gm and Happy Thanksgiving to our readers who observe. It was another week of FTX fallout news, but at least in terms of price impact, things may be settling down: BTC and ETH are flat over the past week. In headlines, multiple regulators are investigating FTX and founder Sam Bankman-Fried, and the contagion from FTX’s mismanagement continues to hit other companies like Genesis. Read on, and enjoy your leftovers.
Are you a web3 / crypto / blockchain startup? Applications to Wharton’s Cypher Accelerator are now open. Apply to the Fortis cohort by December 15th. Cypher leverages Wharton’s world-class resources to scale startups in the blockchain space.
Don’t expect to find NFTs while wandering Grand Theft Auto’s mean digital streets anytime soon. Rockstar Games announced that NFTs and crypto assets have been banned from fan servers for Grand Theft Auto V, the juggernaut video game smash that’s sold 170 million copies over the last nine years. Microsoft made a similar move with Minecraft in July.
Some creators—from rapper Lil Durk to esports team Loud—had operated custom GTA servers that let users own unique NFT items, like vehicles or weapons. But both announced this week that Rockstar’s legal department put the kibosh on their plans. Curiously enough, Rockstar’s parent company Take-Two Interactive is very keen on Web3 gaming. The takeaway: it’s not as simple anymore as “gamers hate NFTs.” Some game studios are embracing them, while others are distancing.
💰 Coin of the Moment
Who had a Litecoin surge on their Thanksgiving bingo card? The long-running altcoin is one of the rare cryptocurrencies to actually rise in the wake of the FTX collapse, with LTC up 47% in total over the last month to a current price above $79.
Litecoin even flipped the market cap of buzzier, more contemporary coins/tokens like Solana and SHIB in its unexpected rise on the charts. Some suspect that LTC is seeing an early surge in momentum well ahead of its next “halving” event, which cuts the amount of tokens awarded to miners. But that happens in August 2023—and LTC is popping right now.
In this bonus episode, we bring you the full audio from an extensive conversation between Edward Snowden and Dan Roberts at Camp Decrypt in Napa Valley CA on October 27. Snowden joined virtually and spoke for an hour, including taking questions from some audience members. He had a lot to say about privacy, government sanctions of Tornado Cash, crypto companies that comply with government, and how and why he helped create Zcash. Dan Roberts and Kate Irwin tee up the conversation for you.
Stories we enjoyed this week from outside Decrypt.
– The Race to Save Sam Bankman-Fried’s Other Crypto Exchange Serum (Wired)
– The crypto dream is not dead, just delayed (Times of London)
– Bahamas reels from FTX collapse: ‘Crypto was going to be our way out’ (FT, paywalled)
– How FTX’s implosion put crypto news sites like CoinDesk, The Block, and Decrypt in the spotlight (Business Insider, paywalled)
😂 Meme of the Week
Sam Bankman-Fried will speak at the NY Times DealBook Summit in New York on November 30, and given recent events, people are a little surprised. (via Twitter)
