WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter - Aug 26

Welcome back to this week's edition of our WhiteboardCrypto Newsletter!

Fun fact: In Q2, Bitcoin saw the most transactions it ever has had (all-time-high), with a total of 680k transactions. This is due to Ordinals and Inscriptions, the new way to have NFTs on the Bitcoin network. At the same time, Layer 2s on Ethereum also hit a record high this week.

Tornado Cash has one of those weeks

Not only did Tornado Cash become officially classified as a "person” for legal purposes—that definition includes the founders, developers, AND DAO members—two more of the founders have had charges pressed against them. Roman Storm and Roman Semenov (their similar names are just a coincidence) were sanctioned and charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit sanctions violations, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. Roman Storm was arrested on Wednesday but has since made bail. Roman Semenov’s whereabouts are supposedly unknown. There is great concern that this will set new precedents for coders to be criminally responsible for how their code is used, which is kind of like saying that the person who built a car is at fault for a drunk driver causing an accident. Of course, this still has to go to trial, so it’s not final.

Learn more here.

Yuga Labs to end support for OpenSea

The creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club will remove support for the NFT marketplace OpenSea beginning Feb 2024 in protest of OpenSea’s decision to shut down the mandatory trading royalties that we shared in last week’s newsletter. That will be a huge loss for the NFT marketplace.

Learn more here.

Coinbase and Circle will manage USDC together

Probably the most well-known stablecoin, USDC, will be expanding onto six new chains between now and October, following a 42% drop in its market cap this year. This announcement comes at the same time that the entity that issues and maintains reserves for USDC, Circle, announced that it will be uniting with Coinbase to manage the asset together. Previously, the issuance and reserves were managed by a separate entity named Centre, and Centre will now be dissolved. Supposedly this is due to increased regulatory clarity that is making Coinbase and Circle more comfortable with stablecoins.

Learn more here.

Friend Tech boom(ed)

The newest crypto trend is called Friend Tech, which is basically a social app that lets you buy “shares” of your friends, with the hope that the value of each share will go up over time and you can cash out. If it sounds like a ponzi scheme… some people would call it a “bonding curve.” But you do get exclusive access to their content, so it doesn’t totally lack utility. However, it is so popular that it became the second ranked project by crypto fees, only falling behind Ethereum. As quickly as it became popular, activity has dropped significantly since.

Learn more here.

Thanks for reading and I hope you learned something!

- Theodore