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My conversation with @brianmerchant about “Speaking Truth to Crypto Power” at SXSW was one of the few crypto-related events. Crypto prices may be back up, but crypto excitement has not followed.

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#crypto #cryptocurrency

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#crypto #cryptocurrency @Brian Merchant
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
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Molly White
• •

One noticeable source of excitement at SXSW this year was to do with federated social media and individual sovereignty online. My conversation with @mike on the topic was only one of many: schedule.sxsw.com/2025/events/… (audio only)

#Fediverse


Digital Sovereignty Is the New Influencer Status

SXSW 2025 Schedule | The real power move for creators is ownership and control of their work and livelihoods.
SXSW 2025 Schedule
#fediverse @Mike McCue
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
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Molly White
• •
Jay Graber, the CEO of BlueSky, gave a great keynote. She wore a t-shirt that read “mundus sine Caesaribus” (“a world without Caesars”): immediately recognizable to those who had seen Mark Zuckerberg’s custom black-on-black “aut Zuck aut nihil” shirt at a Meta event last year.
I was delighted to see that there was, however, quite a bit of excitement around the fediverse and other online spaces that exist outside of the grasps of tech giants and venture capital. There was an entire “Fediverse House” dedicated to programming regarding federated social media protocols like ActivityPub (which powers Mastodon) and ATproto (which powers BlueSky), and how bloggers, journalists, and other online publishers are building on these platforms in wonderful and sustainable ways. There was also, as with some years past, a “WikiHaus” hosting conversations about open knowledge and fighting the privatization of the web. Such topics made it to the primary conference programming too — I had a panel conversation with Flipboard’s Mike McCue about digital sovereignty (and the audio was recorded, though not the video). There was a great panel about “Openness Under Pressure”, which touched on similar points as my recent newsletter about open access amid widespread AI scraping. Bluesky CEO Jay Graber took the mainstage for a keynote with the inimitable tech journalist (and Bluesky board member) Mike Masnick. She wore an oversized black t-shirt printed with black text that read mundus sine Caesaribus (“a world without Caesars”). It was immediately recognizable to those who had seen Mark Zuckerberg’s custom black-on-black aut Zuck aut nihil (“Zuck or nothing”) shirt at a Meta event last year, an egomaniacal play on aut Caesar aut nihilb and a nod to the emperor after whom Zuc
Side-by-side photos of Zuckerberg and Graber in their respective shirts. Zuckerberg is wearing a dorky pair of Meta AR glasses. Caption: Choose your fighter. Text: Her message was clear: we need a world resilient to the outsized power of Zuckerbergian billionaire emperors. And we need platforms that are, as she and Masnick put it, “billionaire-proof”. I couldn’t agree more.
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
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Molly White
• •

Sadly, for now we remain in a very much not billionaire-proof world, so I will now update you on how that’s all been going.

Substantially all remaining enforcement cases from the SEC against cryptocurrency companies (and political megadonors) have been dropped, including the lingering cases against Ripple and Kraken I mentioned last issue.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol

I mentioned in the last issue that the few SEC cases against the crypto firms-turned-political-megadonors that hadn’t yet been dropped would likely be dropped shortly. As predicted, the CEO of Ripple has just announced that the SEC will drop the remainder of its long-running case against the company, originally filed in 2020.20 While Ripple’s CEO described this as “a resounding victory for Ripple”, he did not draw attention to the fact that the SEC had already won the portion of the case alleging that the company had violated securities laws with its institutional token sales, which landed the company with a $125 million fine in 2023 — though this was well below the $2 billion fine sought by the enforcement agency. The SEC was in the process of appealing a decision that the company’s sales to retail exchanges did not violate securities laws, but this appeal is what will apparently be dropped shortly. Ripple and its executives contributed $48 million to crypto-focused super PACs, $12.6 million to Harris, $5 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, and several million more to various other political committees. They’ve also pledged another $25 million to the crypto super PACs for the midterms.
Similarly, Kraken has stated that the SEC has agreed in principle to dismiss its lawsuit against the exchange. As with the case against Coinbase, the SEC will ask for the case to be dismissed with prejudice. Kraken was particularly explicit that this outcome had nothing to do with the facts at issue in the case, writing: “We appreciate the new leadership both at the White House and the Commission that led to this change.”21 Kraken and its executives contributed $1 million each to Trump, Trump’s inauguration fund, and crypto-focused super PACs. Cumberland DRW, the crypto trading portion of DRW, has also announced that the SEC case against them will be dropped.22 The agency had alleged that the firm had sold more than $2 billion in unregistered crypto securities, naming popular crypto assets including Solana and Polygon among them. DRW CEO Don Wilson contributed $100,000 to a crypto-focused super PAC. Finally, NFT company Yuga Labs — best known as the creators of Bored Apes — have said that the SEC has closed an ongoing investigation into the company.23
#crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
mastodon - Link to source
Molly White
• •
The Trump family has reportedly had conversations about acquiring a stake in Binance — as Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao is reportedly seeking a pardon from the president.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family has been in talks to take a financial stake in Binance US, the US business arm of the Binance crypto exchange.17 Although Binance’s founder Changpeng Zhao was forced to step down as Binance’s CEO as part of a criminal plea relating to his operation of the exchange, he remains a majority owner of the company — and he has reportedly been seeking a pardon from Trump. According to the Journal, the talks began last year when Binance contacted Trump allies in hopes of finding a route back to serving US customers. The Journal noted: Trump has increasingly blurred the boundaries between the presidency and his business ventures. ... But pursuing a business deal involving a felon seeking a pardon from his administration would be an unprecedented overlap of his business and the government. A stake in Binance.US would also be a striking expansion of the family’s cryptocurrency endeavors as Trump signs a series of executive orders that benefit the industry. Zhao waved off the reporting, writing rather vaguely that “the WSJ article got the facts wrong”.18 However, it should also be noted that Zhao and Binance routinely deny factual reporting about the company.
in reply to Molly White

Molly White
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Molly White
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Congress has been debating stablecoin bills, and one has advanced to the full Senate thanks to five Democrats who joined all Republicans to vote for it — despite concerns about the power it grants to giant companies and the threat of introducing 2008-esque financial contagion risk.

#crypto #cryptocurrency #USpolitics #USpol

Congress has been continuing to consider stablecoin legislation. In the House, lawmakers tussled over the Republican-led STABLE Act, with Maxine Waters (D-CA) condemning it in its current iteration because she believes it “tears down the wall that was used to separate banking from commerce” — potentially opening the doors to serious financial contagion. She urged other Representatives to reintroduce components of her own proposed legislation, introduced in the last Congress, that would establish more significant oversight and penalties for violations.2728 In the Senate, lawmakers argued over a bipartisan GENIUS Act, with Democrats arguing it doesn’t go far enough to protect consumers or national security. “Anyone who thinks the US taxpayer won’t be called on directly or indirectly to bail out these guys is kidding themselves,” argued Senator Warren (D-MA), also expressing concerns about financial contagion that she likened to the 2008 financial crisis. Several proposals to amend the bill failed along party lines, and the Senate Banking Committee ultimately voted to send the bill to the full Senate.29 Five Democrats voted with the Republicans to advance the bill, including Ruben Gallego from Arizona, who received $10 million in campaign backing from the crypto industry. The other four were Senators Rochester (DE), Alsobrooks (MD), Kim (NJ), and Warner (VA).30
In both the House and the Senate, Democrats expressed concerns that big tech giants, including Elon Musk and Twitter, would further entrench their monopoly positions and abuse consumers by beginning to issue stablecoins. Republicans mostly dismissed any arguments against the bills as fearmongering, with Cynthia Lummis (WY) downplaying concerns about crypto’s role in the drug trade by saying, “I want to assure everybody that Machiavelli is not going to get raised from the dead to issue stablecoins so we can destroy our planet with drugs.”29
#crypto #cryptocurrency #uspol #uspolitics