Tim Cook Owns Crypto, But Doesn't See It for Apple

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

Nov. 9, 2021

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–Daniel Kuhn

Today's must-reads

Top Shelf

CUT TO THE CORE: Apple CEO Tim Cook has disclosed he owns cryptocurrency "as part of a diversified portfolio," but said the investment is not indicative of Apple having crypto ambitions. He spoke during the New York Times DealBook conference on Monday morning. Separately, Discord CEO Jason Citron shared screenshots hinting crypto may soon come to the popular messaging platform.

STRATEGIC INVESTMENTS: Cryptocurrency lender Nexo said it made a strategic investment in U.S.-regulated broker-dealer Texture Capital as it plans a U.S. expansion. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Separately, Neon Labs announced a $40 million token sale to Jump Capital, IDEO CoLab Ventures, Solana Capital, Three Arrows Capital and others as it looks to build out tooling that brings the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) to Solana.

LIQUIDITY HUBS: San Francisco-based fintech firm Ripple will launch a product called the "Ripple Liquidity Hub" to give business customers access to BTC, ETH, LTC, ETC, BCH and XRP from a range of global exchanges, market makers and over-the-counter desks. Its first partner is crypto ATM provider Coinme. Meanwhile, Chainalysis has found decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are growing faster than their centralized counterparts.

LEGAL TENDER: Central bank digital currencies (CBDC) will probably become legal tender in the jurisdictions of their issuance, the European Central Bank's (ECB) Fabio Panetta said. If so, this would give these fiat monies an edge over private payment options. Meanwhile, the Swiss National Bank (SNB) says it will technically be ready to launch a wholesale CBDC (for use in the financial sector rather than at the retail level) in January of next year, using Switzerland's newly licensed Six Digital Exchange (SDX).

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Overheard on CoinDesk TV ...

Sound Bites

"Crypto is too big to ignore."

–Acams Executive Director Rick McDonell, discussing the prospect of regulatory action, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."

What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

Reddit and Solana's founders announced a $100 million initiative for Web 3.0 social media technology (Decrypt)
Axie Infinity's Katana Breaks $1B in TVL After Launch of Governance Token (The Defiant)
The infrastructure bill makes crypto tax-reporting failures a felony (Quartz)

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CoinDesk's "Most Influential" recognizes individuals who've had a big impact on the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry in a calendar year. Chosen by readers and editorial staff, the list features 50 people from across the space, including entrepreneurs, traders, coders, regulators, celebrities and the odd surprise. To have your say on who should make this year's list, check out the form here. The results will be announced on Dec. 6, 2021.

Putting the news in perspective

The Takeaway

Missed the ENS Airdrop? Here Are the Crypto Projects Rumored to 'Decentralize' Next

Hey, it's Daniel Kuhn. Some people were annoyed when they heard Ethereum Name Service, more commonly known as ENS, would be issuing a token. It was the "one, legitimate tokenless project," and it was bending the knee to the market. Tokens are speculative by nature, prone to severe price fluctuations and reminiscent of carnivals. Do they cheapen the prospects of a so-called public good?

Whatever reservations people had, there are plenty of good reasons to retroactively reward early adopters of – perhaps, speculators in – a crypto project. Airdrops distribute influence and wealth to early users and pay back some of their opportunity costs. It strengthens the community around the code and serves as marketing for the next wave of adopters.

ENS went with a broad distribution: sending a tidy sum of tokens (25 million total) to those who purchased or were given their brand of non-fungible tokens (or NFTs, those ".eth" names you may have seen around social media) used as domain names. Token holders will form the foundation of the protocol's decentralized government and hold sway over what comes next.

In a way, yesterday's airdrop announced that ENS has arrived. Often compared to the current web's "domain naming system," which uses "human readable" names for IP addresses, ENS is a functioning, alternate, open-source way for individual users to own their little corners of the web. Or Web 3, more accurately. Uniswap, Curve and 1inch all issued tokens over the past year and have seen measurable growth.

But not everyone wants to own their domain name (DanielKuhn.eth is still open). Many may have been skeptical of this whole "future of the web" thing or otherwise been turned off by high gas fees needed to do anything on the Ethereum blockchain. They lost out on free money this time around. But it's OK, opportunities abound to build a little wealth in the next generation of the web.

The key is to just start using the stack of applications and protocols operating today. The decentralized web promises to reward users for their time and efforts. And key to that: It needs actual users. Some of these protocols may issue tokens in the future, others won't – I don't have any direct insight. Here's a community sourced spreadsheet of rumored projects that may do the token thing (including projects that exist on alternate blockchains like Solana, Polkadot and Terra).

MetaMask, one of the key gateways into Web 3 with 10 million monthly active users, is considering a token. The rumor started when Joseph Lubin, the founder of ConsenSys, the development hub that built MetaMask and a host of other essential Ethereum tools, tweeted "Wen $MASK? Stay tuned." (He was responding to my colleague Andrew Thurman.)

Considering the influence JPMorgan has at ConsenSys, Thurman is skeptical that the popular wallet plugin will decentralize anytime soon, but we'll just say for now that the $MASK ticker is already taken.

Another big fish would be the current ruling champ of NFT platforms, OpenSea. Coinbase, FTX and other massive crypto incumbents have announced plans for their own NFT platforms, and nimble startups are stealing market share. A token may be a way to retain users in the increasingly competitive market, in the same way that Uniswap was forced to decentralize during "DeFi Summer."

Just about any crypto project that doesn't yet have a token is in the running. Maybe even the ones that say they won't drop one.

–Daniel Kuhn

Sponsored Content

Onessus: The Growing Utility of NFTs

When most people think of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), they think of their value as lying in their being unique – hence "non-fungible." As one-off, digital representations of art, they are indivisible and non-replicable, to which people can attach value. But now there is a growing move to make NFTs usable in several different ways. This movement toward added utility creates a different kind of value proposition for NFTs, on top of their scarcity and collectability.

One of the more novel concepts is NFT staking or farming. This refers to staking NFTs to a protocol to earn a yield. It gives NFTs passive yield-generating utility, and can be thought of as decentralized finance (DeFi) meets NFTs.