Apr 17
NFT NYC Again Showcased the Resilience of Web3 Culture
On Tuesday, a financial reporter friend texted me to ask if I'd be attending NFT NYC events the next day. "How is it even happening this year when the volume is so low," she asked. I sent her a spreadsheet that listed 180 different events happening in the next three days all around the city—there was plenty to do. By Wednesday afternoon, I was standing outside Samsung's Future+ launch event doing an interview with a radio reporter who asked me whether this year's event felt like a shell of what...
Apr 10
Every Crypto Project Must Reckon With the SEC's Howey Test
Nearly five years ago, SEC official Bill Himan stood on stage at a Yahoo Finance crypto summit in San Francisco and delivered a prepared speech that concluded that Ethereum (ETH) is not a security. A footnote on the SEC's website clarified that the speech "expresses the author’s views and does not necessarily reflect those of the Commission," but it was nonetheless taken exactly that way. Hinman's speech came just one week after then-SEC chair Jay Clayton said that the SEC does not view Bitcoin...
Mar 19
When Brigitte Macron Came to NFT Paris
I was one of the 18,000 people to enter the Grand Palais Éphémère, a huge domed exhibition hall facing the Eiffel Tower, for NFT Paris three weeks ago. The event has stuck with me more than most crypto conferences do—and I attend a lot of crypto conferences. First off, I was blown away by the energy, positivity, and seriousness of the attendees, panel chats, and art displays. I was struck by how many global consumer and luxury brands were on hand—Adidas, Salesforce, Volkswagen, Panerai, Warner...
Jan 22
The US Government Wants You To Know It's Cracking Down on Crypto
The jokes wrote themselves. On Wednesday, the U.S. Department of Justice declared ominously that it would hold a live press conference at noon to announce an "International Cryptocurrency Enforcement Action." Crypto Twitter panicked, and so did crypto prices. Bitcoin and Ethereum each fell nearly 5% in just a few minutes, amounting to a flash crash. Which big player was caught in the DOJ's crosshairs? Binance was a popular bet, and CZ didn't help matters by tweeting just "4," which he announced...
Jan 2
2022 Wasn't All Bad for Crypto (Just Mostly)
Crypto had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year in 2022. Coins began tanking at the start of Q2 and never rallied; Terra collapsed in May, leading to the bankruptcies of Celsius, Voyager, and Three Arrows Capital; the Feds sanctioned Tornado Cash in August; FTX collapsed in November, leading to the bankruptcy of BlockFi and warning signs from Genesis and Digital Currency Group. The whole world is watching crypto right now—for the wrong reasons. But the year wasn't all bad. The industry...
Nov 27
5 Lessons From the Stunning Implosion of SBF and FTX
It turns out Sam Bankman-Fried wasn't "the next Warren Buffett." Just six months ago I was in The Bahamas at the FTX/SALT conference, where Sam was treated like Taylor Swift. He chatted onstage with Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Gisele Bundchen. Posed for selfies with admirers. Interviewed Tom Brady about the art of winning—and found time to make some TikTok videos with him. Brady has since deleted those videos amid Sam's total public disgrace. But FTX's damage and impact on the entire crypto i...
Oct 30
Elon Musk, Twitter, Dogecoin, Bluesky, and the Decentralized Social Media Race
Elon actually did it. The gleeful jester king of Crypto Twitter—whose tweets about Dogecoin have repeatedly moved the price, whose July 2018 "pedo guy" tweet about a British cave diver landed him in court for defamation (he won), whose August 2018 "funding secured" tweet led to securities fraud charges from the SEC ($20 million fine)—now owns Twitter Inc. When this story began six months ago (!) with Musk's original $44 billion offer, I wrote, "Musk probably won't get to buy Twitter. But crypto...
Oct 17
Pay No Attention to the Price of Bitcoin and Ethereum
Crypto is totally dead lately—if you're only looking at the price action. Yes, Bitcoin is down 72% from its all-time-high price in November 2021, almost one full year ago. Ethereum is down the same, 72% from its own high of $4,878. Woof. Crypto advocates point out that it's not just crypto, stocks have been hammered too. And they're right: everything is down right now. But that's cold comfort for crypto believers, who—I'll let you in on a little crypto media trade secret—do not care to read any...
Sep 11
The Ethereum Merge Matters for Everyone in Crypto
After years and years of delays, the Ethereum merge is upon us. The event formerly known as Ethereum 2.0, when the proof-of-work Ethereum mainnet will merge with the proof-of-stake beacon chain, could happen as soon as Tuesday. (If you want a tech-free analogy for normie friends, I like this charmingly nerdy one from the Ethereum Foundation itself: "Imagine Ethereum is a spaceship that isn't quite ready for an interstellar voyage. With the Beacon Chain, the community has built a new engine and...
Aug 27
The Sheriff of Cryptoville Draws His Pistol
When Gary Gensler was sworn in as SEC Chair in April of last year, many in crypto celebrated. The general reasoning: He had taught a course called "Blockchain and Money" at MIT in 2018, so he must be friendly to crypto. They aren't celebrating now. As I cautioned in multiple segments on Yahoo Finance last summer, teaching one class did not necessarily mean he was a fan of crypto. Now, after 16 months on the job, I think it's safe to conclude that indeed, he is not a fan. (It is somewhat puzzlin...
Aug 14
War on Crypto! From Ethereum Mixers to Media Newsletters
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury Department added Tornado Cash to its blacklist, banning American citizens from using the crypto mixing site because it "has been used to launder more than $7 billion worth of virtual currency since its creation in 2019." Separately, on Tuesday, we at Decrypt woke up to find that our newsletter provider Mailchimp had deactivated our account with no warning—and our reporting discovered Mailchimp had done the same to a bevy of other crypto publishers in the past couple...
Aug 6
Who's Afraid of Gary Gensler? Coinbase Braces for a Fight
If it wasn't clear enough already that SEC Chair Gary Gensler views most crypto tokens as securities from the many times he has said so, two weeks ago the SEC began walking the walk instead of just talking. It charged a former Coinbase product manager with insider trading, and in its complaint listed nine specific tokens as unregistered securities. It looks to me like the biggest crypto news of the summer so far, with the most wide-reaching implications for the industry. The nine tokens are AMP...
Jul 17
2 Months of Running With NFT Fitness App Stepn
Back in April, all the degens on Crypto Twitter were boasting about the money they were making just by going out for a run and tracking it on Stepn. The app rewards you in its GST (Green Satoshi) token for walking, jogging, or running outdoors. Some Web3 folks were racking up more than $20 worth of GST per run. But that was in April, when GST was close to $9. By May 10, when I started using the app (late to the party), GST was down to $3.50. I earned 0.65 GST for my first 2.5-mile run, or $2.27...
Jul 10
The Crypto Bailouts Have Begun. Is This the Only Way?
FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried has rushed to the rescue of ailing crypto firms so quickly amid the current crash that he is being compared to John Pierpont Morgan (the man himself, not the bank) in 1907. Now his rivals are taking note, and they want in on the bailout race. Last month, FTX extended a $250 million line of credit to battered crypto lender BlockFi. One day later, Alameda Research, another SBF company, gave Voyager Digital a $500 million line of credit. Two weeks later, FTX came to terms...
Jun 26
A Tale of Two NFT Parties: Doodles vs. Goblintown
If you only followed NFT NYC from afar on Twitter this week, you could easily have the impression that the entire event was a disaster resulting only in public ridicule. There were tweets making fun of Apefest, tweets laughing at an NFT date proposal, and a viral tweet thread declaring NFT NYC had "already failed" on Monday night, when the week had barely begun. The truth is less satisfying for NFT skeptics and haters: the vibes were super positive and everyone I encountered was bullish, despit...
Jun 19
Bored Ape Yacht Club and the Limitations of NFT Ownership
Crypto is in a brutal bear market and every day brings more price pain. But you wouldn't know it from the flood of party invitations for NFT NYC this week. The event, which is more like a week of disjointed parties across Manhattan and Brooklyn than a typical conference in one building, will bring anons with Ape, Punk, Doodle, and Cool Cat PFPs from Twitter into real life to connect in person and pump their JPEGs. Last year's NFT NYC, the inaugural edition, was in October and perhaps best chara...
May 21
Think Sports Will Back Away From Crypto and NFTs Because of the Crash? Think Again.
This week on Kiawah Island, South Carolina, I hosted a crypto panel with Christine Moy, the new head of digital assets at Apollo (she left JPMorgan in February), Dapper Labs CEO Roham Gharegozlou, Sorare CEO Nicolas Julia, and the red-hot NFT artist Emily Yang aka pplpleasr. I host panels at conferences all the time, but this event was a little different: the attendees included the biggest power brokers in sports and finance. It was the inaugural year of a new leadership summit hosted by Bruin...