March 9, 2022 | Issue #211

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MUST READS

State Street Partners With Copper

State Street Corp is partnering with London-based Copper·co to offer custodial services on cryptocurrencies for institutional customers.
The Boston-based bank expects to have the infrastructure available to its institutional clients by the end of this year, representing just one part of the firm’s expansion into crypto that included launching a dedicated digital division in June.
While some today might find this headline a bit "ehh whatever", we wanted to acknowledge that this news would of been absolutely massive a year or so ago.
State Street, in case you're wondering, has ~$44 trillion in assets under custody and administration. Despite the lack of clamor, it's announcements like these that end up having resounding impacts on global BTC adoption in the long run.
“Today we’re talking custody, but sky’s the limit.” - Nadine Chakar, head of State Street Digital
Now, what else is flying under the radar? In a recent filing, we learned that Morgan Stanley held more than 13 million shares of Grayscale Investments’ Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) in 17 different portfolios at the end of 2021. Who knows how much they have now... The answer to the question "why is this stuff not talked about more?" is beyond us.

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DEEP DIVES

Andre Cronje Calls It Quits

Andre Cronje, prolific DeFi developer and the founder of Yearn, has reportedly decided to retire from crypto and will terminate around 25 apps and services on April 3rd.
To say the market didn't take the news well would be an understatement. The terminated apps and their associated tokens all immediately took a dive with Solidly (SOLID) dropping ~75%, Iron Bank (IB) down ~50%, Yearn (YFI) down ~10%, and Keep3r (KP3R) down ~25%.
Likewise, many of the tokens associated with Fantom (which Cronje was an advisor to) also significantly fell. Spookyswap (BOO), Tomb (TOMB), and LiquidDriver (LQDR) were all down ~20% on the news. This happened despite the fact that Cronje was not even actually involved in any of the projects.
Although other developers are moving quickly to take over the projects being left behind by Cronje, it just goes to show how much the crypto market can be dependent on "celebrity" founders at this stage.
In the end, happy retirement to someone who has designed break-through protocols that have led to the creation of billions of dollars in value. Now, even though some of the protocols have also been hacked for millions of dollars, we always have respect for founders who retire early, run from the spotlight, and go on with their lives – sorta like Tom from Myspace.

The Many Escapes of Justin Sun

If you were involved in crypto in the archaic years of 2017 – 2019, you will remember how truly "wild west" the markets were. ICOs, pump and dumps, and opaque market moves were daily occurrences.
You'd also probably recognize one of the larger-than-life characters from that era as well, Justin Sun, the infamous creator of Tron (TRX).
Today, four years after Tron's initial ICO, The Verge has published an exposé into Sun's purported crimes. (Now, we don't know if any of these allegations are true, but if they are, the story needs to be made into a Netflix series ASAP.)
Sun is accused of wire fraud, conspiracy or intent to commit wire fraud, swindling, money laundering, spending the spoils of a criminal enterprise, failure to register as a security and lying about it, aiding and abetting a crime, and conspiracy to defraud the U.S.
And those are only his business dealings...
Throughout recent years, Sun also paid $4.6 million bid to have a private lunch with Warren Buffett, bid $28 million to be the first paying passenger to fly on the Blue Origin, paid $78.4 million for this sculpture by Alberto Giacometti, and paid $500k for this.
Honestly, we can't do this story justice on this letter. We suggest you go and read it fully here. (Also, it is worth noting that Sun completely refutes these claims as you can read here.)
Still, after reading, we can't help but have further questions...
How deep is Sun's relationship with the Chinese government?... Why does the founder of Binance, CZ, continue to be wrapped up in criminal accusations?... What is Sun's/Tron's involvement with Tether?
As a previous employee puts it, “If he breaks so many laws at such a rapid pace, it’d be impossible for anyone to catch up to him.”
We'll see.

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REGULATORY FRONT

White House Commits To "Responsible Development"

🚨 Sound the alarms... Biden's highly-anticipated Executive Order (EO) on crypto dropped this morning.
To sum it up, despite pent-up speculation that it would spell doom and gloom for the industry, the EO was about as good as anyone could have hoped for.
Details
In short, there were no (not yet, at least) changes in any laws or regulations surrounding crypto. Instead, the EO essentially called on federal agencies to take a unified approach to regulation and oversight of digital assets. The measures announced will focus on six key areas:
1.) Consumer and investor protection
2.) Financial stability
3.) Illicit activity
4.) U.S. competitiveness on a global stage
5.) Financial inclusion
6.) Responsible innovation
Specific policy recommendations will apparently be out in 90-210 days, which will finally bring much-needed regulatory clarity for those in the space. Put simply, this was long overdue.
The Bigger Picture
For quite some time, we've seen a variety of politicians, media, and pundits on TV cast several doubts on crypto. As you probably know by now, the narrative was that crypto was useless, dangerous, and should be seriously restricted. These Mr. Burns-looking folk cried for immediate government intervention.
But we learned today that the federal government had a different narrative all along – one that sees crypto as a legitimate, serious, and important part of the economy and society. Do they still want to mitigate risks? Of course. But it appears they also want to engage constructively with the sector, get organized, encourage domestic innovation, and more importantly, not overreact.
It was a breath of fresh air for (mostly) all of us. And it's evident that investors were rejoicing as well. Some hand-picked numbers from the day:

Related: In Praise of Bitcoin – Epsilon Theory

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