CFTC Orders Unregistered Polymarket to Shutter Markets

The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day

Jan. 4, 2022

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–Daniel Kuhn

Today's must-reads

Top Shelf

PLACE YOUR BETS? The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fined crypto predictions service Polymarket $1.4 million and ordered it to shut down its markets and offer users full refunds on charges the company failed to register with the regulator. CoinDesk Managing Editor Nikhilesh De digs into the CFTC's announcement, arguing certain phrases may point to how the agency will look at decentralized finance (DeFi) in 2022.

CRYPTO MINING: The Republic of Kosovo will ban cryptocurrency mining as a means of tackling its energy crisis, according to the country's economy minister. The government declared a state of emergency in December lasting for 60 days, allowing it to allocate more money for energy imports and introduce power cuts. Meanwhile, Chinese crypto mining rig maker Canaan says 10,300 of its AvalonMiners are up and running in Kazakhstan, a big winner of the crypto mining moratorium in China last year, even as the Kazakh government looks to restrict its own homegrown crypto mining industry.

GETTING CLEAR: Estonia's minister of finance shut down rumors that owning and trading cryptocurrency might be banned under proposed anti-money laundering legislation, in a statement made Sunday. A draft bill approved by Estonia's Parliament on Dec. 23 will look to cut down on anonymous crypto use by having virtual asset service providers (VASPs) identify users at sign-up. The rules will affect crypto – potentially even decentralized providers – but is not a ban on crypto use per se.

BILLION-DOLLAR DEX: Osmosis, the first decentralized exchange (DEX) on the Cosmos network, crossed $1 billion in total value locked (TVL) on Monday night, data from trackers show. Osmosis has caught on recently amid revived interest in blockchains apart from Ethereum, which is expensive to use and has relatively slower transaction times. Daily average trading volume on Osmosis rose from $4.1 million in July to $46.6 million in December, data from analytics tool Token Terminal show.

DEALS, DEALS: Kevin O'Leary's publicly traded "DeFi platform" WonderFi will purchase Canadian crypto exchange Bitbuy for C$206 million ($161.8 million) in cash and shares. The exchange claims to have 375,000 registered users. Separately, NFT venture studio Metaversal raised $50 million in a Series A funding round led by CoinFund and Foxhaven Asset Management. The round included financial juggernaut Franklin Templeton.

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Overheard on CoinDesk TV...

Sound Bites

"[With Web 3] you can finally own what you create. You can live differently. You can own your governance. You can own your data."

–Near Foundation's new CEO, Marieke Flament, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."

What others are writing...

Off-Chain Signals

Tether freezes over $1 million worth of USDT belonging to a single address (The Block)
Ethereum NFT Market Soars in First Days of 2022 After OpenSea Marks Another $3B Month (Decrypt)
Bitcoin at the Bank: Mainstream Lenders Dabble in Crypto Outside the U.S. (WSJ)
Crypto funds attracted $9.3B in inflows in 2021 as institutional adoption grew (Cointelegraph)
Protos reports that Republican political consultant Keith Ingersoll, recently indicted for his role in a $12-million real estate scheme, was the vice president of crypto project Organic Fresh Coin, which ran an illegitimate initial coin offering (ICO) in 2018.

Sponsored Content

Pirate Chain: Privacy Coin Issuer: Nothing's Encrypted Until End Points Are Encrypted

Roughly $13 billion is afloat in the privacy coin market, but are holders of these tokens really getting what they're paying for? That depends. If they're of the mind that all they have to do is to denominate transactions in Monero or Zcash and nobody could ever trace their path or hack their accounts, then no. If they fully understand that buying and selling with privacy coins is one necessary component – but not the one only component – of a completely anonymous transaction, then yes.

Fortunately, a project called Pirate Chain is seeking to fix the issue. The collaborators behind Pirate Chains know they can't do it simply by changing minds. Minds and behaviors don't necessarily change just because new information is provided.

Putting the news in perspective

The Takeaway

RIP Bogdanoffs, Inspiration for Crypto Memes

Who will dump my bags now? Yesterday, it was reported that Igor Bogdanoff, twin of Grichka, passed away due to complications of the coronavirus, six days after his brother's untimely death of the same disease. The two were known for their flamboyance, outlandish scientific theories and mountainous cheekbones, and were, to some extent, the face of the cryptocurrency day trader.

Descendents of European nobility and preeminent figures of popular science, the twins have been commemorated in countless memes. It was often said Igor and Grichka were behind the wild price fluctuations in token markets – somehow always taking the opposite side of your trade.

"In peace and love, surrounded by his children and his family, Igor Bogdanoff left for the light on Monday January 3, 2022," the Bogdanoff estate said, as reported by The Sun. "RIP Grichka Bogdanoff, no wonder everything is dumping," one Twitter user wrote, referencing the popular in-joke among traders.

It's a sad day for crypto. The Bogdanoffs were part of the crypto family since at least 2017, coming to particular prominence in the heady days of the initial coin offering rally. Known across the internet for their atypical look – their nearly identical brunette quaffs, square jaws and faces that appeared to be Botoxed or plastic (or both) – crypto traders made them into mythical figures.

In one meme, Grichka, iPhone to his chiseled face, tells some magisterial figure who can move crypto prices to "pump" or "dump" (sometimes "pomp" or "domp") the market. In 2018, YouTuber Bizonacci teased the joke into a widely shared, minute-long video, "He Bought," of a wojack (those black-lined drawings of the average internet user) driven into madness by the countertrading Bogdanoffs.

You never want to take any meme too seriously, but if there's a deeper meaning here, it might be the admission that crypto is fundamentally speculative. It might be a reference to massive bagholders – early investors, project insiders – with outsized influence on crypto markets. It's self-referential, a little mean-spirited, but all in good fun.

Often, it seemed like the Bogdanoffs were in on the joke. They were at least familiar with their stature. Last July, the twins told French TV show "Non Stop People," the image of Grichka was downloaded more than 1.3 billion times and put in "all blockchains between 2010-2012." In that same interview, the twins claimed to have been former colleagues of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous figure often credited with developing Bitcoin, and even said they contributed to the network's development.

"It is probably Nakamoto who made [the photo] circulate," Igor Bogdanoff said, as reported by Decrypt.

The Bogdanoffs' public personas have always bordered on the absurd. The New York Times described their role as co-hosts of "Temps X," the French science fiction TV show that launched their media careers in the '70s and '80s, as "science clowns." In the '90s, they fought (and settled) plagiarism claims concerning their book ''God and Science." At the turn of the century, they published several scientific articles that put forward a theory of what happened before and during the birth of the universe, which later became the center of "the Bogdanov affair." Recently, they were accused of swindling a bipolar millionaire.

Perhaps it's no surprise then that the twin mathematical physicists are tethered to the crypto industry. They walked the line between fake and real science, between absurdity and self-knowledge. On the surface, they were a little grotesque, though they said they enjoyed looking like "aliens." They denied having plastic surgery, but they could have very well been in on the joke.

–Daniel Kuhn