Global Gaming Operator Adds Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto Coin for Deposits and Withdrawals
Press Release –
updated: Mar 18, 2022
LOS ANGELES, March 18, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– BetOnline.ag, one of the world’s largest online sports betting, poker and casino platforms, became the first gaming operator to add ApeCoin to its approved cryptocurrency processing list, the company announced today via the Odds PR agency.
ApeCoin ($APE) began trading on crypto exchanges Thursday, March 17, after months of hype and speculation behind the ERC-20 token created by Yuga Labs, which is the parent company of the popular NFT project, Bored Ape Yacht Club.
BetOnline, which publicly announced its entry into the NFT market in February after purchasing Bored Ape #320 for $375,000 during Super Bowl week, was an early adopter of cryptocurrency. The website first began accepting Bitcoin for transactions in 2010.
“We got in early on Bitcoin because we are confident blockchain is the future of global currency,” BetOnline CEO Eddie Robbins III said. “And now, it’s incredibly exciting to start adding NFTs to our asset vault and be the first in our industry to accept ApeCoin. We’re bullish on the world of Web3, and we’re eager to build and strengthen our partnerships and promotions in this space.”
Outside of Bitcoin, BetOnline.ag accepts more than a dozen altcoins for deposits and withdrawals on its platform, including Ethereum, Dogecoin, Avalanche, Cardano, Polygon, Solana and USDC.
BetOnline is widely respected by crypto communities for processing perks such as zero transaction fees, high-level security and instantaneous deposits and withdrawals. Clients have access to crypto deposit limits up to $500,000, which is the highest in the gaming industry.
“We’ve established ourselves as the go-to sportsbook, poker and casino platform for crypto players who want the best gaming experience that is guaranteed by anonymity and transparency,” Robbins said. “The security of our customers has been, and will always be, the top priority at BetOnline.”
An Etherscan transaction from Thursday morning shows that the company’s ENS domain and crypto wallet, betonline-ag.eth, claimed 10,094 APE tokens. A spokesperson said the company has no intention of selling its ApeCoin.
For March Madness, BetOnline is currently offering a 110% matching bonus for new customers depositing with cryptocurrency and a 45% deposit bonus for existing customers.
About BetOnline.ag
Established in 1991, BetOnline (www.betonline.ag) has become a worldwide leader in providing safe, legal and secure online gaming. The company’s guiding principle is to establish long-lasting, positive relationships with its customers and within the gaming community. BetOnline features the most innovative technology and online gaming solutions for its sportsbook, poker, casino and horse racing clients.
Kraken, a large crypto platform, said it won’t close Russian accounts unless the company is legally … [+] forced to do so, CEO Jesse Powell said via Twitter. Powell tweeted, “Our mission at Kraken is to bridge individual humans out of the legacy financial system and bring them into the world of crypto, where arbitrary lines on maps no longer matter, where they don’t have to worry about being caught in broad, indiscriminate wealth confiscation.” Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
There are reports that Russian oligarchs and others are trying to move their money around to avoid the crippling economic sanctions that have been levied on the country, in response to the invasion of the Ukraine.
One of the ways to “hide” financial assets and evade the sanctions is to put their rubles, which have been crushed, into cryptocurrencies at various cryptocurrency exchanges. These trading platforms enable the buying, selling, holding and trading of digital assets, such as bitcoin and Ethereum. This would also be a way for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his inner circle to get their vast fortunes out of the traditional banking system.
Since the United Kingdom, European Union, United States, Canada and other countries kicked Russian banks from SWIFT, the primary international global payments messaging system used by banks, the country needs access to capital to supply the war and keep its economy alive.
After Russia waged war against Ukraine on February 24, transactions on bitcoin exchanges, in both the Russian ruble and the Ukrainian hryvnia, surged. On Wednesday, bitcoin increased to $44,188 after falling to $36,370 last week. Other leading digital assets, including Ethereum, Ripple and Solana, stayed about even or had modest gains. The ruble dramatically plummeted to record lows, against the dollar, to under one U.S. cent.
U.S. regulators and law enforcement officials are looking into this matter and enhancing their efforts to combat the possible use of cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions, according to the Associated Press. However, not all crypto exchanges are on board, and said they won’t shut out Russian accounts. To be fair, why should the average citizen, who is already subjugated under a tyrant, be adversely impacted? Also, the exchanges claim that one of the major reasons why people purchase crypto is to get out of the banking system and the clutches of big governments.
It will be up to compliance and regulatory personnel to ensure that the sanctions are enforced. These professionals review data and accounts of the people and companies that are on the sanctions list. They do this by conducting a Know-Your-Customer review when they onboard new clients and review existing customers.
Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine and minister of digital transformation of Ukraine, praised the crypto community for their financial support, tweeting, “Massive support from crypto projects @solana @SolanaFndn and @everstake_pool, which set up a joint initiative @_AidForUkraine in collaboration with our @mintsyfra to raise funds for @Ukraine.”
He also called for the blocking of oligarchs to hide their money through purchasing digital assets.
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, said in a statement, “We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts. Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe. To unilaterally decide to ban people’s access to their crypto would fly in the face of the reason why crypto exists.” The exchange did say that it will freeze the crypto accounts of Russian officials who are on sanctions lists, Reutersreported.
Kraken, a large crypto platform, said it won’t close Russian accounts unless the company is legally forced to do so, CEO Jesse Powell said via Twitter. Powell tweeted, “Our mission at Kraken is to bridge individual humans out of the legacy financial system and bring them into the world of crypto, where arbitrary lines on maps no longer matter, where they don’t have to worry about being caught in broad, indiscriminate wealth confiscation.”
Whatever the human toll of the war in Ukraine, the ugly reality is that conflicts between nation states are won or lost as much in the monetary realm as on the battlefield.
Keeping the machinery of war raging forward will leave even the wealthiest of countries in dire financial straits. Many will resort to currency debasement, capital restrictions and unsustainable foreign debt to fund their violence. Superpowers who control the global financial architecture will often deploy sanctions to strangle lesser economies, wiping out entire business sectors and goading impoverished citizens to overthrow their leaders.
One way or another: once the money runs dry, the guns soon fall silent.
Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion of Ukraine will be no exception. Neither side can afford a war with no end. Yet the emergence of a new form of sovereign digital money is distinguishing this conflict from all that came before it.
Never before has the ability to finance a war – and to shield oneself from monetary attack – rested in the hands of individual citizens wielding smartphones and making personal choices without scrutiny from their government, bank or law enforcement agency. The financial libertarianism that bitcoin unlocks for the world has no parallel in history. Whether it will be written about as a force for good or for evil by historians will depend not on the underlying technology – which is apolitical and incorruptible – but on the scruples with which society collectively deploys it.
Ukraine’s government fired the opening salvo on this front on February 26th, when deputy prime minister Mykhailo Fedorov appealed directly to global citizens – not their political representatives – to donate money for his country’s war effort in bitcoin and two other cryptocurrencies.
Fedorov did not ask his audience to lobby their governments for military aid. He did not solicit donations through the cumbersome, inefficient, state-supervised infrastructure that allows bank-account holders in Seattle, Sierra Leone and Shanghai to send money to Kiev. Instead, he posted a 34-character bitcoin address in a single tweet. Anyone on the planet who copied that address and pasted it into their digital wallet was then able to teleport a donation instantly, at the click of a button, for virtually no cost, and without needing the help or permission of an intermediary.
It’s easy for Westerners living in democracies to downplay the significance of this technological feat. Westerners are accustomed to opening banking apps on our phones and swiping away our globally accepted dollars or euros. Those living in poorer countries, less so. Westerners are not accustomed to being bundled into the back of a police van because our latest bank statement included a payment to a disagreeable party. Those living in autocratic countries, more so.
Bitcoin is the first genuinely peer-to-peer monetary network the world has ever known. The individual freedom it enshrines is now helping a friendly government protect its people from a hostile one: at the time of writing, 220 bitcoin worth $9.6m had been donated to Ukraine. Crucially, as a borderless and permissionless network it’s also protecting benefactors – many Russians among them, no doubt – from persecution at home.
And yet with the good, comes the bad.
Just as an army can both liberate or annihilate a population, so bitcoin can both set people free or empower their tyrants.
Western efforts to punish Russia economically – through wide-ranging sanctions and exclusion from the international payment system Swift – expose the dark side of monetary freedom. Vladimir Putin and the oligarchs in his pocket will likely try to use bitcoin to circumvent restrictions. According to Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank (ECB), this ability to defang Western policy underlines the need for regulation in cryptocurrency markets. According to Ukraine’s Fedorov, the risk is so great that all Russians should be banned from cryptocurrency exchanges.
Lagarde’s stance needs serious caveats. Regulation, in principle, is acceptable to all but the most radical libertarians. But the devil is in the detail. The fully transparent, open-ledger transaction history on which bitcoin is built already helps law enforcement track illicit funds. Credible exchanges already block “dirty” bitcoin that is known to be the proceeds of crime. They already comply with Know Your Customer (KYC) anti-money laundering legislation. These protocols can, should and will be used to target sanctioned Russians, more or less trapping their ill-gotten gains within the cryptosphere. But regulation must not become a smokescreen for attacking bitcoin and blocking law-abiding citizens from taking custody of their wealth – an ulterior motive that Lagarde clearly harbors, believing it’s the ECB’s god-given right to bind Europeans to a monetary system that dissolves the value of their savings through negative real interest rates.
Fedorov’s proposal, meanwhile, should be dismissed out of hand.
Russian citizens are not the enemy. They are not responsible for Putin’s actions; they certainly never voted him into office, and they’re now paying dearly for his madness. Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, struck the correct tone in response to his appeal: “We are not going to unilaterally freeze millions of innocent users’ accounts,” it told CNBC. “Crypto is meant to provide greater financial freedom for people across the globe.”
It’s important to recognize that bitcoin will help ordinary Russians as much as – and very likely more so – than their Ukrainian counterparts. Russian inflation had already surpassed 8% by the end of last year. It will now, inevitably, skyrocket as supply chains collapse, energy prices surge, and panic takes hold in financial markets.
Bitcoin’s fixed supply and seizure-resistant, non-physical design are attractive traits for civilians – on both sides of the border – who need to protect their assets from inflation and government overreach. Civilians, after all, rarely escape the cost of war. Those who survive the bombs are left to pay for them. If they’re lucky, their government will secure a debt repayment plan while rolling out tax hikes that saddle an entire generation with the cost of its military adventurism. If they’re unlucky, they face total financial destruction through hyperinflation. That’s what happened in Hungary in the aftermath of WWII, when former currency the pengő was losing 90% of its value every four days. Its replacement, the forint, lopped 29 zeros off the nominal value of the old notes.
The consequences for Hungarians who had stored their life savings in pengő does not need elaborating.
On February 28th, following a weekend of deteriorating fortunes for Russia’s military, the ruble lost nearly a quarter of its value in a single day. It continues to depreciate rapidly. Moscow has responded by banning foreigners from exiting local investments and doubling the interest rate to 20%. Russian citizens will be targeted next. These are the agonized contortions of an economy that is burning from the inside out. The ruble need not go the way of the pengő for Russians to have their wealth erased with the stroke of a pen.
Her remarks were meant to convince democratic governments that bitcoin is a threat to the established financial order. Instead, they are showing undemocratic ones that global citizens can no longer be robbed and abused with impunity.
Roger L. Martin is one of the world’s foremost business strategists, serving as an advisor to the CEOs of some of the world’s largest companies including Procter & Gamble and Ford. In this interview we discuss the pitfalls with modern corporate governance and how things have become exacerbated by the rise of passive investing, proxy services and the pandemic-driven stock market boom.
We also touch on the growing trend of major technology firms, such as Google, Facebook and even Coinbase, concentrating voting power in the hands of executives. Finally, we explore what all this means for the growth of DAOs and token prices during this period of crypto development.
Excerpted from our premium research service, Forbes CryptoAsset and Blockchain Advisor. Subscribe today to get first access to breaking news, trading signals, exclusive interviews, and much more.
Forbes: What do you see today as some of the flaws in the modern incarnation of a corporation? And what are some of the key points of attention and trade off that you see between the various types of stakeholders?
Roger Martin: I’m not sure that the modern widely held publicly traded company is governable. The problem is that there’s this notion of professional managers who run the company. And we have this notion that there’s a principal agent problem, where there is a challenge of having the management operate the company in a way that’s consistent with what the shareholders/owners want. There are two proposed solutions to the agency problem. One is to have stock-based compensation that’s supposed to align the interests of management and shareholders. There is a board of directors that works on the shareholders’ behalf to make sure that the directors or the senior management is operating in accordance with what the shareholders would want. So, here’s the question. If management are agents, and have self-control problems and interests that aren’t necessarily aligned with those of the shareholders, could you explain to me how another group of people who we call directors, who also aren’t the shareholders, would have the desire and motivation to serve those shareholders?
It’s an article of faith that the widely held publicly traded company is constructively governable. And of course there is this notion that stock-based compensation will align the interests of management and shareholders and I’ve written extensively about that, but it actually does the opposite. Everybody thinks the stock price is somehow a real thing that really reflects the company and its operations, and they’re often baffled when earnings are up 20% and the stock goes down. The reason is that the stock price is nothing real. It’s something entirely ethereal. It is simply the culmination of what all people in the capital markets observing the company imagined its future prospects to be. We know that because the S&P 500 has traded on average at 19x or 20x across its history, which means the stock prices incorporate 1x for current earnings and the other 19x times for future expectations. So we believe that stock-based compensation provides an incentive to make the company perform better. It isn’t. You don’t get higher stock prices by making the company perform better. You get a higher than today’s stock price by making the company perform better than people think it’s going to perform today. So the only thing that actually increases stock prices is a positive surprise. Hence, the question is, can management keep on delivering positive surprises to capital markets? Executives figured out that the game is to heighten the stock price, use aggressive accounting or whatever, to get expectations up, and then get out or cash out before the expectations fall back. And that’s why you get all this manipulation. In fact, the smartest thing you can possibly do as a CEO—and lots of CEOs do this—is as soon as you take over the position, you say, oh my god, now I understand what’s really going on here; the company is an incredible disaster. By saying so you are trying to get the stock price down. Then you do a bunch of things to get it back up to the level it was when you arrived. And you’ll be rich. So a publicly traded company is not governable. That’s a fundamental problem.
Forbes: Have any of these issues been exacerbated by the frenzied capital markets during the pandemic?
Martin: The worst position for management of a company to be in is to have overvalued equity. If you’ve got equity that is trading for more than you, as the manager, knows it’s worth, you can be inclined to take desperate actions; make big, gigantic risky bets to try and do something to keep a collapse of the stock price from happening. That’s when most managerial sins are committed: when your equity is overvalued. The best place to be as a manager is if your equity is mildly undervalued, which gives you room to do things to get the stock price up. Because if there isn’t room and if in fact, there’s negative room, you just know the crash is coming. These ultra-high markets, which are spurred by the Fed keeping interest rates thus far at zero and pumping the economy absolutely chock full of cash, are making equity and debt go up. But there’s a correction coming. It’s just a matter of how, when and just how brutal it will be.
Forbes: You’ve also written about how the rise in passive index investing has disconnected shareholders from the managers, which exacerbates the problem of corporate governance. Can you touch on that, and perhaps also discuss how proxy funds fit in here?
Martin: I think the proxy voting firms ISS, etc., are just ideologues. They have an ideology, which has nothing to do with anything that is demonstrated, proven or the like. I think they help lazy people be able to say, oh, ISS told me that I should vote this way so I’m okay. And ISS, from my experience, has no clue what is actually good for the performance of a company. It’s one of these things where the dominant players in the capital markets are not playing with their own money. It’s not even close. Pension fund managers, BlackRock, Fidelity, State Street, Vanguard are also playing with somebody else’s money. Hardly anybody’s playing with their own money. And it’s real people actually making those decisions. So you have to analyze their incentives. The main incentive for pension fund managers, for example, is to not be fired. It’s not to make the most money possible for shareholders. I will say that I have met pension fund managers who do take on pensioners’ interests as their responsibility, but that’s the exception, not the rule. So the idea that somehow they would be paragons of great management is just far fetched.
Forbes: Do you have any tell tale signs for distinguishing a good money manager from a bad one? Also, are there any ways for how this broken proxy system could be improved?
Martin: I think the improvement is going to come from much more of a return to the corporate structure of the 1920s and 1930s, where public shareholders were simply along for the ride and these were semi-public companies. Because there was somebody who owned the majority stake and or at least a controlling stake and said, “hey, if you want to come along, go ahead. But I’m managing this. My net worth is tied up with this, and I’m going to make the decisions. And I don’t basically care what you think.” Now you’ll notice there’s a new kind of firm emerging in America that has taken that form, right? Tesla and Google, etc., where the leaders pretty explicitly say, “I do not care what you think, I am uninterested completely. And I’ll do what I want.” I think we’re going to have more of that. And I think that’s a better structure than the widely held publicly traded company.
Forbes: That is an interesting point, because even looking at crypto with firms like Coinbase where Brian Armstrong controls a majority of the voting power, we are seeing some of the major firms follow this lead.
Martin: As long as they’re honest and clear from the outset. That’s why I liked Google. When it went public, they were super clear. It was like, we’re in charge. You are free to come along for the ride. We’re fine with that, but do not be confused.
Forbes: Let’s now turn our attention to DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations. What are your thoughts?
Martin: That sounds like a phenomenally dumb idea to me. I think it’s mainly massive hype. So there’s a tool that a bunch of very geeky people have come up with, they’re totally in love with, and they’re trying to find something useful to do with it. And they’re trying to create an ideology about it—oh, it’s all about decentralization. And they’ll find things to use the tool for. NFTs (non-fungible tokens) is a good example. It created an industry because now you can prove ownership of something. I don’t doubt that it’ll have applications. Do I see it as a way of changing human nature? Which is what this is saying; that people want a kind of completely decentralized, everybody votes thing. If they wanted that, Facebook and Google wouldn’t control the internet. Remember, we had the hype back then—oh, it’s going to be the most democratizing force on the face of the planet. Everybody can contribute and everybody can be on their own. Look what happened. Way, way more centralized nodes, centralized control of a sort we’ve never seen in the history of the planet. So if people are lustful and longing for all sorts of decentralized systems where everybody participates in every decision, humans have never worked that way. And I don’t think humans want to. And they are showing us that by having fealty to Facebook and Google.
Forbes: Do you think it’s because humans don’t want that? Or they’re just lazy and they appreciate the convenience and don’t understand the tradeoffs that come with these platforms?
Martin: All action is designed. People do what they want and what they want is to not participate in every decision and take personal agency for fixing everything. Then they will act accordingly. I think that almost everything about blockchain is fantastical; it’s hype but as usual, there’s something real inside the hype. So the internet as of 2000 was the hype, right? You didn’t need earnings; all you need is eyeballs and everything else to follow, and we’ll vendor finance it because that’s fine because it’s eyeballs and all the rules are suspended. It’s all different. Well, what happened? The whole thing blew up. Did the internet go away? No, it bred some very useful things that have changed the world for the better. I see the same with blockchain, which has no chance of reaching all the hype. And so, if you’re a sensible, not hype-oriented blockchain person, you can probably make a legitimate buck on it. That’s the best case scenario for blockchain as far as I’m concerned.
Bitcoin, ethereum and cryptocurrency prices have swung wildly over the last week as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends shockwaves through global markets—adding to fears of a “cataclysmic market shift.”
The bitcoin price fell under $35,000 per bitcoin this week before rebounding sharply. Ethereum and other major cryptocurrencies have been equally as volatile as “extreme fear” grips investors.
Now, traders are braced for severe gyrations after Russia was kicked off the world’s main international payments network SWIFT, with a former Russian Central Bank deputy chairman warning of “catastrophe” on the Russian currency market.
The bitcoin price has fallen sharply in recent months with the Russia invasion of Ukraine causing … [+] further volatility for bitcoin, ethereum and other cryptocurrencies.
SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
“It means there is going to be a catastrophe on the Russian currency market on Monday,” Sergei Aleksashenko told Reuters. “I think they will stop trading and then the exchange rate will be fixed at an artificial level just like in Soviet times.”
On Saturday, the U.S., the E.U., the U.K., France, Germany, Italy, and Canada announced in a joint statement they would penalize Russia’s central bank and exclude some Russian banks from the SWIFT messaging system, used for trillions of dollars worth of transactions around the world, and designed to “prevent the Russian Central Bank from deploying its international reserves in ways that undermine the impact of our sanctions.”
It’s thought Russia holds about $300 billion of foreign currency offshore—enough to disrupt money markets if it’s frozen by sanctions or moved suddenly to avoid them, according to a Credit Suisse report reported by Bloomberg.
Bitcoin, ethereum and crypto prices had recovered along with stock markets toward the end of this week as traders came to terms with Russian sanctions. However, it’s thought the latest measures could trigger fresh volatility, with soaring commodity prices and inflation fears rattling investors in recent weeks.
Bitcoin’s extreme price volatility at a time when the gold price has climbed has undermined the popular narrative that bitcoin has begun acting as digital gold, a so-called safe-haven asset that investors flee to in times of perceived risk—though some bitcoin and crypto investors remain confident.
“In contrast to major stock indices, bitcoin hasn’t actually recorded a lower low [this week],” Mikkel Morch, executive director at digital asset Fund ARK36, wrote in an emailed note. “This small detail could be of great significance in terms of the talk around bitcoin as a safe haven asset.”
Despite the bitcoin, ethereum and crypto price recovery, fears persist that the bitcoin price could fall back again.
“The situation is still volatile and the $40,000 levels are still the resistance,” Morch added. “Unless bitcoin meaningfully breaks this barrier, revisiting the range lows or even the $30,000 support is still very much on the table in the short term.”
“If the situation in Ukraine escalates even more bitcoin may fall below $30,000 as investors leave for defensive assets,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior financial analyst at FxPro, said in emailed comments, pointing to reports Russia could use cryptocurrency to circumvent sanctions. “Otherwise, the country will not survive the growing sanctions pressure from Western countries.”
The bitcoin price fell to lows not seen since a major crypto crash last month as fears mount over … [+] the knock-on effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Ethereum and other cryptocurrencies have also swung wildly.
Coinbase
However, others in the bitcoin and crypto community think its unlikely bitcoin could be used by Russia to evade global sanctions.
“The suggestion that Russia could use bitcoin to evade sanctions is mostly an exaggeration by the media,” Cory Klippsten, the chief executive of bitcoin-buying app Swan Bitcoin, said via Telegram.
“Technically, Russia could use bitcoin given its permissionless, open nature, but there are methods for agencies to trace bitcoin transactions. It’s important to note that bitcoin is a technology that can be accessed by anyone, no matter if you agree with their actions or not.”
Almost $14 million has so far been donated to the Ukrainian war effort through anonymous bitcoin donations, according to researchers at Elliptic, a blockchain analysis company.
On Saturday, the official Twitter account of the Ukraine government posted: “Stand with the people of Ukraine. Now accepting cryptocurrency donations. bitcoin, ethereum and USDT”—a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar. Addresses for two cryptocurrency wallets collected millions of dollars in bitcoin, ethereum within just a few hours.
“Across the globe, demand for bitcoin continues to increase as the need for a decentralized, censorship-resistant store of value becomes more evident by the day,” added Klippsten.
Paige Bueckers of the UConn Huskies celebrates her three point basket in the first quarter against the Baylor Lady Bears during the Elite Eight round of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament at the Alamodome on March 29, 2021 in San Antonio, Texas.
ELSA/GETTY IMAGES
University of Connecticut basketball star Paige Beuckers announced a new partnership Monday that’s sure to add to her buckets of cash off the court.
The reigning Naismith College Player of the Year is partnering with Cash App, the mobile payment service owned by Jack Dorsey’s Block (formerly Square), to help launch the Paige Bueckers Foundation. Although specific details have yet to be released, the foundation will broadly focus on creating opportunities for children and families and promoting social justice. Cash App plans to endow an initial $100,000 Bitcoin donation, in addition to $100,000 in cash that will be given away to fans in $15 payments to promote the announcement. Other financial terms were not disclosed, but Forbes estimates that Bueckers is still a few deals away from hitting the $1 million mark in endorsements.
“I know this deal isn’t like a super long-term contract,” Bueckers tells Forbes. “But I’m working with people and want to work with people who have the same values as me.”
This marks Bueckers’ third major partnership since the NCAA stripped down its regulations in July, allowing college athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness. She signed with global e-commerce platform StockX in October and, one month later, became the first college athlete to join Gatorade’s ranks. In July, Bueckers trademarked the phrase “Paige Buckets,” which is the point guard’s nickname.
How Bueckers fares in the nascent NIL market could offer a glimpse of the opportunities emerging for the top tier of college athletes. Based on her sprawling social media presence—Bueckers has more than one million followers between Twitter and Instagram—a study from research outlet AthleticDirectorU named her the most marketable athlete in college sports prior to the NCAA’s rule change.
“She is the best of the best, and these major brands want to leverage her appeal, particularly to a young and growing demographic,” Carnegie Mellon Tepper School of Business associate professor Tim Derdenger wrote in an email. “Her success will certainly spill over to other players.”
It already has. Last month, Gonzaga forward Chet Holmgren signed a deal with Topps that the company said was its largest with a college athlete to date. Fresno State basketball players and TikTok stars Haley and Hanna Cavinder recently cofounded a streetwear clothing company in addition to striking partnerships with Boost Mobile, Champs, Eastbay and WWE.
The addition of Bueckers rounds out an impressive roster for Cash App, which has signed up a handful of high-profile athletes in the last few months. In November, Los Angeles Rams wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. and Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers announced they were partnering with Cash App and taking part of their salaries in Bitcoin. Golden State Warriors stars Klay Thompson and Andre Iguodala said they would be doing the same in January. As cryptocurrency becomes a hot topic among athlete investors, at least ten North American-based professional athletes have taken part of their salaries or endorsement payments in some form of crypto.
“Obviously, I’m still learning a lot about it and trying to understand,” Bueckers says. “I just started understanding what to do with my tax money, so now I have to learn what to do with Bitcoin and cryptocurrency.”
A native of Hopkins, Minnesota, Bueckers arrived at UConn in 2020 as the top-ranked recruit in the United States and the 2019-20 Gatorade Female Athlete of the Year. She collected a string of awards during her freshman season and led the heavily favored Huskies to the Final Four, where they were upset by the University of Arizona. Bueckers picked up where she left off during her sophomore campaign before suffering a fracture in her left knee, which has sidelined her for the last two months. She hopes to return at the end of February.
As she adds to her sponsorship portfolio, Bueckers plans to continue to use her platform to advocate for racial equity. At the 2021 ESPYs, where she won the award for best college athlete in women’s sports, Bueckers used her speech to honor and celebrate Black women. She’s adamant about including BIPOC creatives in anything she does. “I grew up with everything, a roof over my head and food on my plate,” she says. “I want to help younger kids that weren’t as fortunate as me.”
This is likely just the start.
“The current set of offers is just the tip of the iceberg,” Derdenger says. “She has a lucrative future ahead of her.”
Dear Web 3 investors, NFT collectors and all the crypto-curious,
The @ForbesCrypto team has been hard at work for the past few months developing the ultimate platform to help navigate the world of crypto and blockchain—Forbes Digital Assets—our all-in-one platform which includes news, market data, analysis, in-house research and virtual events covering all corners of the blockchain world.
To help get you started we’re launching Watchlist, a feature located in the top right section of the Forbes Digital Assets landing page that lets you track the performance of your favorite cryptocurrencies, be it Bitcoin, Solana or one of the smaller altcoins. Think of it as a way to bookmark assets you discover on Forbes in real time, for future exploration.
Find ‘My Watchlist’ in the top right corner of the landing page
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Forbes
If you don’t have a registered Forbes account or simply haven’t signed in, your watchlist will by default consist of Bitcoin, Ether and Litecoin, reflecting their current prices and 24-hour performance. Once you sign in, it’s tabula rasa! All you should see is the green circled cross button at the center of your watchlist.
You can start making selections by scrolling down to the “Leaders and Laggards” segment of the main page, which shows the best and worst performers in the past 24 hours among cryptocurrencies that Forbes tracks. To view all available assets, click the corresponding link at the bottom of this section or select the “Assets” tab at the top of the main page. To remove an asset, click on ‘Edit’ in the top right corner of the Watchlist window and press the Remove button next to it.
The “Leaders and Laggards” segment of the main page shows the best and worst performers over the past 24 hours among cryptocurrencies that Forbes tracks.
Forbes
Forbes currently tracks the 85 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, but more will be added as we continue to enhance our platform. The tokens are ranked by “Impact”—a metric we have developed to address discrepancies in market cap calculations and the corresponding rankings of cryptocurrencies across several major platforms providing this data. Every cryptocurrency has a dedicated page with basic information about the asset, a price chart and accompanying data across various time periods as well as prices listed on major cryptocurrency exchanges such as Coinbase Pro and Gemini.
For context and further guidance, head to the News and Research section in the Dashboard tab featuring stories and research reports from our experts in data, crypto regulation, taxation and other relevant fields. We also regularly host webinars and panels with top executives and specialists to discuss emerging trends and investment strategies, where you can bring your pressing questions. All sessions are recorded and available on demand in the Events tab.
And lastly, as the popular saying goes: “When in doubt, zoom out,”—and we mean it in the broadest sense. For the serious investor, looking for in-depth, regular insights, nothing beats the Forbes CryptoAsset & Blockchain Advisor, our monthly newsletter keeping you informed of all the nascent trends. But there’s no ultimate guide for investing in emerging assets and technologies so make sure to use other resources and platforms (other than Twitter and Discord) when building your watchlist. And if you have any questions, come to us!
MIAMI, FLORIDA – JUNE 04: MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor speaks at the Bitcoin 2021 Convention (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
Getty Images
What Happened
MicroStrategy has been purchasing bitcoin since 2020 as a part of its capital allocation strategy. The company holds over 120,000 BTC as of the end of December 2021. As a U.S. public company, MicroStrategy is required to report earnings and transactions related to bitcoin under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) standard. However, properly accounting for these transactions in GAAP financial statements is an emerging area. The current GAAP standards that classify digital assets as intangible assets with indefinite lives (similar to goodwill and trademarks of a business), fail to capture the true financial behavior of bitcoin holdings. This treatment requires companies to report a loss when digital assets’ prices fall below the cost; however it prohibits marking up digital assets to it’s true value when prices later recover. This discrepancy can negatively impact a company’s net income, which could incorrectly translate into lower price per share.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is the IRS of the accounting world. The FASB is responsible for creating Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). As of the date of posting, there are still no cryptocurrency specific GAAP rules.
In the absence of these crypto specific rules set by the FASB, in 2020, a working group formed by the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) came up with a Digital Asset Practitioner Guide addressing how to classify cryptocurrencies in GAAP financial statements.
How Cryptocurrencies are Classified on GAAP Financials
According to the white paper issued by the AICPA, crypto assets cannot be classified as “cash or cash equivalents” on GAAP financial statements because they are not backed by a sovereign government or considered legal tender. They cannot be classified as a financial instrument or a financial asset because they are not cash (see above why) and do not represent any contractual right to receive cash or another financial instrument. Additionally, since cryptocurrencies are intangible, they do not clearly meet the definition of inventory and cannot be labeled as inventory on the balance sheet either.
After going through the process of elimination, we are left with only one category to classify cryptocurrencies under: intangible assets with indefinite life. This is how MicroStrategy currently classifies bitcoin in their financial statements.
(3) Digital Assets: The Company accounts for its digital assets as indefinite-lived intangible assets in accordance with Accounting Standards Codification (“ASC”) 350, Intangibles—Goodwill and Other. The Company’s digital assets are initially recorded at cost. Subsequently, they are measured at cost, net of any impairment losses incurred since acquisition” (10-Q, page 11)
Practical Mismatches with Intangible Asset Treatment
There are a few problems with classifying cryptocurrencies as intangible assets with indefinite life. Practically speaking, this accounting treatment does not align with the reality. Cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are liquid and work extremely similar to cash. The purpose of GAAP financial statements is to paint an accurate, unbiased picture of the underlying entity’s financial situation. By treating crypto assets as intangible assets, GAAP financials fails to communicate the high liquidity of crypto assets.
Second, once an item is classified as an indefinite life intangible asset, it should be tested for impairment. This means, if the value of the crypto asset has gone down at the end of the reporting period, the business gets to write off that amount as an impairment loss (not to be confused with tax losses) on the income statement. However, if the value goes back up (which is common due to high volatility), the business does NOT get to mark up the value of the asset. This overly conservative approach often results in businesses showing poor operating results under GAAP which negative affects investor sentiment and stock price.
For example, MicroStrategy reported $65,165,000 of impairment losses for the three months ending September 30, 2021, because the market value of bitcoins went below their purchase price. Although this 65M impairment loss was not a cash outflow from the business, it was the largest operating expense which contributed to a net loss of $36,136,000.
Similarly, during the three months ending September 30, 2021, Tesla reported 51M of impairment loss. Square reported 6M of bitcoin impairment loss in the same period.
MicroStrategy consolidated statement of operations
MicroStrategy
To clarify the situation and show the true performance of the business to investors, MicroStrategy added a section named, “Non-GAAP Financial Measures” in their 10-Q. This section shows what would their operating income be without taking impairment and few other non-GAAP amounts (not related to digital assets) into consideration.
According to this schedule, if impairment loss was not considered (and few other items not relevant to bitcoin), the company would have a net income of $18,566,000.
Reconciliation of non-GAAP net income schedule
MicroStrategy
SEC Letter to MicroStrategy
The SEC objected MicroStrategy’s Reconciliation of non-GAAP net income schedule above. On December 3, 2021, it sent the company a comment letter and advised the company to remove it under the Rule 100 of Regulation G.
Reg G requires public companies to “disclose or release such non-GAAP financial measures to include, in that disclosure or release, a presentation of the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure and a reconciliation of the disclosed non-GAAP financial measure to the most directly comparable GAAP financial measure”.
Although we don’t know the specifics of the situation, it is clear that MicroStrategy’s 10-Q includes GAAP financials & a reconciliation of non-GAAP net income schedule allowing readers to compare numbers easily. The company’s goal is to clearly communicate the true operating performance of the company minus the “paper bitcoin losses” which is required to report under incompatible GAAP rules. Therefore, the specific concern the SEC has with the presentation is unclear. It is also interesting to see that the letter is only talking about the “adjustment for bitcoin impairment charges” among other items included in the Reconciliation of non-GAAP net income schedule such as share-based compensation, interest expense and income tax effects.
On a subsequent letter from MicroStrategy dated December 16, 2021, the company accepted SEC’s comments and removed the adjustment for bitcoin impairment on the reconciliation of non-GAAP net income schedule.
Finally, the rising inflation and the uncertainly of interest rates have moved the market sentiment from investing in risky companies to value stocks of profitable companies. Microstrategy may find it challenging to show a net profit under GAAP in the coming months if the price of BTC moves sideways in a bearish market or declines further creating more impairment losses. Even when BTC goes up, Microstrategy will not be able to show a profit under GAAP unless they sell it. This situation could unfairly affect the stock price of the company. If a spot BTC ETF gets approved, investors might be better off directly investing in the ETF compared to using Microstrategy as a way to get exposure to BTC.
Next Steps
Keep an eye on how SEC approaches Non-GAAP disclosures related to bitcoin for other public companies holding bitcoin.
First, there was web1 – aka the internet we all know and love. Then there was web2 – the user-generated web, heralded by the arrival of social media. Now, wherever we look, people are talking about web3 (or sometimes, web 3.0) – the supposed next big evolutionary leap forward of the internet. But what is it, exactly?
What is Web3 All About? An Easy Explanation With Examples
Adobe Stock
Well, opinions on this differ somewhat. Web3 is currently a work-in-progress and isn’t exactly defined yet. However, the main principle is that it will be decentralized – rather than controlled by governments and corporations, as is the case with today’s internet – and, to some extent, connected to the concept of the “metaverse.”
Before we start – just to avoid confusion – it’s worth mentioning that, until a few years ago, the term “web 3.0” was frequently used to describe what is now known as the “semantic web.” This was a concept put forward by the original “father of the internet,” Sir Tim Berners-Lee, for a machine-to-machine internet. Language is defined by its use, and the term is more frequently used to describe something else now. However, Berners-Lee’s concepts are considered to be a part of what we now call web3, although not the entirety of it.
What is the decentralized web?
Let’s look at decentralization first. Today, all of the infrastructure that the popular sites and hangouts we spend time on online are usually owned by corporations and, to some extent, controlled by regulations set out by governments. This is because this was the simplest way to build network infrastructure – someone pays to install servers and set up software on them that people want to access online, and then either charges us to use it or lets us use it for free, as long as we abide by their rules.
Today, we have other options, and in particular, we have blockchain technology. Blockchain is a relatively new method of storing data online, which is built around the two core concepts of encryption and distributed computing.
Encryption means that the data stored on a blockchain can only be accessed by people who have permission to do so – even if the data happens to be stored on a computer belonging to someone else, like a government or a corporation.
And distributed computing means that the file is shared across many computers or servers. If one particular copy of it does not match all of the other copies, then the data in that file isn’t valid. This adds another layer of protection, meaning no one person other than whoever is in control of the data can access or change it without the permission of either the person who owns it or the entire distributed network.
Put together, these concepts mean data can be stored in a way so that it is only ever under the control of the person who owns it, even if it happens to be stored on a server owned by a corporation or subject to the control of a local government. The owner or government can never access or change the data without the keys to the encryption that proves they own it. And even if they shut down or remove their server, the data is still accessible on one of the hundreds of other computers that it’s stored on. Pretty clever, right?
Other important concepts that are often used in relation to the technical infrastructure of web3 are that it is open, meaning largely built on open-source software, trustless and permissionless.
Trustless means that interactions and transactions can take place between two parties without the need for a trusted third party. This was not necessarily the case on web2 or below because you would have to be certain that whoever owned the medium you were using to interact or transact was not manipulating your communications.
A good example of a web3 trustless transaction would be sending Bitcoin directly to another person – not via an online exchange or wallet stored on a centralized server. The entire process of making the transaction is controlled by the blockchain algorithm and encryption, and there is close to zero chance that anyone can step in and disrupt it.
Similarly, “permissionless” means that neither party in a transaction or interaction have to seek permission from a third party (such as a service provider or government) before it can take place.
By the way, if you think all this talk about avoiding government interference sounds a little bit anarchistic or libertarian, then you’re not alone! There are still big questions to be answered about the implications that this lack of oversight or control has for safety and legality. We’ve already seen governments attempt to create legislation that will allow them to retain some level of control over communications and interactions on the web3. This includes the UK Government’s indications that it would like to regulate citizens’ ability to send end-to-end encrypted messages.
Web3 concepts – the DAO
The Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) is a web3 concept describing a group, company or collective that are bound by rules and regulations coded into a blockchain. For example, in a DAO-based shop, the price of all of the items, as well as details on who would get pay-outs from the business, would be held on a blockchain. Shareholders in the DAO would be able to vote to change prices or who gets the money.
However, no individual could change the rules without having permission to do so. And no one who owned the physical infrastructure, such as the server owners, or the owners of the facilities where the profits were stored, could interfere in any way, like running off with the takings!
Crucially, DAOs – in theory – eliminate the need entirely for many of the “men-in-the-middle” needed to run an organization – such as bankers, lawyers, accountants, and landlords.
Artificial intelligence (AI) and web 3.0
Most people believe that AI will play a big part in web3. This is due to the heavy involvement of machine-to-machine communication and decision-making that will be needed to run many web3 applications.
How does the metaverse fit with web3?
The last important concept of web3 that we have to cover is the metaverse. In relation to web3, the term “metaverse” covers the next iteration of the internet’s front-end – the user interface through which we interact with the online world, communicate with other users, and manipulate data.
Just in case you’ve missed all the hype – the idea of the metaverse is that it will be a much more immersive, social and persistent version of the internet which we all know and love. It will use technologies like virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to draw us in, enabling us to interact with the digital domain in more natural and immersive ways – for example, by using virtual hands to pick up and manipulate objects, and our voices to give instructions to machines, or talk to other people. In many ways, the metaverse can be thought of as the interface through which humans will engage with web3 tools and applications.
It’s possible to create web3 applications without the metaverse being involved – Bitcoin is one example – but it’s thought that metaverse technology and experiences will play a big part in the way many of these applications will interact with our lives.
This all sounds great, and everyone must love it, right?
Well, actually, no. It should be mentioned that there has been a fair amount of high-profile criticism of web3. Elon Musk has made several comments, including stating that it “seems more like a marketing buzzword than a reality right now” and tweeting, “Has anyone seen web3? I can’t find it.”
Former Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, on the other hand, has questioned whether it will be as free and open as many hope. He said, “You don’t own web3. The VCs and their LPs do. It will never escape their incentives. It’s ultimately a centralized entity with a different label.”
Others don’t like many of the current proposals for web3 due to the fact that they are built on blockchain, which can sometimes be very energy-intensive, contributing to carbon emissions and climate change. The Bitcoin blockchain, for example, is estimated to consume around the same amount of energy as Finland. Other blockchains – such as those that are built on proof-of-stake algorithms rather than proof-of-work, are not as energy-intensive.
Some examples of web 3.0 applications
Let’s look at some examples of web3 in practice:
Bitcoin – The original cryptocurrency has been around for more than ten years, and the protocol itself is decentralized, although not all of its ecosystem is.
Diaspora – Non-profit, decentralized social network
Steemit – Blockchain-based blogging and social platform
Crypto.com announces multiple updates following a hack that resulted in millions in total losses, … [+] though the exchange said all affected individuals were reimbursed. (Photo illustration by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
NurPhoto via Getty Images
Crypto.com, one of the biggest and best known cryptocurrency exchanges in the world now backed by superstar actor Matt Damon, has admitted that 483 of its users were hit in a hack earlier this month, leading to unauthorized withdrawals of bitcoin and Ether worth $35 million. The company had initially said $15 million was taken in the heist.
“On 17 January 2022, Crypto.com learned that a small number of users had unauthorized crypto withdrawals on their accounts,” Cyrpto.com wrote in a post on Thursday. “Crypto.com promptly suspended withdrawals for all tokens to initiate an investigation and worked around the clock to address the issue. No customers experienced a loss of funds. In the majority of cases we prevented the unauthorized withdrawal, and in all other cases customers were fully reimbursed.”
The company said that on Monday it saw that for a handful of accounts, transactions were being approved without the second-factor of authentication (the additional one-time code beyond the password allowing access to an account) being entered by a user. As it investigated, all withdrawals across Crypto.com were put on hold, lasting 14 hours. It then required all customers to login again and go through a new two-factor authentication process.
As an additional measure, Crypto.com introduced a feature that means when a new address is added as a payee on an account, the user will get notifications and have 24 hours to cancel any payment if they didn’t authorize it.
Finally, it’s announced the Worldwide Account Protection Program (WAPP), promising to restore funds up to $250,000 for users who qualify. To qualify, users have to be using multi-factor authentication and have filed a police report that it can show Crypto.com. “While we are reminded of the existence of bad actors intent on committing fraud, this new Worldwide Account Protection Program, along with our new MFA [multi-factor authentication] infrastructure, gives our users unprecedented protection of their funds, and hopefully, peace of mind,” said Kris Marszalek, cofounder and CEO of Crypto.com.
There remains little in the way of an explanation of how the attack actually occurred, however. The internal investigation continues.
cloud with rain of coins on blue background. minimal concept of investment, success and cryptocurrencies. 3d rendering
getty
What Happened
Airdropping is a popular method used by cryptocurrency projects to reward early adopters. For instance, we saw projects like Flare and Uniswap ($UNI token) airdrop $FLR and $UNI tokens to millions of users in 2020. So far, over 133M $UNI tokens worth over 3 billion have been claimed by the users.
Similarly, anyone who had an Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain as of October 31, 2021, is eligible to receive free $ENS tokens. Specifically, 82,047 of the 137,689 addresses have claimed the airdrop as of November 17, 2021. The specific amount available per address depends on their level and duration of involvement with the project. Currently, $ENS is trading at approximately $50 per coin, making it a lucrative opportunity.
Key Concepts
What are Airdrops?
Airdrops are free tokens that you are eligible to receive as a result of being an early adopter of a cryptocurrency project. Some are surprises. For example, Uniswap airdropped 400 $UNI tokens to early users of the Uniswap exchange. Other airdrops are planned in advance to drive up prices and publicity. For example, Flair had been talking about a potential airdrop for $XRP holders for a while before it occurred on December 12, 2020, the snapshot date.
The redemption processes can differ as well. Sometimes, you get airdrops automatically in your wallet without any action from your end. In other cases, you have to intentionally claim the free tokens by following the instructions provided by the project. For example, if you had an ENS domain as of October 31, 2021, you can claim your free $ENS by going to https://claim.ens.domains/.
Airdrop Taxes
The IRS has not issued any direct guidance on airdrops sent to early adopters of a project. It is reasonable to think that such airdrops are unsolicited property for tax purposes because the recipient doesn’t have any prior knowledge about the airdrop. Moreover, the Rev. Rul. 2019-24 talks about airdrops that could happen pursuant to a hard fork. Although the background provided here may not be directly applicable to the $ENS airdrop (since there’s no Hard fork), the dominion & control doctrine used here is important when determining the tax consequences.
According to past unsolicited property tax rulings (Technical Advice Memorandum 8109003 and 8109004) and the details provided in the Rev. Rul. 2019-24, surprised airdrops like the $ENS token is likely taxed at the time the taxpayer gains dominion & control over the asset. In simple terms, this means at the time you claim the token and have the ability to transfer, exchange or sell the coin. The amount of ordinary income to be reported is the fair market value at the time you gain dominion and control. This amount would be subject to ordinary income taxes (10% – 37%) based on your income tax bracket.
For example, say you claimed (exercised dominion & control) one $ENS token on November 08, 2021. On this day, one ENS token was approximately worth $30 according to CoinMarketCap data.Therefore, you have to report $30 of ordinary income.
Say you later sell this $ENS for $50. Then, you would pay capital gains taxes on $20 ($50 – $30).
Note that some airdrops could automatically appear on your wallet without you taking any action. In these cases, you’d have a taxable event even If you didn’t want the airdrop. This is because the dominion and control is automatically established when the coins appear on your wallet. If the price of the coin later drops and/or you don’t want the coin, you may still be liable for the tax bill based on the price at the time you received them. Here, you can liquidate the coin at a loss to offset the income reported at receipt.
How to Plan Taxes Around the $ENS Airdrop
ENS protocol allows you to claim $ENS until May 4th, 2022. There are couple of actions you can take to reduce and defer taxes on the $ENS airdrop. First, you can wait until the prices go down before claiming the token, if you think that they will. Going with the example above, assume you claim $ENS in December 2021 when the price is $20 per coin. Here, you’d report $20 of ordinary income instead of $30. On the other hand, if the price rises, you would end up reporting more income.
Second, you can claim your $ENS between January 1st, 2022, and May 4th, 2022. By doing so, you can defer the taxable event to the 2022 tax year. If you are subject to a lower tax bracket in 2022 compared to 2021, this will reduce your taxes on the airdrop. Further, 2022 taxes are due by April 2023. This gives you ample time to observe the prices and sell when the price is at Its highest.
Either way, it is also important to set aside some money to pay the related taxes on the income reported on the airdrop. The amount to be set aside varies depending on your filing status and the tax bracket. If the airdrop is a large amount, it is recommended to talk to a tax adviser and calculate the estimated taxes on the airdrop.
Finally, you can entirely eliminate taxes by not claiming the airdrop at all. If you don’t claim the tokens by May 4th, 2022, you will potentially lose access to the airdrop. According to the ENS website, tokens not claimed by this date will be sent back to the ENS DAO treasury. If you don’t claim, you will not have any taxable event because you never gained dominion & control over the asset.
Next Steps
· Consider claiming $ENS when the market price is low.
· Consider claiming $ENS between January 1st, 2022, and May 4th, 2022, to defer tax liability to the next tax year.
· Have enough cash in hand to pay the related tax liability generated from the airdrop.
As commerce becomes increasingly global, the financial system grows and digital assets become more ingrained in our lives than ever before, governments and regulators are pushing back with even more restrictions to maintain control over the industry. Some would argue that they have gone too far, or are fighting the wrong battles. In light of the pace of innovation, especially in the cryptocurrency space, where privacy is often mandatory, these distractions are likely to keep them playing catch up and perhaps on the wrong side of history.
Key Background
In May 2021, the Treasury Department released the Biden administration’s revenue proposals for fiscal year 2022. They include a key requirement that would apply stringent reporting requirements to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions. Specifically the proposal covers, “bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600.” In other words, financial institutions will report any flows in and out of business and personal accounts of more than $600 regardless of whether they are based in fiat or cryptocurrency. Then in late October the Treasury offered an additional threshold of more than $10,000 in transfers in a given year.
All of this adds to a restrictive climate towards crypto, especially for ‘privacy coins’, a part of the industry that promotes privacy as its key value proposition. This sentiment has put them under the regulatory microscope and led several exchanges to de-list certain tokens to avoid regulatory ire.
Things are not stopping at US shores either. Internationally, in late October 2021 the global AML agency, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) released its updated guidance for firms that handle cryptocurrency and virtual assets. The guidance increased transactional reporting requirements for virtual asset service providers (VASPs), which are defined to include a lot more companies than just centralized exchanges.
However, rather than lying down, as governments continue to encroach on financial privacy, the cryptocurrency community is pushing forward with privacy initiatives to safeguard this basic human right. The most recent example came last week when Findora, a privacy-centric blockchain developed by Discreet Labs announced a $100 million ecosystem fund to be used for research, development of new applications, infrastructure such as staking, and liquidity so these platforms and ‘privacy coins’ offer similar levels of utility to more prominent blockchains such as Bitcoin or Ethereum.
Investors are noticing. Many privacy coins have proven to be solid investments in 2021, as several have quietly outperformed bitcoin during this bull market, which bodes well for the industry moving forward.
Key Actors
Treasury Department & Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Financial Action Task Force (FATF)
New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) – Jon Blattmachr (Deputy GC of INX, former Virtual Currency Chief of NYDFS)
Zcash – Zooko Wilco and Josh Swihart
Monero – Riccardo Spagni
Cake Wallet – Vik Sharma
Findora/Discreet Labs – Warren Paul Anderson
Secret Foundation – Tor Bair
Broader Context
Contrary to the popular narrative, bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies do not provide a high degree of anonymity or privacy. Bitcoin is pseudonymous, meaning transactions are linked to your wallet address rather than your name. Bitcoin’s transactional records are stored on the public blockchain in plain view; so as a result, Bitcoin is one of the more transparent ways to send money. While someone’s full name would likely not be connected directly to a Bitcoin transaction, the network can see everyone’s public address and it doesn’t take much to pair an identity to a public key. This means transaction amounts, frequency, and balances are all open for the entire public to see. Many cryptocurrency exchanges also require their users to go through their anti-money laundering/customer due diligence (AML/KYC) to define customers’ identities before using the platform. Additionally, the growing cottage industry of crypto forensic and analytic companies led by Chainalsyis, Elliptic, and CipherTrace have proven adept at attaching identities to illicit transactions. In this sense, legal tender today is much more private than bitcoin.
According to Warren Anderson, VP of Product at Discreet Labs, the team behind Findora, “[w]hen someone exchanges coins or banknotes for a good or service, that transaction is only known to the two parties involved. . .Further, if you hand a $10 bill to the woman at the local farmer’s market, she can’t look up how much you have left in your bank account.”
Privacy coins are specifically designed to add a much needed layer of privacy to the benefits and functionality of cryptocurrency. A privacy coin can keep information about its users hidden, including identity, size of cryptocurrency transactions, or the amount of cryptocurrency a person holds. Most projects have some sort of “view key” in which a user, exchange or regulator can pierce through the privacy layer and access the encrypted information.
Examples of Privacy Coins
There are a variety of privacy coins that function in different ways. A few are listed below:
Zcash — Zcash was launched in October 2016 as a fork of Bitcoin and uses zero-knowledge proofs to provide a means for nodes on the network to verify that a transaction is valid. It accomplishes this feat without giving them any information about the transaction, including sender, receiver, or transaction amount. One unique characteristic about Zcash is that it not only facilitates fully private transactions, but it also offers public transactions similar to Bitcoin or the ability to make certain aspects of a transaction public or private. Zcash’s transparent setting is its default, not shielded and exchanges can reveal information to law enforcement. This makes it arguably more friendly to regulators than other options.
Monero – Monero launched in 2014 as a Bytecoin fork, a privacy focused cryptocurrency based on CryptoNote technology and launched in July 2012. Monero relies on stealth addresses and ring signatures to hide everything from the addresses of the sender and recipient to the full transaction amount. Privacy coins that use stealth addresses create new addresses for every single cryptocurrency transaction while Ring signatures group many public keys together in a transaction so that outside observers cannot determine the exact participants. Monero also offers optionality for users to reveal their transaction but it cannot be forced by law enforcement or an exchange. Only the key holder can reveal their transactions.
Findora — Findora is a public blockchain with programmable privacy. Findora utilizes zero-knowledge proofs and multi-party computation to allow users transactional privacy with selective auditability. Whereas some privacy protocols, namely Zcash and Monero, offer simple reveal keys to allow transaction auditability, Findora takes it a step further with selective disclosure agreements by supporting a variety of other compliance proofs to allow for more enhanced auditability without compromising privacy. Findora began as a research project in 2017, but mainnet beta launched March 2021 after a fund raise in late December 2020.
Secret Network – Secret Network is said to be the first blockchain to integrate privacy by default for Ethereum smart contracts. Smart contracts are self-executing pieces of code that are managed on a blockchain like Ethereum. Secret Network improves upon traditional smart contracts by supporting encrypted information within the contract.
“Regulators inherently dislike privacy. But that’s only because when they hear privacy, they think secrecy. These concepts are not one in the same.” – Warren Anderson, VP of Product at Discreet Labs
Financial Privacy – A Historical Review
The desire and need for privacy is a generally accepted concept that started long before crypto. Most people are very familiar with the Fourth Amendment, which originally enforced the notion that “each man’s home is his castle” that is secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. The Fourth Amendment protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance.
The Fourth Amendment’s protections apply to financial privacy as well. The Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978 protects the confidentiality of personal financial records by creating a statutory Fourth Amendment protection for bank records. Generally, the Act requires that federal government agencies provide individuals with a notice and an opportunity to object before a bank or other specified institution can disclose personal financial information to a federal government agency, often for law enforcement purposes. The Act was in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1976 ruling in United States v. Miller, where the Court found that bank customers had no legal right to privacy in their financial information held by financial institutions.
The United States also understands the importance of privacy and encryption of transactions and payments on the internet. Once commerce became a large use-case for the internet, thieves made efforts to steal credit card numbers printed in clear text in the unencrypted HTTP traffic. According to Zooko Wilcox, founder of Zcash, the solution turned out to be encryption, though this was initially controversial. In the early days of the Internet, the National Security Agency (NSA) and others were concerned about the potential use of cryptography by terrorists and criminals. Today, HTTPS is a requirement for transmitting data on the internet and is mandatory for all US government agencies, including those which were initially against public access to encryption.
Privacy is fundamental to security and usability, and users deserve and expect strong privacy protections no matter where they’re active online.” – Tor Bair, Founder of Secret Foundation
Regulatory Mistrust of the Desire for Privacy
Like the days of the internet and the introduction of HTTPS, regulators are still uncomfortable with the concept of financial privacy and privacy coins. The Right to Financial Privacy Act of 1978 offers clear classes of exceptions in which certain financial records are not protected by the Act, for example as it relates to tax reporting, pursuant to other federal statutes or rules, administrative or judicial proceedings, and legitimate functions of supervisory agencies or if the subject of a suspicious activity report (see 12 U.S.C. §3403(c)). In these situations, disclosure by a financial institution is permitted, and no subpoena or warrant is required. In many ways, regulators seem to equate the desire for privacy with someone who has something to hide. This can be especially true when it comes to cryptocurrency, and was a key point of contention when the IRS submitted a John Doe summons to Coinbase in 2016 in hopes of identifying crypto tax evaders.
A primary concern of regulators is preventing money laundering and terrorist financing. Bank Secrecy Act (/BSA) Requirements require companies to implement KYC and transaction monitoring. Further, BSA rule 31 CFR 103.33(g) — often called the ”Travel Rule” — requires all financial institutions to pass on certain information to the next financial institution, in certain funds transmittals involving more than one financial institution.
Under the Travel Rule, all transmittor’s financial institutions must include and send the following in the transmittal order to the recipient financial institution:
The name of the transmitter,
The account number of the transmitter, if used,
The address of the transmitter,
The identity of the transmitter’s financial institution, The amount of the transmittal order,
The execution date of the transmittal order, and
The identity of the recipient’s financial institution;
and, if received:
The name of the recipient,
The address of the recipient,
The account number of the recipient, and Any other specific identifier of the recipient.
FATF recently released its updated guidance to include firms that handle cryptocurrency and virtual assets. Since 2018, FATF has issued a series of draft papers that sought to define VASPs and virtual assets, and also recommend how countries implement the Travel Rule for cryptocurrency transfers.
Comparison of requirements under BSA and Travel Rule
CipherTrace
More recently, FATF has tried to account for transactions to and from “unhosted wallets,” decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
The above requirements appear to stand in conflict with the goal of privacy coins which can shield potentially identifying information about transferors, transferees, and holders. Regulators are worried that these features can enable money laundering and terrorist financing by preventing their ability to track the movement of the coins.
Privacy coin laws vary by country, as with any other cryptocurrency. Some ban them outright, while others leave them in a legal gray area. South Korea and Japan, for example, have decided to make the use and possession of privacy coins illegal.
Josh Swihart of Zcash noted to me, “The categorization of some coins as ‘privacy coins’ is going to lead to brittle regulations with regulators trying to play privacy whack-a-mole. Policy makers should be pushing for privacy rather than fighting against it in order to protect civil liberties as well as national security.”
New York Department of Finance Services As a Microcosm Of Privacy Coin Scrutiny
Perhaps the competing priorities of privacy and regulation are no better exemplified than what is happening in New York. Privacy coins are especially limited for New York residents as a result of the New York Bitlicense. Section 200.10 states that any Bitlicensee “must obtain the superintendent’s prior written approval for any plan or proposal to introduce or offer a materially new product, service, or activity, or to make a material change to an existing product, service, or activity, involving New York or New York residents.” In New York, for many years this meant that exchanges like Coinbase and Gemini who have the Bitlicense still needed to obtain approval from New York on a coin-by-coin basis.
“At NYDFS, we had presentations that helped folks understand that there are many existing methods by which most cryptocurrencies, even BTC and ETH, can have their transactions masked. This masking can lead to transactions that make them as private as the privacy coins we’re discussing. This engagement didn’t lead to DFS’s backing down from its position on privacy coins, but the more regulators know, the more they can make rational, informed decisions about policy.” – Jon Blattmachr
As Bair told me, “Regulators are often nervous about centralized exchanges listing privacy coins because it breaks the link between fiat onramps and Web3 activity. Control and oversight of onramps and offramps is critical to extending the control and surveillance regulators already exert over the traditional financial system.”
In 2019, NYDFS responded to years of complaints that the Bitlicense slowed adoption of new products and services in New York by proposing a token approval procedure. The new procedure allows exchanges to bring their token listing policy to New York and, once approved, there is an automatic approval of tokens that the exchange puts through their process. This removed NYDFS involvement in approving coin by coin basis.
NYDFS Coin-Listing Process
NYDFS
There is just one problem. NYDFS explicitly stated, “Consistent with the intent and purpose of 23 NYCRR 200.15(g), a VC Entity cannot self-certify any coin that may facilitate the obfuscation or concealment of the identity of a customer or counterparty. Thus, for example, no privacy coin can be self-certified. A VC Entity also cannot self-certify any coin that is designed or substantially used to circumvent laws and regulations (for example, gambling coins).” (emphasis added).
NYDFS also offers a green list of tokens for New York but no privacy coins are included.
No privacy coins appear on the NYDFS pre-approval list
NYDFS
As Vik Sharma, founder of Cake Wallet, a noncustodial wallet for Monero, told me, “As NYDFS slightly opened the door for Bitlicense holders to more quickly list additional assets, they kept the door closed for ‘privacy coins.’ The issues with this decision remain: 1) ‘privacy coin’ is ill-defined, meaning it is applied based on optics instead of actual money laundering and terrorist financing risks, and 2) the vast majority of money laundering and terrorist financing risks remain on the Bitcoin network.”
“If a regulator were to allow the coins to be listed on its regulated exchanges, the regulator is endorsing the use of these coins and opening them up to many more users. Ironically, of course, if people are using privacy coins on an exchange, they’re far more traceable than between unhosted wallets.” – Jon Blattmachr, Deputy General Counsel of INX and former Virtual Currency Chief of NYDFS
Privacy Coins Outperform As Investments
While over the last two years the outlook for privacy coins appeared bleak from a regulatory perspective, and some such as Monero and Zcash were delisted from certain exchanges such as Bittrex and ShapeShift, privacy coins have still turned out to largely be strong investments. Especially so when compared to bitcoin.
Privacy coins are holding their own against bitcoin
TradingView
There are a couple of reasons for this. First, like most cryptocurrencies, privacy coins tend to move in the same direction as bitcoin. Second, many of these platforms have loyal followings that see these assets as more than just a transactional opportunity, but as a higher calling for a basic human right.
That said, because of their thinner trading volumes, and smaller usage rates, privacy coins may be more volatile than the base asset. Privacy coins are arguably an important tool of asset diversification in any portfolio provided that the regulatory climate does not tighten due to increased concerns about ransomware or other factors.
Outlook
What does the future of privacy coins look like in the US and internationally? Many would argue it will be similar to HTTPS and how the government eventually agreed with the need for privacy and encryption.
Industry groups and companies must continue to engage with regulators to discuss privacy coins, eliminate misconceptions, and responsibly articulate the value of financial privacy. These issues are unlikely to be solved anytime soon.
In Jon Blattmachr’s words, “Engagement with the regulators is paramount. Regulators are always going to be behind the curve when it comes to new technologies and iterations using those technologies. Regulators are understaffed and are not focused on what’s next, but what’s in front of them right now.”
That’s why industry engagement with regulators is so important. It allows the industry to show regulators that privacy coins are not as detrimental to AML efforts as perceived and alo explain how regulators can oversee in the space while still allowing for innovation.
Located in the UK, GiftChill recently revamped its website. As an international leader in the gift card industry, GiftChill offers a unique one-stop-shop experience for customers seeking to purchase gift cards online. Customers can now use the GiftChill website to browse hundreds of featured gift cards, check product reviews, and order gift cards online.
Press Release –
Nov 9, 2021
SINGAPORE, November 9, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– Located in the UK, GiftChill recently revamped its website. As an international leader in the gift card industry, GiftChill offers a unique one-stop-shop experience for customers seeking to purchase gift cards online. Customers can now use the GiftChill website to browse hundreds of featured gift cards, check product reviews, and order gift cards online.
The GiftChill website offers a simple, secure online registration process that takes most people less than 60 seconds to complete. Once the registration process is complete, account holders can place orders for gift cards with just a few clicks.
Upon completion of their online purchase, customers can expect to receive their gift card code instantly. Each gift card code is delivered to the email address the customer provided during registration. Codes are accompanied by instructions that include helpful tips about using the gift card online or in stores.
GiftChill’s updated site also plays a key role in helping customers save money when purchasing gift cards. Because GiftChill does not have to integrate with credit card companies or Paypal, GiftChill is able to minimize overhead costs. The savings are passed along to customers who are able to buy gift cards at a lower price. The new website may soon feature daily specials to enable GiftChill customers to maximize their ROI.
Customer privacy is a top priority for the GiftChill team. In contrast to other websites that require buyers to provide a large amount of detailed personal information, GiftChill’s registration process requires customers to provide the bare minimum amount of information that is required by law. Account holders can therefore complete transactions with peace of mind knowing that every effort has been made to protect their privacy.
GiftChill takes their commitment to privacy a step further by enabling customers to buy gift cards through their website using six popular cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, Litecoin and USDC. This means buyers are never required to enter their credit card information when making a purchase. Additional payment options are also under consideration as the GiftChill team strives to combat any unnecessary credit card use on their website.
Providing buyers with a hassle-free purchasing experience is a primary goal for GiftChill. By keeping the registration process simple and offering attractive payment modalities, customers can enjoy a fast, seamless buying experience. At the same time, customers never have to settle for an uninspiring gift card purchase. The GiftChill site features over 200 gift card options that change every day.
To learn more about their discounted gift cards, you can contact them on Support@giftchill.co.uk. Their dedicated team of professionals is committed to providing customers with a wide variety of affordable gift card options.
The opportunity to make big money in cryptocurrency is attracting huge investments to industrial-scale bitcoin mining, with thousands of supercomputers and an enormous energy demand, so much so that some companies are using power plants to fuel their operations – which may create real-world concerns for the environment. CBS News meteorologist and climate specialist Jeff Berardelli reports.
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NordikCoin is an Estonian-based high-tech cryptocurrency exchange service. Propelled by the recent boom of Bitcoin, the company has announced plans to push further into Oceania and Asian Markets in 2022.
Press Release –
Oct 8, 2021
TALLINN, Estonia, October 8, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– Bitcoin has flourished across all four corners of the globe, and it’s safe to say that the Asian markets have welcomed it with open arms, even more so than most Western countries.
According to GlobalAsia.com, “It is in Asia where government regulators have been the most active in trying to come to terms with this financial innovation. In seeking to establish new rules to govern cryptocurrencies, they are performing a delicate balancing act, because any form of prohibition might risk sending the cryptocurrency industry underground or making it even more popular.”
NordikCoin, an Estonian-based high-tech cryptocurrency exchange service, took notice of the myriad of opportunities that the Eastern markets offer for Bitcoin.
The company has announced that it will push further in Oceania and Asian markets in 2022. Amongst the new countries the exchange will open up to is Australia. Whilst expanding its global reach, the company itself and its day-to-day operations will continue to be domiciled in global finance hub Tallinn, Estonia.
Another feature in GlobalAsia’s magazine points out that the Eastern markets are also worried about the high level of anonymity that BTC affords to its holders, and how that makes it prone to misuse. NordikCoin is tackling these challenges in a straightforward way. To support the expansion, the company will apply its European Know-Your-Customer and Anti-Money-Laundering rules to customers from new Asian jurisdictions.
David De Marco, CEO of Omni Matrix Ltd., the parent company of NordikCoin.com, happily shares his excitement for the expansion plans:
“Our expansion into the Asian market marks a unique opportunity for the company to present its innovative cryptocurrency trading services globally. We are thrilled to announce that we will be expanding our customer onboarding processes to facilitate clients from Asian markets. We are confident that this is the perfect stepping stone for the new era of cryptocurrency exchanges, with NordikCoin leading the way.”
The price of Bitcoin was spiking and steadily dropping since the beginning of April, only to surge between May and June. Throughout the tail-end of summer, it has kept a steady pace and has surged on the 30th of September and the 3rd of October. The traded volumes of BTC have tripled between the 2nd of August and the 27th of September. On the 3rd of October, the most recent date of the biggest BTC spike in the past few months, $381,964 were traded, according to BTCA Price Chart.
NordikCoin is the trading name of Estonian company OmniMatrix OÜ, with organization number 14674630. The company is licensed by the Estonian FIU with cryptocurrency license number VT000095. More information about NordikCoin can be found on the company’s official website.
Contact details
David De Marco CEO, Omni Matrix Ltd. david@omnimatrix.com
Cryptocurrency haters have found a home—and common cause—trashing the volatile asset class and wishing for its demise.
David Gerard has not a kind word to spare for any part of the $1.4 trillion cryptocurrency market. “It’s dumb nerd money that nerds use to try to rip each other off,” he says. Bitcoin in particular earns his ire. “Its history is a series of get-rich-quick schemes,” says Gerard, a 54-year-old IT administrator in London. He does not even have anything nice to say about the widely applauded technology underlying crypto, the digital ledger system known as the blockchain. “A pile of nonsense,” he concludes.
He has amassed a modest Twitter following spouting off like this (13,300 followers) and has self-published several books on the subject (Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain and Libra Shrugged: How Facebook Tried To Take Over the Money). When Gerard wants to commune with other crypto haters, he heads over to a burgeoning corner of the web: a Reddit forum called Buttcoin, the name a suggestion that cryptocurrencies are, well, a waste of time. He often posts there several times a day and spends more time commenting on what the group’s other 63,000 members publish. “Every other Reddit about cryptocurrency is full of cultists! Or marketing shills. Or both,” he says.
Cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin have made millions for investors large and small and become popularized by such mainstream figures as Jack Dorsey, who has said he’d be working in cryptocurrency if he wasn’t running Twitter and Square—and, of course, Elon Musk. The Tesla CEO made a $1.5 billion Bitcoin investment earlier this year that prompted a spike in the currency’s value and later sold some of his holdings to help his electric-vehicle company report a first-quarter profit. Crypto has legions of devoted fans but also an army of critics. And sometimes those lines blur: Musk turned on Bitcoin last month and triggered a plunge in its price by saying Tesla would no longer accept the currency as payment for its vehicles, citing “the rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels” by miners who create the currency with banks of computers that create blocks of verified transactions which are then added to the blockchain.
Crypto foes on Reddit cheered Musk’s retreat and trumpet any such negative news to fuel their own strident criticism of Bitcoin and other currencies, pointing out that they are underpinned by little other than hype of the kind initially inspired by Musk. Like those true believers, the denizens of Buttcoin tend to be men interested in technology who are constantly online and enjoy communicating through things like memes. (The group motto: “Buttcoin: backed by gold, comedy gold!”) But rather than devote themselves to talking up an asset, Buttcoin does the opposite, schadenfreude firmly established as the group’s lingua franca.
Some of the most popular posts over the past week: a screenshot from a pro-crypto Reddit of someone losing $35,000 on DogeCoin; a photo of red and green chiles tracing out Bitcoin’s trading chart; and one simply headlined “30k finally broken 😊,” a reference to Bitcoin’s recent descent from all-time highs earlier this year. This type of thing is what Amy Castor, a Buttcoin fan and online crypto pundit, calls “shitposting.” Within the crypto world, “there are a lot of ridiculous things that happen, so ButtCoin is a place where you go to poke fun at all that,” she says. As you can tell, Buttcoiners aren’t any more buttoned-up online than their idealist counterparts, and much of the thinking on both sides tends to be pretty simplistic, accepting little nuance. But Buttcoin’s antics at least aren’t gyrating financial markets.
Despite two decades of steadily increasing mainstream acceptance, crypto remains an undeniable easy target—something that some people love to hate, like say, the tax man and the New York Yankees. Owning it requires a remarkable leap of faith many cannot justify: There’s nothing backing it. It has no value tied to a physical object. Plus, the stuff’s super volatile, its value seeming to ping-pong madly on a consistent basis. (Bitcoin, for instance, was worth over $60,000 at one point this year. Today it fetches around half that.) The combination of these elements makes crypto even easier to ridicule than an aging retail chain or an ailing movie-theater business.
McCormick’s actions get at the real weightiness of these social media-led financial manias. He didn’t believe what he was saying at all. But other people did.
“It’s not real, actual finance,” declares Stephen Brown, 40, a software engineer in Portland, Oregon, one of the moderators of the Buttcoin Reddit group. No one is sure who created Buttcoin almost 10 years ago; Brown and the seven other moderators represent as much authority as it has known since. “They’re just trying to build this other system and replace it with something that’s either a joke or a huge bubble.”
Brown can seem like something of an anomaly within his own group. He admits to having dabbled in short term trades of crypto over the years, though insists he would never buy and hold for the long haul. Most Buttcoiners are more like another group moderator who would only identify himself by his handle, AmericanScream, or by his preferred pseudonym, Adam Smith. (Since the latter seems rather like unearned aggrandizement, let’s refer to him by the former.) AmericanScream attests to never owning any cryptocurrency, and his complaint about the asset class is a familiar one: That it lacks fundamental value, and it can only increase in price if enough people successfully convince more people into buying: “Once you hold Bitcoin, PR is all you’ve got.”
AmericanScream, who says he is a 50something semi-retired software engineer, is a near-constant presence on ButtCoin, talking about upcoming changes to Ether, the death of crypto proponent John McAfee and the recent vanishing of two South African crypto-preneurs, whose disappearance could represent the largest scam in the industry’s history. “You’ll see me post at 8 in the morning, sometimes 11 at night, sometimes at 3 a.m.,” he says, proudly. His prolific publishing has had consequences, he says, and it’s why he studiously refuses to give his name. He claims to fear that if he did, pro-crypto Redditors would read this, track him down and punish him for his many contrary comments, perhaps by doxing him. “We’re the little guys saying the emperor has no clothes,” he says. “People want to shut us up.”
Buttcoiners by nature aren’t afraid to go poke the bear. And Jim McCormick, a 28-year-old from Houston, is another of those types. McCormick discovered Buttcoin only recently, but in one of his first actions to amuse the group, he pulled a prank on a rival crypto-supporting Reddit, publishing several wildly ludicrous posts on the pro-crypto page going bullish on Bitcoin. (In one, McCormick purported to have found a rare “Iron Gremlin” movement on Bitcoin’s stock chart, a surefire sign to buy; to be clear, such a thing does not exist.) “Not exactly to my surprise but still to my dismay, a lot of people believed it and supported it without a hint of irony or skepticism,” he says. Afterward, he posted screenshots of their enthusiastic responses to Buttcoin.
McCormick’s actions get at the real weightiness of these social media-led financial manias. He didn’t believe what he was saying at all. But other people did, and possibly after reading his faux posts and taking them at face value, they went out and bought more crypto. Now imagine what else has been said across the web over the past year—and who’s said it and who has chosen to believe it—to get the markets behaving as schizophrenically as they have recently. “It was kind of a brief experiment to see if people would be able to distinguish mockery of what they believe in from the actual thing,” McCormick says. “And to their demerits, I guess they couldn’t.”
Fashion icon, Nick Wooster, has officially dropped his first ever NFT in collaboration with Consumer Commodity, a Vancouver based consumer goods brand focused on apparel, personal care, and household essentials. Consumer Commodity aims to be at the forefront of consumer goods and blockchain / NFT. Their Nick Wooster NFT is a bold deep dive into the digital trading space to build community hype around their new product / brand launch.
Press Release –
updated: May 19, 2021
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 19, 2021 (Newswire.com)
– Consumer Commodity’s Nick Wooster NFT debuts the menswear fashion icon wearing Consumer Commodity apparel in the form of a digital motion art piece. There are 4 tiers to the Nick Wooster collectible NFT’s, with a limited number available of each across Gold, Silver, Bronze, and Colour. They are available on RARIBLE as of May 19th. As only a limited number of Nick Wooster NFT’s will be created, there’s added value to the rarity of these collectibles while creating a totally unique brand experience.
While NFTs are still speculative in nature, there is added value for Consumer Commodity & Nick Wooster with this new approach. Being able to authenticate ownership of a digital art collectible will create a lasting piece of the brand that will live on the blockchain. There verifiable uniqueness of the Nick Wooster x CON-C NFT’s also deepen the commemoration of their apparel/ products and reputable designer, London Alexander.
Consumer Commodity is offering 20% off all sweatsuit pieces (the same as Nick Wooster appears in via NFT) on their online shop, CON-C.
HOLLYWOOD, Calif., June 4, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– A new Bitcoin documentary, “Bit x Bit: In Bitcoin We Trust,” takes an in-depth look at the beginnings and development of what has become a widespread global advance in digital commerce. The third film from director David Foox, which is currently available on iTunes and a list of other platforms (see www.bitxbitmovie.com for more listings), aims to educate everyone about a new value transfer system based on blockchain technology, an innovative technology revolutionizing the world.
“The journey led me and my filmmaking team to travel to 18 cities interviewing the futurists making Bitcoin a reality. What I discovered filled me with hope that our world will change, and I wanted to contribute to this epic transformation,” said David Foox.
This film tells the story of the emerging technology from its conception in the 2008 Satoshi Nakamoto whitepaper, “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System,” through Bitcoin’s successes and setbacks defined by the explorers who blazed the trail from early 2014 to the beginning of its integration in 2018. With so many willing participants looking to utilize and build related value around this technology, it has touched everything from startups to some of the largest financial institutions in the world and shows no signs of slowing down the possibilities for its adoption.
With predictions from the Winklevoss twins, the infamous “Bitcoin Billionaires” who reportedly held talks with Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook’s newly announced “GLOBALCOIN” cryptocurrency slated for 2020 — and through interviews highlighting the passion and intrigue expressed by the futurists and pioneers building these new systems, such as Andreas Antonopolous, Nolan Bushnell, Marshall Long, Pamela Morgan, Peter Todd, and many others — Bit x Bit: In Bitcoin We Trust stays true to its vision: “Futurists enlightening the minds of the many for the acceptance of a digital value exchange system focused on prosperity and transforming our world.”
These predictions and already some companies have already started to see the substantial value and increased investment paying off. A recent Bloomberg article showcased the historic investments and returns coming from Block.one, a cryptocurrency startup led by billionaire Peter Thiel. With these kinds of potential returns and a number of creative minds driving potential future investment in the space, the future is looking bright.
Media Contact:
David Foox, Independent Filmmaker bitxbitmovie@gmail.com
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
David Foox began his journey into the making of “Bit x Bit: In Bitcoin We Trust” in January 2014 at the Sundance Film Festival, where he was celebrating an earlier successful film project – “Love Child.” In the production of “Love Child,” his eyes were opened to the effects of technology on the collective consciousness in ways that defied humanity. Therefore, when introduced to Bitcoin by friends who used the new digital technology to arrange airfare and hotel accommodations to attend the festival – David was fascinated. This simple encounter became the driving force behind David’s desire to create a film that brings the topic to a broad audience and perhaps even to those that will play a part in its future.
About Gravitas Ventures
Gravitas Ventures, a Red Arrow Studios company, is a leading all rights distributor of independent feature films and documentaries. Founded in 2006, Gravitas connects independent filmmakers and producers with distribution opportunities across the globe. Working with talented directors and producers, Gravitas Ventures has distributed thousands of films into over a hundred million homes in North America or over one billion homes worldwide.
About Red Arrow Studios
Red Arrow Studios is one of the world’s leading creators and distributors of entertainment content. Red Arrow Studios is comprised of 20 production companies in seven territories, including 10 companies based in the United States; world-leading multi-platform digital network Studio71, based in six countries; and global film and TV distributors Red Arrow Studios International and Gravitas Ventures. The group’s significant output includes scripted, non-scripted and formatted content and IP, from TV and film to short-form and branded content, made for an array of global networks and platforms. Red Arrow Studios is part of ProSiebenSat.1 Media SE, one of Europe’s leading media groups.
TALLIN, Estonia, April 23, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– CoinLoan crypto-backed lending platform presents a dynamic risk-management system that is capable of resisting market fluctuations. In numbers, this translates into raising the LTV limit to 70 percent and liquidation threshold to more than 90 percent. In practice, it allows borrowers to get more fiat against their crypto and not care too much about margin calls.
The Necessary Evil of Crypto-Lending
Crypto-backed lending services help hodlers to access the liquidity of their coins by borrowing against them rather than selling them. No wonder that such services gained wide popularity during the last couple of years. The high liquidity and boundless nature turn cryptocurrencies into almost perfect collateral.
But “almost” is the key word here; obstacles come from extreme volatility. Giving $700 against cryptoasset valued at $1,000 today, no one can be sure that collateral price won’t drop below $700 tomorrow.
Problems of Low LTVs and Liquidation Risk
There’s a proven model to cope with crypto market fluctuations. It operates perfectly for lenders, but mainly at the cost of borrowers. To be on the safe side, lending platforms put Loan-to-Value limit down, so our users can usually take no more than $500 for cryptoasset worth $1,000.
Liquidation point is set way too low as well. If the collateral value drops, increasing the LTV (no higher than 80 percent usually), the system will alert the borrower and ask him to add more fiat or crypto to maintain a healthy LTV ratio. Otherwise, cryptocollateral will be liquidated automatically to secure the lender’s funds.
How to Handle Volatility
Alex Faliushin, co-founder and CEO at CoinLoan, explained how his team found a solution to the crypto-lending issues:
“It was obvious that liquidation approaches are far from perfect. Over the past year, we’ve been testing new risk-management ideas. Today we have a solution that makes things as convenient as possible for borrowers.”
In short, CoinLoan’s dynamic liquidation system allows cryptocollateral to become resistant to market movements. Liquidation point is estimated for each loan individually and depends on the interest rate. For loans with an interest rate of up to 12 percent, the threshold is expected to be 92 percent, for those between 13 percent to 24 percent it will be 91 percent and so on. In all cases, liquidation may only occur when LTV is over 90 percent.
“Such a high liquidation threshold enables us to increase the LTV limit as well. In other words, a borrower gets more money for his crypto. Today, CoinLoan platform is open to 70 percent LTV loans; it’s one of the best conditions on the market,” adds Alex Faliushin.
Blockchain lending & borrowing platform chosen as founding member of SDG Impact Fund
Press Release –
updated: Sep 21, 2018
NEW YORK, September 21, 2018 (Newswire.com)
– Announced today at the United Nations, Fifth Element is launching its SDG Impact Fund and will be the first to accept and deploy traditional assets and all forms of crypto, token and digital assets for the mission of meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Celsius Network is a founding member of the fund and will be its preferred digital wallet. The fund plans to raise several hundred million dollars and deploy them in both fiat and digital format using public blockchains.
We see a great opportunity to use this technology to deliver the value collected by different UN organizations in a more precise and effective way to the people and organizations that need it most.
Scott Stornetta, Adviser, Celsius Network
At the SDG Frontier Finance forum event today, held in conjunction with the International Day of Peace, Bryan Doreian, Chief Development Magus, Fifth Element Fund, announced the selection and partnership. The event also included the first few donors to contribute to the fund. Celsius Network was named as a founding member.
Scott Stornetta, adviser to Celsius and one of the original inventors of blockchain technology, commented, “We see a great opportunity to use this technology to deliver the value collected by different UN organizations in a more precise and effective way to the people and organizations that need it most.”
The Fifth Element Fund plans to use the public blockchain to implement its global programs and use the technology to both monitor and implement its mission in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Celsius Network aims to bring power back to the people by providing banking services typically reserved for the top 1 percent. “By offering earned interest rates up to 7.1 percent, we allow individuals to make the same passive income Wall Street has been making for years,” says Celsius CEO, Alex Mashinsky. “Joining forces with Fifth Element will ensure our services reach those most deserving.”
If you would like more information please call Kristen Ryan at 603-401-5897 or email kristen@celsius.network
