Crypto Clown Town

SEC Shenanigans, IPOs, Public Goods and more

Author

Boys Club
January 14, 2024

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The Boys

Writer: Deana

Laser Eyes. We did it Joe, the ETFs are approved. This news came after a deeply unserious start to the week involving a hacked official SEC.gov X account, resulting in Big Fake News™ that body slammed the timeline. The intersection of crypto and stupidity is the Boys Club beat, so of course we did an emergency pod covering the shenanigans. This whole thing was a stage 5 dopamine depletion event, so I’m not going to revisit it again in this newsletter.

Okay, But What Really Happened. The real news is that 11 Bitcoin spot ETFs from Big Money Bois like Fidelity and BlackRock were approved on Wednesday, after literal years of anticipation. $4.4 billion was recorded in first day trading volume on Thursday, exceeding expectations. The price of Bitcoin since then, however, has been…the opposite of exceeding expectations. If you do one thing today, please read SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce’s statement on the ETF and SEC “saga” as she calls it. It’s a masterpiece, filled with banger quotes, ending with a bit about how the SEC has “alienated a generation of product innovators within our space.” Go off! Okay so where do we go from here? Well, the banks are fighting amongst themselves to see who can offer the lowest trading fees on their ETF products. I say, let them!

More TradFi (sorry this newsletter will be edgier next week). Circle, the crypto firm which issues the $25B market cap stablecoin USDC, confidentially filed paperwork for an IPO this week, and then issued a press release about it. This is not surprising, because they seem to be making a tidy profit. Unfortunately, the S-1 filing is private, so we can’t lurk on their risk disclosures. The money side of crypto is happy about this, and I’m happy for them.

Public Goods. Major congratulations to all who received grants as a part of Optimism’s $100M retroactive public goods funding round this past week. The grant funding has gone to 501 builders, writers, creators, educators, and contributors across the crypto ecosystem. Vitalik supports it! The moment hasn’t been without healthy debate however, with many questioning the sustainability of the program. Also, some have taken issue with venture-backed teams receiving funding. My take? New models need stress testing, building in public also means deliberation in public, and these are all good learnings for next time. Just try keep it nice, okay?

Have you bought your tickets to the consumer crypto and new internet summit of the year, anon? Here is just a sampling of where our speakers have worked recently. Get yours here, before they’re going, going, gone.