The Debate Over VC Influence in Web 3

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

Dec. 23, 2021

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WEBS WE WEAVE: Block CEO Jack Dorsey has gone on an unfollowing frenzy on the social platform Twitter he used to run, sparring with major figureheads of and investors in "Web 3," the ambiguous term for the next generation of internet technologies built on decentralized tech. Earlier this week, Dorsey, an unabashed Bitcoin booster, criticized Web 3 proponents for making overstated promises and recently suggested venture capitalists like Andreessen Horowitz's (a16z) Marc Andreessen, Coinbase's Brian Armstrong and Gemini's Tyler Winklevoss have already "captured" the industry meant to put power back in the hands regular internet users. Indeed, a16z, for one, has lobbied the U.S. government to foster a Web 3 that has (largely) yet to arrive after investing heavily in multiple token-based projects.

NETWORKS MERGE: Decentralized exchange Uniswap and Ethereum scaling system Polygon said Wednesday that all Uniswap version 3 contracts are now live on the Polygon mainnet. The deployment comes days after holders of the UNI governance token voted to approve the move. The price of MATIC, the native asset of the Polygon network, hit a fresh all-time high of $2.66 on the news. Meanwhile, NEAR, the native asset of the layer 1 blockchain of the same name, jumped 23% to $10.80 on Wednesday after an integration with red hot decentralized payments network Terra was announced by developers on Tuesday night.

BINANCE BURNS: Starting Thursday, Binance will burn its BNB tokens continuously instead of once a quarter to better reflect activity on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Introduced in April 2020, BSC is an increasingly popular home for decentralized finance (DeFi). BNB is used to pay transaction fees on BSC and allows holders to make changes and additions to protocols running atop the chain. With the new "auto-burn" system, tokens will be destroyed based on price and supply-demand dynamics to limit volatility.

INDIA: In what may come as a major disappointment for India's crypto community, a law to regulate cryptocurrencies is unlikely until at least after a Budget Session in April 2022, several people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk. A much-anticipated draft regulatory proposal is meant to finally settle questions about crypto's viability in the country, which is emerging as a center of financial and technological innovation after years of crypto essentially being banned.

PRETTY SWIFT? Swift, the cross-border payments messaging service used by more than 11,000 institutions, is taking cues from crypto and planning to experiment with tokenized assets beginning Q1 2022. This "frictionless and seamless tokenized digital asset market" will use central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) as well as established forms of payment. Swift (officially the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is the global standard for communication between financial institutions but has been criticized for its Eurocentric oversight and arguably archaic technology.

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What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

The Library of Congress found that over 50 countries have placed bans on crypto (U.S. Gov)
Decentralized exchanges saw over $1 trillion in trading volume this year (The Block)
Crypto companies raised just over $25 billion in venture funding during 2021 (The Block)
Ripple CEO says 2021 "strongest" year yet. XRP is up ~120% this year despite many exchanges delistings during on-going suit with the SEC (Blockworks)
NY Post on "crypto bros" (the Post's term) buying luxury NYC real estate
Smart read on how/why MicroStrategy would rehypothecate its $6 billion BTC bags from Protos

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