This week in crypto we’ve seen Opensea signing with Warner Music, Nexo being hit for six eight, a revelation about the digital dollar and much more. But what stories were the richest pickings? Grab your gloves and let’s tackle those trees together.
No. 3 – Vitalik Buterin Pushes Dogecoin PoS Shift
Vitalilk Buterin seems to be all giddy with excitement over Ethereum’s successful shift to Proof-of-stake (PoS), and is going all Oprah Winfrey. Just a couple of weeks after Ethereum’s switch, Buterin was throwing out PoS conversions like free cars, saying that he was confident that Zcash and, surprisingly, Dogecoin was next up for the treatment.
Zcash has already started the process, so that wasn’t much of a shock, but Dogecoin certainly was, with no-one making any suggestions to date that such a conversion might take place. Indeed, the suggestion didn’t go down all that well, with some on Twitter saying that there was “zero chance” of such a change happening. Perhaps Vitalik should stick to his own projects and let other people worry about theirs.
No. 2 – Digital Dollar Will Not be Anonymous
Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell surprised no-one this week when he told a Bank de France conference that any digital dollar would not be anonymous. Ever since China rolled out its CBDC back in October 2020, the U.S. has faced questions over its plans to introduce its own. The Fed has always insisted that such a development is years away, but this hasn’t stopped persistent questions over what it might look like.
Central to the augment is the issue of privacy. Paper money is about as anonymous as you can get, with China’s highly traceable digital yuan being at the other end. This has worried privacy advocates and prompted the proposal of a U.S. Treasury-led digital dollar, Ecash, which claims to be as privacy-centric as a cash dollar, but Powell put any thoughts on this to bed this week when he confirmed that a U.S. CBDC would not be an “anonymous bearer instrument” and would include an “identity verification” process.
Looks like cash might be sticking around for a while longer then.
No.1 – Nexo Hit With Eight Cease-and-desist Orders
Lending platform Nexo broke the record for the most number of cease-and-desist orders received in one go this week, when it was hit by eight on Monday, all relating to its Earn Interest Product. Regulators of eight states claimed that the product, which allows customers to earn interest on their crypto deposits, was the equivalent to the sale of securities, for which Nexo isn’t registered. It also claimed, more seriously, that Nexo was branding itself as a regulated outfit, which it isn’t – at least not in the eight states in question.
Nexo responded by entirely avoiding the question, saying instead that it was a more responsible lender than the likes of Celsius (which isn’t hard, tbh), and then announced that it had bought a stake in a fully regulated U.S. bank, which would allow it to do the very things the regulators had accused it of doing illegally.
Checkmate.
Honourable Mentions
This week we also learnt that:
- Warner Music Group signed a deal with Opensea to promote its artists on the exchange through NFT music and collectibles.
- EU leaders will seek to ban all Russians from holding crypto on wallets connected to EU entities, which of course won’t impact decentralised wallets
- Crypto’s second most hated man, Alex Mashinsky, announced this week that he will step down as Celsius CEO, but will stay on as director
We’ll be back next week for another review of the week’s top crypto news.
