29th August 2024 > > Gensler.

tl;dr

Gensler gold-plates his attempt at world domination.

Market Snap

Market Wrap

BTC is essentially unchanged since a week ago, but in that time, we hit $65k killing a load of leveraged shorts, and we threatened $58k killing a load of leveraged longs. All that pain, all that money lost, and we are back where we started. Will they ever learn?

Alts are suffering, but if you are in quality projects which have real-world uses, and the total value is around 5% of your crypto portfolio, and you still believe in the BTC narrative, perhaps there are some juicy buying opportunities.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Hamster Kombat

Don’t pooh, pooh me, I know you have all been playing Hamster Kombat on Telegram. Personally, I am on level 6, but I have been stuck there for a while.

It has been announced that the TGE and airdrop are planned for September 26th, which just happens to be one of my favourite days of the year, for other reasons. If you have invested time on this latest iteration of tap-and-earn, make sure you connect your TON wallet beforehand. You don’t want to miss out.

Curious Cryptos’ Commentary – Gensler is out of control

The man is mad.

The SEC has served a Wells Notice on Opensea, one of the original and one of the largest online marketplaces for NFTs. A Wells Notice is often the precursor to regulatory and/or legal action against the recipient. David Finzer, CEO and co-founder, is not best pleased:

https://x.com/dfinzer/status/1828791832009953706

David explains his concerns:

“… this is a move into uncharted territory. By targeting NFTs, the SEC would stifle innovation on an even broader scale: hundreds of thousands of online artists and creatives are at risk, and many do not have the resources to defend themselves.

NFTs are fundamentally creative goods: art, collectibles, video game items, domain names, event tickets, and more.

We should not regulate digital art in the same way we regulate collateralized debt obligations.”

As an aside, CDOs were at the heart of the Global Financial Crisis, which allowed for the normalisation of the use by governments of the policy of quantitative easing, designed to make the rich richer, and the poor poorer. The problems of the GFC arose not because of a lack of regulation, but because of completely inappropriate and poorly designed regulation. The regulators’ natural knack for getting it wrong has not diminished one bit since 2008.

Back to NFTs.

This land grab by the SEC to regulate digital art has enormous ramifications, if it is allowed to prosper.

Clearly, the buying and selling of physical art and collectibles is now within the crosshairs of the SEC. Button-collecting hobbyists, or model train enthusiasts need to start worrying. If you are trading Pokémon cards for your own pleasure, then watch out for that knock on the door. If you are selling the cards on eBay, prepare for a lengthy jail sentence if Gensler gets his way.

There is virtually no facet of human activity that cannot be characterised as a transaction in some form or another.

Gensler is after all of us, for reasons known only to himself.