Decentral Block Post

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

This week, our 6 Questions go to  Rene Reinsberg, a co-founder of Celo, an open platform that makes financial tools accessible to anyone with a mobile phone.

Rene Reinsberg is a co-founder of Celo and president of The Celo Foundation, a grant-giving organization supporting the carbon-negative Celo blockchain. He has been working at the intersection of finance, technology and development for the past 15 years, including at Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, General Catalyst Partners, the World Bank and TechnoServe. His previous company, Locu, was acquired by GoDaddy where he served as vice president of Emerging Products post-acquisition.

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Peter Schiff’s bank closure strengthens Bitcoin case for financial freedom

Avid Bitcoin hater and gold peddler Peter Schiff saw his bank in Puerto Rico, Euro Pacific International Bank, shut down this week, with regulators pulling the plug on the grounds that the bank was not maintaining the net minimum capital requirements. Schiff noted that, as a result, “accounts are frozen and customers may lose money.” The crypto community on Twitter was quick to swoop in, with pseudonymous user HodlMagoo noting the priceless irony: “Do you understand why you need bitcoin now?”

Traditional venture capital funds drive valuations through multiple funding rounds. Startups aim for initial public offerings or other exits. Then the sharemarket decides upon a more realistic valuation. 

But in cryptoland, tokens introduce market capitalization while a company is being built.

This means there are a lot of competing interests and agendas. Token sales for Web3 startups can be the bastard child of a personality cult leader founder and a bunch of VCs, raised by a group of Discord-dwelling degens manning a DAO, while speculators trade 24/7 and the media circles.

So, how do founding teams get the balance right between the needs and wants of the VCs and what’s best for the community? Are the interests of VC funds aligned with the interests of token holders?

This column’s goal has never been to provide investment advice on cryptocurrencies or other digital assets, nor has it been to provide individualized legal advice. It has mostly been about my desire to freely set forth in writing my thoughts on the state of the crypto market and the legal affairs surrounding it.

Powers On… is a monthly opinion column from Marc Powers, who spent much of his 40-year legal career working with complex securities-related cases in the United States after a stint with the SEC. He is now an adjunct professor at Florida International University College of Law, where he teaches a course on “Blockchain & the Law.” 

So let me state the obvious: It has been a particularly bad past two months in cryptoland. Both in activities relating to digital assets and crypto prices. However there are silver linings to consider. And when considered, perhaps readers will gain a greater perspective and not act in a reactionary way with their digital assets or blockchain business.

As crypto winter sets in once more, industry players in Australia, one of the world’s most crypto-friendly nations, watch closely for a shift in the regulatory climate.

Anthony Albanese, the new Australian Labor Party prime minister, has made regulating crypto a top priority. However, neither he nor his cabinet has given a clear indication of how it may approach the unregulated space.

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

This week, our 6 Questions go to Alyssa Tsai, founder and CEO of Panony — an incubator, investor and adviser for blockchain and Web3 business.

My name is Alyssa Tsai, and I’m the founder and CEO of Panony. There are three pillars of businesses under our group umbrella. PANews is one of the earliest crypto media outlets in Greater China and South Korea. It has published over 20,000 articles, with an average of over 5 million page views per month. At Panony, we invest in blockchain projects worldwide and consult Fortune 500 companies for integration and expansion into the industry, spanning the entire spectrum of the blockchain industry from solution providers and exchanges to public chains, protocols and DApps. I’m also a limited partner of NGC Ventures, the Animoca Metaverse Fund and the Delta Fund.

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

After 8 years dumping billions of XRP, Jed McCaleb’s stack runs out in weeks

Ripple Labs co-founder and former chief technology officer Jed McCaleb is nearing the end of his eight-year-long XRP dumpathon. The former Ripple exec has been gradually shedding his stash of 9 billion XRP since his departure in 2014. As of June 30, McCaleb only had 81.53 million XRP worth $26.55 million remaining, much to the delight of die-hard Ripple supporters.

The story of how a Bitcoin OG set up a Libertarian crypto community and commune for digital nomads on beautiful islands in Thailand three times — and why he hasn’t yet given up on the dream.

It’s a wild tale involving “unchecked merrymaking,” crypto-influencers, police grillings, seasteading, a reported $20,000-a-month burn rate, rumors about shamans and drugs — and a major collision between idealism and reality. It was also, by all accounts, a whole lot of fun.

Kieran Warwick created the play-to-earn game Illuvium with his brothers Aaron and Grant — all siblings of DeFi maverick Kain, the founder of Synthetix. He shares his alpha on how NFT game mechanics can be designed in such a way that playing them can be fun and profitable in the long term.

Warwick entered the retail world right out of high school, eventually becoming an online shopping entrepreneur. He got his start in the crypto world at brother Kain’s company BlueShyft, which first made Bitcoin and crypto exchange payments available over-the-counter at more than one thousand physical retailers around Australia in 2015.

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

This week, our 6 Questions go to Daniel Yan, founding partner and chief operating officer at Matrixport — a digital assets financial services platform where users can invest, trade and leverage crypto assets.

Hey guys, this is Dan — I am a founding partner at Matrixport. I have been COO of the company since 2019 overseeing the day-to-day operation of the company. Late last year, I started to spend most of my time building Matrixport Ventures — the venture investment arm of the company. It has been a great experience for me both personally and professionally. There has not been a boring day since I dipped my toes into crypto, let’s say! Prior to my stint in crypto, I was an options trader in the investment banking industry. 

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

SBF and Alameda step in to prevent crypto collapse contagion

Sam Bankman-Fried stated on June 20 that his firms Alameda Research and FTX would be “stepping in” to help companies with liquidity troubles amid the current bear market. Over the course of the week, Alameda dished out a loan of roughly $500 million to Voyager Digital, which is suffering from exposure to the potentially insolvent Three Arrows Capital, while FTX supplied BlockFi with $250 million worth of credit.

Photography often has to weather disruptive changes — from film to digital, for example — and photographers find themselves needing to master new technologies or face losing out to more tech-savvy competitors. NFTs are just another transformation in how we consume images. Can photographers adapt and benefit from them?

Back in the dark ages

I go back a long time in photography. To the dark ages — or at least the darkroom ages, to be more precise — when images were analog and negatives or color transparencies had to be developed through some arcane magical process I didn’t quite understand. If you had told me you had to wave a Harry Potter wand and shout “Developus!” I would have believed you.

Accredited investor laws are the bane of many in the crypto industry, who see them as preventing small investors from accessing big opportunities. When Celsius was recently forced to cut off access to U.S. citizens who were not accredited investors, many cried foul.

Did it help some users avoid the current crisis? Or do accredited investor laws go too far in saving users from themselves — and from profits, too?

Two weeks ago, as speculation about Celsius’ solvency began to mount, users started experiencing trouble withdrawing money from their accounts. Though Celsius CEO and founder Alex Mashinsky appeared to initially write the issues off as baseless rumors, the company soon announced a “temporary halt” on withdrawals. Users were — and, as of the time of writing, remain — unable to access their funds, which are, at least in theory, still earning interest.

Magazine had interviewed Mashinsky about investor accreditation on May 25 before Celsius ran into serious problems in the public area. The resulting drama makes the topic all the more timely. So, what does Mashinsky have to say about accredited investor laws?

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

This week, our 6 Questions go to Annabelle Huang, the managing partner at Amber Group, a global leading digital asset platform.

Prior to Amber Group, I served as the Asia lead at AirSwap, a decentralized trading platform that enables peer-to-peer trading on the Ethereum blockchain. Before transitioning into digital assets, I advised private equity funds, U.S. corporates and hedge funds on structured solutions and risk management as an FX structurer at Deutsche Bank and Nomura in New York. My background in traditional financial markets, coupled with my experience in institutions and macro markets, has given me a unique vantage point in developing the product strategy and solutions delivered through Amber Group. 

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Binance ends support for anonymous Litecoin transactions

Binance has decided to ban Litecoin (LTC) transactions sent through the most recent MimbleWimble (MWEB) upgrade from its exchange, noting that such transactions would now result in the loss of the related LTC. Binance isn’t delisting LTC entirely, unlike other exchanges that have decided to remove the cryptocurrency. Among its changes, the latest Litecoin MWEB update ushered in privacy features. Binance’s decision to end support for these transactions comes as global crypto regulation remains an ever-present focal point in the industry.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s Soulbound Token proposal for a robust identity and reputation system has stirred up the crypto community. 

Soulbound Tokens or SBTs are non-transferable, non-financialized tokens tied to a unique profile proving verifiable achievements and commitments. Still at the concept stage, it’s suggested SBTs will be capable of tracking memberships, credentials and affiliations with educational establishments, decentralized lenders and other entities.

Supporters say that SBTs could be the use case for the next bull market. But others have likened the concept to China’s social credit system and say it’s an “expensive solution to a problem that’s already been solved.”

So, which is it? Let’s take a deeper dive.

We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!

This week, our 6 Questions go to Alex Wilson, co-founder of The Giving Block — a crypto donation solution that provides an ecosystem for nonprofits and charities to fundraise Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Alex is a co-founder of The Giving Block, a Shift4 company. The Giving Block is a leading crypto philanthropy platform that makes accepting and fundraising cryptocurrencies easy for nonprofits and empowers donors to give crypto to their favorite causes. Alex oversees The Giving Block’s growth in several areas, including technological innovation, crypto and financial partnerships, and institutional giving. 

Coming every Saturday, Hodler’s Digest will help you track every single important news story that happened this week. The best (and worst) quotes, adoption and regulation highlights, leading coins, predictions and much more — a week on Cointelegraph in one link.

Top Stories This Week

Anonymous hacker served with restraining order via NFT

In what’s perhaps an industry first, an anonymous defendant in an exchange-hacking legal case has received a temporary restraining order via NFT. The defendant is part of legal proceedings surrounding the January 2022 LCX exchange hack. Two legal firms served the “service token” NFT to the defendant as a restraining order, with the event touted as the first official NFT usage in the legal world.

Automated market makers are a true public good in crypto, enabling genuinely decentralized trading 24/7 and supporting the wider DeFi ecosystems. But they’re not without a host of problems, writes digital economist and academic Christos A. Makridis.

The decentralized finance (DeFi) market has surged since 2021, growing from just over $20 billion to nearly $160 billion as of March 2022, compared with a rise in the total cryptocurrency market from $433 billion to $2.5 trillion over the same period.

While the recent crypto washout in the wake of the collapse of Terra’s LUNA and UST has caused the market value of DeFi to fall almost all the way back down to $60 billion, there is still optimism in the crypto community and the market value will largely return for major crypto assets in the months and years ahead.

Walking into Remote and Digital’s La Casa co-working space on the tropical island of Koh Pha-ngan, you wonder how anybody gets any work done. I sip a cocktail and wait for my burrito as James Brown plays in the background.

There’s a real palm tree growing at the edge of the cafe, and behind it sits shallow crystal blue water stretching off for miles, with Koh Samui’s jungle-covered mountains jutting up in the distance. Adding to the ambiance, kite surfers are getting massive air off small waves, before gently floating back to earth.

30-year-old Belgian blockchain developer Jérôme Van Vlierbergen is one of the regulars at this Ban Tai co-working space and runs his Equinox Launchpad here. He explains Koh Pha-ngan (or Koh Phangan) has a thriving crypto scene, mostly populated by digital nomads like himself.

“There are a bunch of people here that own crypto or they’re doing something with crypto — because when you have money, you like to be somewhere where it’s a nice place to live.”

Ironically, of course, you need very little money to live here. You can rent a desk at La Casa for less than $3 a day, rent a scooter to get around for under $4 a day, and rent a whole house for $500 a month. With beautiful food, postcard-style views and half a dozen other coworking spaces with gigabit internet, it’s no wonder Koh Pha-ngan has become something of a mecca for crypto digital nomads.