CoinDesk wrapped up Consensus 2023 on Friday, marking the top of three days stuffed with discussions round coverage, expertise and scams. Catch up on a few of the key tales under.
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The narrative
There had been quite a lot of coverage periods at Consensus this yr, together with our first Policy Summit – a full day of discussions centered round regulatory points world wide.
Why it issues
Thousands of individuals descended on Austin, Texas final week to speak about crypto. Here’s some of the highlights. That similar week, we noticed a number of Congressional hearings, follow-up work from the European Union and extra work from regulators attempting to grapple with this sector.
Breaking it down
Policy points had a day within the limelight at Consensus and confirmed up all through the week in numerous talks.
“What’s really fascinating to me about the regulatory conversation is we’re seeing these discussions happen in parallel with ongoing work in Congress and other jurisdictions, lending a bit more urgency to this week’s talks. It has been a very busy week,” I mentioned final week as a part of a compilation of views for CoinDesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey’s Money Reimagined column.
Here’s the factor: I’m biased. I cowl coverage and regulatory points each within the U.S. and worldwide as a part of my each day job.
What was additionally actually fascinating to me is that my colleagues, who don’t essentially have to deal with regulatory points, additionally known as out regulation as a key matter. Both Nick Baker, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief and Ben Schiller, CoinDesk’s managing editor for Consensus Magazine, talked about regulatory points in the identical column. The different contributors included CoinDesk reg group reporters Cheyenne Ligon and Amitoj Singh.
But it’s true: the regulatory points remained entrance and heart in most of the panels final week, together with those who in concept had been about something apart from regulation. How crypto firms will navigate the assorted jurisdictions they function in and the way they’re going to deal with considerations from regulators within the wake of final yr’s numerous collapses are each questions we heard in the course of the three days of panels.
There’s additionally what I’ve taken to calling “fundamental questions.” During a Twitter area discussing Consensus final week, in addition to throughout my opening to the Policy Summit, I discussed that one in all these basic questions is “will we ever get a clear delineation between what is a security and what is a commodity.”
It’s a query I requested throughout a few of the periods I moderated. Of course, this query has a solution when you ask regulators, say on the Securities and Exchange Commission, however principally I’ve heard it’s a facts-and-circumstances analysis moderately than a transparent vivid line. Will we get that clear vivid line?
Another is that if we’ll really see laws addressing crypto handed within the close to future. Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), the chair of the highly effective House Financial Services Committee, mentioned “yes” when I asked him if a bill might be passed into law throughout the subsequent yr.
Other points that got here up embody the upcoming election, which incorporates the 2024 presidential election. Obviously that’s going to be of curiosity, however I’m additionally beginning to hear increasingly that this can be the primary presidential election with an precise crypto element (the Twitter Hack of 2020 doesn’t rely).
Read extra of the protection from Consensus on the hyperlinks under:
- CoinDesk Winds Down Ethereum Validator ‘Zelda,’ and We Now Wait to Get Money Back: This was a cool experiment by the CoinDesk team, led by former CoinDeskers Christine Kim and William Foxley, and present CoinDesker Spencer Beggs. “Hats off to the entire CoinDesk team for a successful two years of validating. Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake is finally complete and Zelda’s purpose to enhance the editorial coverage of that transition has been fulfilled. So proud of this project and the people who carried this project on after I left CoinDesk like Spencer Beggs, Sam Kessler, and Margaux Nijkerk,” Christine mentioned in response to the shutdown.
- DCG’s CFO Steps Down as Crypto Conglomerate Repays $350M Loan: Digital Currency Group Chief Financial Officer Michael Kraines has left his function after two years, whereas the corporate – which is CoinDesk’s mum or dad – introduced it repaid a $350 million senior secured time period mortgage and generated $180 million in income within the first quarter of this yr.
Tuesday
- 15:30 UTC (4:30 p.m. BST) The U.Okay. is contemplating a invoice that may loosen restrictions on crypto advert suppliers, although an precise vote has been postponed to Wednesday.
Wednesday
- 14:00 UTC (10:00 a.m. ET) The public sale for Celsius’ belongings resumes.
- 18:00 UTC (2:00 p.m. ET) The Federal Reserve will announce whether or not it’s persevering with to hike charges.
- (Princeton University) Wow, surprising: “From our qualitative analysis of verified user accounts, we find that cryptocurrency promotion accounts constitute significantly more Blue subscribers than our randomly sampled control dataset, indicating that a significant number of Blue users may be leveraging the confusion between legacy and Blue verification to promote their own commodities.”
- (Various researchers) Researchers from quite a few universities verify what all of us suspected about this yr’s financial institution runs: “social media amplifies these bank run risk factors.”
- (The New York Times) The FBI searched former FTX Digital Markets CEO Ryan Salame’s home final week.
If you’ve acquired ideas or questions on what I ought to focus on subsequent week or some other suggestions you’d prefer to share, be at liberty to e-mail me at nik@coindesk.com or discover me on Twitter @nikhileshde.
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See ya’ll subsequent week!
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