28th November 2024 > > Watford F.C. & Tornado Cash.

tl;dr

Watford F.C.

Oh, and some crypto stuff too.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

ETH up 15% in a week suggests to me that alt season is just getting going.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Go on the ‘orns!

Curious Cryptos’ resident techie Larry has been visiting CC Towers in preference to lounging around on one of his many boats that are moored in sunnier climes. You want to know why? The primary purpose of his visit was to understand the interplay between the crypto industry, football, and specifically Watford. To that end, we headed to the Vic on Tuesday night to watch Watford just sneak past Bristol City with a 1-0 scoreline, which might possibly be described as flattering to us. Homegrown Ryan Andrews slotted home the winning goal with a most impressive strike:

https://www.watfordfc.com/videos/0_6392i1cf

Ryan is one of our own.

The most uplifting football crypto crossover story has been the rise of Real Bedford F.C. which we have talked about in the past (https://www.curiouscryptos.com/post/14th-april-2024-real-bedford-f-c).

Back to the ‘orns.

CoinTelegraph points out a few things I have missed.

Apparently, we have had the BTC logo on our shirt sleeves since 2019. As an avid Watford fan who rarely misses a home game, and allegedly obsessed with cryptos in my spare time, then if I am being honest with myself, I have only one question. How did I not know that?

All season we have had the CoinTelegraph logo displayed around the pitch. Again, it is a very fair question to ask of me - how did I not notice that?

In 2021, the DOGE logo was on our shirts, and again that passed me by. How?

Perhaps advertising, PR, marketing, fluff, call it what you will, doesn’t work on me. Or perhaps I should pay more attention to my surroundings. And in that vein, I leave it to Gareth Jenkinson, managing editor of CoinTelegraph, to tell it like it is:

“We firmly believe Watford can retake its place in the Premier League. We hope to be a part of that journey while educating and informing a broader audience on the industry we cover.”

He talks sense. Gareth, you are welcome to come and stand and sing with me right in front of Mark the Drummer at the Vic any time you like.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Tornado Cash

So, this is how it is going to go from now on. The antagonism towards cryptos is over.

Tornado Cash is a mixer. It is open-source code that allows any wallet to send cryptos into the mixer and at a later date receive those cryptos back (minus a small fee) into a new wallet. With enough mixing, the input and output wallets cannot be associated with one another, adding a new layer of privacy to one’s crypto transactions.

There are legitimate users of mixers. There are nefarious users of mixers.

There are those who state that because of the nefarious users, mixers should be banned, including the US Treasury, which has previously sanctioned Tornado Cash. If you think that is an appropriate response, I assume you also believe that the US Treasury should sanction the EU, for the EUR 500 note is the note of choice for drug dealers and terrorists to move large wads of illicitly gained fiat. Having sanctioned the EU, then the next organisation on the US Treasury list of targets to sanction would be the US Treasury itself, for issuing the $100 note before it was usurped by the EU in a petulant display of “mine is bigger than yours”.

Two days ago, a Fifth Circuit Appeals Court ruled that OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) exceeded its authority in sanctioning Tornado Cash.

I am sure there will be another appeal, and various lawyers will have differing takes on the minutiae of the wording of the judgement, but we need not let such trivia detain us here.

What is important is that the change of administration in the US to a crypto friendly one is already redrawing the landscape in our favour.

In years to come, 2025 will be seen as the year that the crypto revolution really got going.