Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong Is Sued

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

Dec. 22, 2021

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Today's must-reads

Top Shelf

BUY THE DIP: El Salvador bought another 21 bitcoins to mark the 21st day of the last month of the 21st year of the 21st century, President Nayib Bukele tweeted Tuesday night. The country now holds 1,141 BTC and plans to buy $500 million more with a $1 billion bond tokenized on the Liquid network sidechain. Elsewhere in the bitcoin-verse, mining profitability has slipped since November as hashrate competition returns following a ban in China that took out about a third of all miners, leading to outsized profits for miners elsewhere in the world, according to Arcane Research. Major miners across the sector plan to bring even more specialized mining machines online in the coming months.

ACCELERATE BY THEFT? Brian Armstrong, the CEO of publicly traded crypto exchange Coinbase, allegedly stole the work of a blockchain accelerator under the guise of potentially making an investment in one of its projects. Blockchain accelerator MouseBelt Labs filed a complaint in California's Supreme Court Friday alleging that in June 2019 Armstrong offered to invest in Knowledgr – a platform used to distribute scientific papers with tokens offered as an incentive – so he could use confidential information for ResearchHub, a similar platform he was working on, and eliminate Knowledgr as a competitor.

IRRESPONSIBLE ADVERTS? Arsenal FC, one of the U.K.'s top-ranking soccer clubs, received a reprimand from the country's advertisement regulator for "irresponsible" and "misleading" promotion of its fan token, which was introduced on July 12 in partnership with Socios. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) criticized two ads, one on Facebook and the other on the club's website, that trivialized investment in crypto assets and failed to illustrate financial risk. Arsenal has disagreed, adding that at the time the ads appeared the tokens could not be traded on the Socios app. Socios has struck similar deals with football clubs in Barcelona, Juventus, Atletico Madrid and Manchester City.

FINANCE IS FASHIONABLE: Arcade has closed a $15 million Series A to bring collateralized lending that connects the fast-growing non-fungible token (NFT) space to decentralized finance (DeFi). The code "primitive" allows NFTs to be bundled and utilized to acquire a single loan. Launched in 2018, Arcade is now coming out of a private release with $3.3 million in total loan volume secured on $10 million worth of assets. Fresh capital will go towards building new products and hiring a regulatory expert. Meanwhile, Golden State Warriors star guard Stephen Curry is partnering with sports apparel brand Under Armour on an NFT drop.

DAO MERGER: In the biggest merger yet of two decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), Rari Capital and Fei Protocol will combine via a token swap, series of custom smart contracts and multiple on-chain votes. Now united under the TRIBE token, the merger passed by votes from both DAO communities after less than a month of deliberation. A total of 103 wallet addresses participated in the election. The joint effort will immediately command $2 billion in total value locked (TVL).

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What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

A petition to find the canonical version of the Ethereum white paper (Github)
The Web3/Crypto/Metaverse Ecosystem Guide (Lightspeed blog)
Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs flip CryptoPunks in terms of floor price (The Block)
Chinese news site Xinhua to mint NFTs on Tencent's enterprise blockchain (The Block)
Cryptocurrency Entrepreneur Justin Sun to Join Jeff Bezos in Blue Origin Flight (Bloomberg)
Metamask Prepares NFT Integration for Browser Extension (NFT Plaza)

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Coinbase: Building a Secure Crypto Infrastructure for Institutional Investors

As the largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange in the U.S., Coinbase often serves as a bridge for institutional investors between traditional finance and the world of digital assets. And with the launch of its prime brokerage, Coinbase now has an integrated product that provides institutional investors with a suite of services including trading, analytics and secure custody.

Using the same regulatory, compliance, insurance, and security practices and standards that leading banks follow as its starting point, Coinbase then invests heavily in adapting and strengthening them so they're tailored to the unique aspects of digital assets.