U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ruled on Monday that the names of the two currently unidentified people who co-signed Sam Bankman-Fried’s $250 million bail bond can be made public. It’s already known that the FTX founder’s parents also co-signed, but the other names were kept private under allegations of possible physical threats. This comes as Alameda Research filed a lawsuit against bankrupt lender Voyager Digital, in an attempt to claw back $446 million in loan repayments. FTX lawyers claim Voyager received $248.8 million in September, $193.9 million in October and a $3.2 million interest payment in August, which Alameda claims falls within the window to be returned under U.S. bankruptcy law. Switching gears, an independent examiner for the U.S. bankruptcy court in New York said in a Tuesday filing bankrupt crypto lender Celsius Network misled investors and operated like a Ponzi scheme.
Bitcoin Matters
Triggered by anxieties the U.S. Federal Reserve will continue its attempt to restrain the economy, bitcoin dipped below $22,600 Monday to record its biggest single-day percentage loss since the FTX meltdown in November. Traders expect the Fed to raise interest rates by 25 basis points (bps) at its Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting, which begins Tuesday, although some fear a 50 bps hike is possible amid ongoing inflation worries. “There is a strong possibility that in the press conference, [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell will be more hawkish and re-tighten financial conditions. For that reason, we could see a healthy short-term correction in crypto and all risk assets,” Wave Financial’s Nauman Sheikh said. Elsewhere in the world of Bitcoin, the Ordinals protocol, a project bringing NFTs onto the Bitcoin platform has stirred backlash from some purists who say the blockchain should be restricted to financial transactions.
Infrastucture Level
Crypto infrastructure company Prime Trust laid off one-third of its staff Tuesday, reportedly limited to its communications and compliance departments. The firm, which provides services for companies including Swan, Abra and Okcoin, has recently faced headwinds including a suspension and fine in Texas. Separately, Twitter is designing a native payments system. Billionaire owner Elon Musk said this is “first and foremost” meant for fiat currencies, though he envisions a crypto expansion later – causing his favorite coin, DOGE, to rally. Elsewhere, German lender DekaBank is developing a digital asset offering for institutional clients. Like Societe Generale and Citibank, Switzerland’s Metaco will provide custodial services for the platform pending regulatory approval. Finally, Hong Kong could enact its stablecoin licensing regime as early as this year, which would ban algorithmic stablecoins such as terraUSD.
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Sound Bites: Compliance Culture
“A culture of compliance often begins at the top.”
– CFTC Commissioner Kristin N. Johnson, on CoinDesk TV’s “First Mover.”
The Takeaway: Doing DAOs
However, it became evident as soon as DAOs collided with the real world that these powerful new vehicles for crowdfunding and organization are constrained by immense coordination and regulatory costs that can negate the benefits of using a DAO in the first place. By understanding these costs, entrepreneurs, researchers and regulators have the opportunity to help DAOs deliver on their promise to create a fairer internet.
On the coordination side, DAOs add friction to using resources by requiring members to pass proposals. By default, most DAOs today are at risk of being what Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin would call a vetocracy, where the default outcome is “no” unless a proposal sponsor rounds up sufficient support for their project. In some cases, the fact that democratic process adds friction is a feature, not a bug.
On the regulatory side, starting a DAO is easy – you can create a multisig (a multisignature wallet, which requires multiple people to sign transactions together) in minutes. The cost of starting a compliant DAO, however, is immense. Everything from incorporating an entity to paying contributors in jurisdictions around the world can take weeks of legal work and rack up hefty bills. If a DAO needs a lawyer and an accountant just to operate, that’s an immense barrier to entry.
When it comes to raising money, vague securities laws can make crowdfunding a risky endeavor. When it comes to spending money on anything off-chain, a DAO will need to open an institutional trading account or “off-ramp,” which can be a multi-month affair. And if the DAO owns real world assets like land and trademarks, the cherished property of forking, which allows a group that disagrees with the main group to branch off, becomes even harder or impossible.
Making DAOs work
Many of these coordination and regulatory costs can be solved with innovation. Entrepreneurs are building tools to ease burdens of DAO payroll, compliance and governance. Some of these barriers must be addressed at the policy level, for example by clarifying DAO statutes and securities laws. More research is also needed on governance mechanisms in order to move DAOs away from vetocracies and towards meritocracies.
Sometimes, though, the high coordination and regulatory costs are simply worth paying. For example, important pieces of internet infrastructure that touch the lives of many ought to be decentralized. MakerDAO, which acts as a sort of Federal Reserve guardian of the stablecoin DAI, is a great example of something that should be very decentralized because trust in the protocol is established by the fact it’s (theoretically) stewarded by a large group and immune from the whims of a single person. The success of Bitcoin, Ethereum and the internet itself is largely due to decentralization, which has brought them robustness and passionate communities.
Making DAOs work is an important project for humanity because they promise us a more democratic future where we own and govern the town squares of tomorrow. One thing is certainly clear – demand for democratic systems is increasing, and people are skeptical of a few platforms ruling the internet. By lowering the coordination and regulatory costs, we can make DAOs more viable and help them fulfill their original vision to create a more level playing field and a more democratic internet.
– Scott Fitsimones, founder of CityDAO and the author of “The DAO Handbook”
Off-Chain Signals
Solana Protocol Metaplex To Enable Royalty Enforcement (The Defiant)
Rollup Wars: Battle Rages For the Future Of Ethereum Scaling (The Defiant)
Nuclear Bitcoin Mining Hits Snag as UK Startup Sells Business (Blockworks)
Crypto M&A Deals Hit Record High in 2022, Despite Downturn (Blockworks)
As the MetaBirkins Case Goes to Trial, a Dive into Some of the Key Issues (Fashion Law)
Celebrities Who Endorsed Crypto, NFTs Land in Legal Crosshairs After Investor Losses (WSJ – paywalled)
The first-ever exchange-traded fund centered on non-fungible tokens, Defiance Diigital Revolution ETF, is slated to shutter (Bloomberg – paywalled)
