Weekly Web3 Workout — 21st Aug 22
Intro
Welcome to the Weekly Web3 Workout. The sun is still shining here even though winter continues to prove it has a hold of the crypto markets. This doesn’t stop the news from continuing to pour in, with lots to get our teeth into this week. For you YOPsters out there, I have added a YOP Finance section this week. Right, let’s get into this.
Crypto Market Highlights
$BTC $21,490 -10.20%
$ETH $1,647 -12.39%
$YOP $0.061 -38.83%
$USDT Market Cap $67.55Bn
$USDC Market Cap $52.29Bn
Regulation
In the US there has been a lot of talk about the SEC’s (US Securities regulatory body) warpath against crypto. A lot of finger pointing is being done by the SEC, without sharing (publicly at least) which rules it is playing by. This of course makes people nervous because they don’t know if they’re next. While all this is going on, the CFTC (US Commodities regulatory body) don’t want to be seen to be missing out and have started weighing in. They’ve taken down a $12M Bitcoin Ponzi scheme in Ohio https://decrypt.co/107364/cftc-charges-12m-bitcoin-ponzi-scheme. I think we are going to see more movement from the CFTC in this area, especially as they have just kicked off their special crypto unit.
On the other side of the pond, the UK continues to make positive strides. Crypto.com has received registration approval from the FCA (UK financial regulatory body) to operate in the UK. Crypto.com plan to launch a series of products and services for UK consumers. Great to see this innovation being backed by the UK! https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-17/crypto-com-receives-registration-as-uk-cryptoasset-provider
Celsius
As the news continues to come out about Celsius, it turns out that their math was wrong, and they don’t have as much money as they first thought. This is quite surprising given they only recently insisted they pay their CFO $93K a month to stay on and help them with his “invaluable knowledge and experience concerning the unique features of crypto” and do whatever it is they are actually trying to do with Celsius. One would think if he were worth that much, they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place?
But then when you read about the former telecoms’ entrepreneur, Alex Mashinsky, CEO taking over the trading strategy from trading executives with decades of finance experience, months before Celsius declared bankruptcy it just seems crazy on many levels. What was it Steve Jobs said, “It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and tell them what to do” https://www.ft.com/content/43d4fb5d-72a1-468c-aac8-9e11c4693f4e?shareType=nongift
There are now calls for Celsius to be independently examined. I think this is precisely what needs to be done. There needs to be a check to make sure nothing unethical or untoward was done. It needs to be clear, profits before ethics will not be accepted https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/08/18/crypto-lender-celsius-needs-independent-examiner-us-government-entity-says/
Web2 v Web3
We all know about the Web2 tech stack impact to Web3, as demonstrated in the current Tornado debate. There are plenty of other examples of this as the negative perception/unregulated nature of crypto results in impacts from Web2. Mailchimp will no longer work with crypto currencies and for a while now, Twitter Ads has banned promoting crypto tweets. Clear regulation will provide a predefined set of parameters for crypto advertising, so it can be regulated on a scale rather than the binary nature it is now https://decrypt.co/107099/intuit-owned-mailchimp-is-banning-crypto-content-creators
YOP Finance
I have held back a little from talking about YOP Finance as I am the COO there and don’t want this blog to be seen as a YOP sales pitch. What I have decided to do is have a separate section of the blog that will be the only place YOP will be mentioned. I hope you enjoy this section as much as the rest.
YOP Finance is very security focused; this is clear when you look at our current partners (e.g., Haken, Fireblocks). YOP Finance have now partnered with Elliptic who scan all wallets that connect to YOP Finance, to make sure they pass our thorough AML checks. Sanctions are a very real thing in crypto, and in an industry where anonymity is highly valued, it can be difficult to enforce the sanctions without the proper tools. Elliptic have a solid stack with some great tools that make effective AML in crypto a reality https://www.altfi.com/article/9709_pluto-digital-calls-on-elliptic-to-make-its-yield-optimisation-platform-safer
Something that is becoming quite popular now are bug bounties. The number of hacks is growing and so is the size of hacks. Unfortunately a lot of these product put the bug bounties in place after they have been hacked, a bit late https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-22/the-sleuths-who-protect-crypto-from-hackers-are-raking-in-money. Something that YOP Finance put in place very early in its life was a bug bounty program. This has proved very successful and we have managed to uncover bugs that were previously unknown https://yopfi.medium.com/yop-launches-bug-bounty-hunt-up-to-170-000-is-up-for-grabs-3d9b115f03b7. Bug bounties are standard best practice and should not be an afterthought.
And Finally …
The crossover between crypto services and what has been more commonly classified as fintech, blurs further. Revolut are making further advances into the crypto-sphere and have now been granted approval to offer crypto services. This will enable them to offer crypto services across the European Economic Area (EEA) https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/08/15/revolut-receives-nod-from-cyprus-regulator-to-offer-crypto-services/
I think eventually you will see the FinTech x Crypto line blur until it disappears completely. They both have a very similar user demographic, which will also help crypto grow naturally in the fintech world.
OK, that’s it. Thanks for reading the Weekly Web3 Workout and I look forward to sharing my thoughts and learnings with you next week. Please share this with all the web3 and crypto curioso out there.
Have a great week! 🚀🚀🚀
