the Liqwid governance forum to reduce LQ token emissions. https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1621351623887917056
15. ImperatorLang made a great thread about how to get started building on Cardano with no prior programming experience. https://twitter.com/ImperatorLang/status/1622283773759950849
16. Shocker! VCs are not going to do what’s best for crypto communities. https://twitter.com/Dogetoshi/status/1620602151830704129
17. Some are pointing to A16Z’s involvement in a rival bridge and calling it anti-competitive behavior. https://twitter.com/ChrisBlec/status/1622201701921964035
18. Apparently, there is now 30 million ADA locked in the Djed contract. Not bad in the first week. https://twitter.com/DjedStablecoin/status/1622298562628407298
19. Behold the Cardano media blackout in all its glory! https://twitter.com/cz_binance/status/1622528162499383299
20. At Messari you can see that our recent 24h active address count is 73k (as of Feb 6). https://messari.io/asset/cardano/metrics/all
21. Having watched Martin throughout the '90s and Bad Boys (about a million times), it's surreal & amazing to see that the content is interesting to a guy who entertained me so much. Thank you immensely! https://twitter.com/realmartymar/status/1622710686647287808
22. Binance dot com (but not binance dot US) has announced a temporary pause of US dollar & US bank transactions. https://twitter.com/binance/status/1622669988560609293
23. Some are linking this to issues with its banking partner, Signature. https://gizmodo.com/binance-bank-transfers-crypto-ftx-1850079035
24. Liquid has published a summary of what’s happening with LQ tokenomics and utility. https://liqwidfinance.substack.com/p/lq-tokenomics-and-utility
25. A very legitimate point about the stark contrast between ETH and Cardano on governance. Do you want a bunch of guys locked in a room for a week or transparent on-chain governance? https://twitter.com/StakeWithPride/status/1623064762610499586
26. If you held all of the Cardano Summit 2021 NFTs at the Virtua snapshot in November and still haven’t grabbed your free miner bot, there is a window open right now (Feb 7). https://twitter.com/landbots_virtua/status/1623005985324380181
27. Some in the traditional finance world already see where crypt is going. https://www.forbes.com/sites/ninabambysheva/2023/02/07/how-mastercard-goldman-sachs-and-other-tradfi-titans-are-using-blockchain-to-rewire-global-finance/
28. Here’s the one-tweet summary of that article if you run into the paywall. https://twitter.com/Blockworks_/status/1622966028299902977
29. Artifact Moon has released their beta 3d Moon Map with the ability to buy parcels from the map. Seems beautiful and responsive. https://twitter.com/ArtifctApp/status/1623045948690800640
30. Fed Chair Jerome Powell was interviewed at The Economic Club of Washington today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkC4LuuxOg4
31. CoinDesk wrote an article about the activity in SundaeSwap governance. https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/02/08/cardano-dex-sundaeswap-floats-first-on-chain-governance-proposal/
32. Ladies and Gentlemen, allow me to present the king of all bad crypto policies. https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/1623459203150131201
33. Unsurprisingly, the crypto crackdown that was long predicted for after the mid-term elections is also taking place via banking access (once again). https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1623346563069116417
34. Nice try, Coin Center! The real difference is between custodial staking and non-custodial staking. https://twitter.com/NeerajKA/status/1623469303545593856
35. Liquid protocol was temporarily paused via multisig today for a security issue fix. https://twitter.com/liqwidfinance/status/1623345076016406530
36. The UK has released a consultation paper on plans for the Digital Pound saying “it is likely” to be needed. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1134845/CBDC_WEB_PDF_-_7_FEB_2023_1130am.pdf
37. Apparently, you can now invite the public to come check out your Cardano Island Crib. https://twitter.com/VirtuaMetaverse/status/1623365199032946697
38. Get ready for lots of Cardano essays. Twitter Blue people now have 4k characters. https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1623411400545632256
39. Looks like Kraken was the first staking target of the SEC. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2023-25
40. Gensler released a video which very specifically described staking in terms of “escrow” or “if you transfer your tokens to a staking-as-a-service provider”. Neither of these is common in normal Cardano staking or delegating. But, it sounds a lot like the Ethereum staking world. https://twitter.com/GaryGensler/status/1623777842000539648
41. Rumors are that other exchanges & stablecoin providers will receive letters outlining charges soon. One posted rumor is mentioning Circle (USDC) & Paxos specifically. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1623785788725944322
42. Here’s some wild speculation from one poster: if Circle agrees to limit/censor USDC in some way, it might lead to demands from ETH users to employ some kind of social slashing, which could cause a schism (and create fork potential) in that ecosystem. https://twitter.com/jessebabies/status/1615769704353734656
43. Charles posted a reply to Brian Armstrong’s staking tweet that savagely highlights the regulatory problem with Ethereum’s custodial/slashing based staking. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1623530227870896130
44. Charles also dropped a video explaining how (in the very worst scenario) Cardano staking could still operate via “contingent staking” even if SPOs were regulated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7y2tvpHY5w
45. Now the SEC is going after Binance USD stablecoin issuer, Paxos. https://archive.ph/nrgeU
46. Jessie Powell (founder of Kraken) posted “I don’t think that any minor differences matter to the SEC, which views all forms of custodial staking as problematic.” If true, this is massively bad for Ethereum and confirms the advantage in Cardano. https://twitter.com/jespow/status/1623825932011155457
47. Here’s the actual complaint in the Kraken/SEC settlement. https://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/2023/comp-pr2023-25.pdf
48. Coinbase has released a comprehensive defense against their “Earn” staking program being classified as a security under the Howey Test and vowed to fight if the SEC goes after them. While I don’t find their reasoning to be bulletproof or extremely persuasive. The value is in the commitment to fight. We need this hard line in the sand right now. https://www.coinbase.com/blog/coinbases-staking-services-are-not-securities-and-heres-why
49. The community is predictably conflicted about the possibility of contingent staking. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1624937015824510976
50. Here’s a fantastic thread by Sooraj explaining the huge innovative leap forward provided by Ouroboros Genesis for dynamic participation in proof-of-stake systems and making Cardano more secure than Ethereum or Algorand. This is by far the best explanation I’ve seen. https://twitter.com/Soorajksaju2/status/1623748877152034818
51. FutureFest obviously understands the importance of proximity audio chat in virtual worlds. https://twitter.com/coc_space/status/1623759580017614848
52. Congratulations to MinSwap for its highest one day volume! https://twitter.com/MinswapDEX/status/1623322182670508034
53. And just like that….the legend of “Corando” was born. https://twitter.com/MinswapDEX/status/1623322182670508034
54. Looks like 3D assets are live for Cardano Island cribs. https://twitter.com/k45tor/status/1623370449869541387
55. There’s 30 million ADA now locked in the Djed contract (as of Feb 10). Update as of Feb 12: 31.5 million ADA. https://twitter.com/DjedStablecoin/status/1622298562628407298
56. The messaging against the energy use in Bitcoin is fully ramping up now courtesy of Bloomberg and the Harold and Kumar guy. Knowing that this would happen was a part of choosing proof-of-stake and Cardano for many of us. https://twitter.com/WalkerAmerica/status/1624847319928655874
57. Here’s the statement from Paxos on the SEC enforcement pressure. They say they will no longer issue new BUSD. https://twitter.com/PaxosGlobal/status/1625091554951004161
58. Apparently, Circle filed a complaint regarding Binance with NYFDS last year that led NYFDS to direct Paxos to sever their relationship with Binance. https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/stablecoin-issuer-circle-warned-york-184748322.html
59. Here’s Caitlin Long on why the Federal Reserve rejected the application of Custodia Bank and whether this is part of a larger attempt to strangle all of crypto by the current administration. https://twitter.com/YahooFinance/status/1625166752291119105
60. Charles dropped a new whiteboard (actually blackboard) video on contingent staking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36WUIyk0T9g
61. Higher than expected US inflation numbers were released today (Feb 14) with the CPI up 6.4% from a year ago. https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/14/consumer-price-index-january-2023-.html
62. Looks like the Cardano Island Condos will be opening tomorrow. https://twitter.com/VirtuaMetaverse/status/1625543057927028752
63. More rumors circulating that we’ve got a lot more crypto enforcement actions coming our way to “cut off crypto in all its” forms. https://twitter.com/CGasparino/status/1625475673073635330
64. This one is calling it a “midnight massacre” where Gensler will bring as many enforcement actions as possible before the new congress gets its bearings. https://twitter.com/EleanorTerrett/status/1623796900586573826
65. Today the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs held a hearing called “Crypto Crash: Why Financial System Safeguards are Needed for Digital Assets”. https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/crypto-crash-why-financial-system-safeguards-are-needed-for-digital-assets
66. To counter the Dragon’s depiction of crypto as basically just a money laundering tool, Chainalysis points out that only 0.24% of crypto volume is illicit transactions. https://twitter.com/clarkcoin1/status/1625641638906277888
67. Today was the mainnet SECP hardfork combinator event. https://twitter.com/InputOutputHK/status/1625615743470411784
68. While I hate it as a metric, Cardano TVL is definitely looking up. https://defillama.com/chain/Cardano
69. Operation Chokepoint 2.0 continues. https://twitter.com/jespow/status/1625887480556974081
70. Here’s the rebuttal to the crypto custody rule from Hester Peirce. https://www.sec.gov/news/statement/peirce-statement-custody-021523
71. Interesting thread alleging who in the current administration is pushing this attack on crypto and why. https://twitter.com/ThinkingCrypto1/status/1625621477365096449
72. Binance expects to pay fines to settle U.S. investigations. https://www.wsj.com/articles/crypto-giant-binance-expects-to-pay-penalties-to-resolve-u-s-investigations-f1e3c9d2
73. There are now hotkeys for Cardano Island cribs. https://twitter.com/VirtuaMetaverse/status/1626280633029869568
74. CNFT Jungle has rolled out some new tracking features. https://twitter.com/ElRaulito_cnft/status/1626156405706170368
75. My condolences to those of you who recently lost your AI girlfriend. Maybe all the free time is the cause of the recent price spike in ADA. https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3py9j/ai-companion-replika-erotic-roleplay-updates
76. SEC charged Do Kwon and Terraform Labs today. https://twitter.com/SECGov/status/1626347690853376008
77. SEC Do Kwon complaint alleges that Luna,UST, MIR, & wLuna are all securities. At this point, I think we can assume the SEC will be happy to call any crypto a security if they are trying to go after you. https://twitter.com/collins_belton/status/1626345152892526592
78. The Do Kwon complaint brought us a lot of scary firsts. https://twitter.com/lex_node/status/1626344391248936965
79. SundaeSwap governance has concluded its first proposal. https://twitter.com/SundaeSwap/status/1627459486632779776
80. Even Forbes is reporting on the SEC expansion of powers under the Do Kwon complaint. https://www.forbes.com/sites/digital-assets/2023/02/17/sec-claims-new-turf-in-lawsuit-against-terrausd-stablecoin-creator/?sh=3a9610577a88
81. Apparently, state legislators have complete disregard for the way blockchains actually work. https://twitter.com/0xfoobar/status/1627446585582919681
82. Caitlin long revealed that she handed over evidence of one of the big crypto frauds long before that company imploded. https://twitter.com/CaitlinLong_/status/1626661344316473346
83. One of the most comforting things in this crypto bear market is knowing that our Cardano metaverse projects are building out virtual worlds for us in the background. https://twitter.com/Pavia_io/status/1627689345283944448
84. Charles dropped a Voltaire video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wzsLeU2u0E
85. So, Bitcoin Devs patched a vulnerability in 2018 and kept it secret until 2020? https://twitter.com/pcaversaccio/status/1627631035017052163
86. Rumors that Grayscale may win its case against the SEC to become a spot ETF. https://twitter.com/AP_Abacus/status/1627737116888166400
87. The big contingent staking debate with Charles went down. https://twitter.com/IOHK_Charles/status/1628115203182190594
88. CardaStation now has audio chat. This is a big step forward for Cardano metaverse projects. https://twitter.com/Carda_station/status/1627868527087476738
89. The Proof-of-Stake alliance is now trying to convince everyone that liquid staking derivatives are not securities. The ETH world seems very worried about the possibility of SEC action against LIDO et al. https://twitter.com/TeamPOSA/status/1628017928405762053
90. Djed says changes to minimums and fees coming soon. https://twitter.com/DjedStablecoin/status/1628116084229558272
91. Report: only 1.6% of remittances in El Salvador use Bitcoin while ⅓ of Latin Americans have used stable coins. https://twitter.com/paddi_hansen/status/1628002503932657664

~Army of Spies