Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Should we revisit Basel rules on Bitcoin?
• Jay Powell evolves on banks serving crypto
• Are banks going to offer crypto custody post SAB121?
• Gensler joins MIT Sloan
• Should crypto firms boycott MIT?
• The Senate will hold a hearing on debanking next week
• Choke Point 2.0 is getting caught up in conservative debanking
• Where are we on DeSci?
• Is tokenization finally going to happen?
• X is adding payments to the platform with Visa
• Truth Social is launching Truth.Fi
• Christine Lagarde says the ECB will not buy Bitcoin
• Is the Czech Republic buying bitcoin?
• Kraken turns back on staking
• Apollo is launching a tokenized credit fund on Ethereum and Solana
• Fairshake raises another $116m for the midterms
• SBF is asking Trump for a pardon
• Elliott says crypto is in a bubble

Content mentioned:

• Blockchain Association Unveils Digital Asset Market Structure Principles

The episode where we logged on and won forever. Probably the biggest week in crypto history...

In this episode:

• Ross Ulbricht is granted a full pardon
• Did Ross Ulbricht deserve a life sentence?
• SAB121 is finally gone
• Why SAB121 was bad
• Crypto ball review
• Trump launches a memecoin
• Trump is inaugurated
• OCP2.0 is over
• CBDCs are banned
• We review Trump's Executive Order
• No Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, but a stockpile instead
• Larry Fink calls for 600-700k BTC
• Mark Uyeda, announces the formation of a new task force: SEC Crypto 2.0
• Senator Cynthia Lummis announces the formation of the Senate Banking Committee on Digital Assets
• A US court in Texas overturnes the sanctions placed on Tornado Cash

Matt and Nic are back for more news and deals. In this episode:

• Lummis instructs FDIC staff to not destroy evidence of Chokepoint
• Did the FDIC call Nic poor?
• Coinbase wins a partial victory against the SEC
• Canary Capital files for a Litecoin ETF
• Tether is moving to El Salvador and building an HQ there
• Atlanta Fed gets stablecoins
• The case for non-USD stablecoins
• Is there a case for other assets in a Strategic Reserve?

Matt and Nic are back after a week off. In this episode:

• Southern District of New York grants Coinbase’s appeal in their case against the SEC
• The Governor of the Czech national bank is considering Bitcoin in their reserves
• Do Kwon is extradited to the US
• E-trade is launching crypto trading
• The FDIC is forced by a court to further un-redact documents Coinbase asked for in a FOIA request
• We cover the FDIC’s Pause Letters

Content mentioned in this episode:

• Fidelity Digital Assets, 2025 Look Ahead
• Bitwise, Benchmark Survey of Financial Advisor Attitudes Toward Crypto Assets
• Nick Anthony, Fair Access to Banking

Dana Syracuse and Josh Boehm of Paul Hastings LLP join the show. In this episode we discuss:

• The common legal and regulatory considerations that are encountered by companies in the digital asset industry.
• Common pitfalls that entrepreneurs in this ecosystem should avoid.
• The state of the stablecoin industry and the regulatory considerations in this category.
• Potential changes ahead in 2025 on how digital assets are regulated in the United States.

To learn more about Paul Hastings and their fintech and digital asset practices visit www.paulhastings.com

Matt and Nic are back for an end of year episode. In this episode:

• Tether invests $775m in Rumble
• Who are the Rumble shareholders in Trump's admin?
• Microstrategy seeks approval for more Bitcoin buying
• We review the quantum risk to Bitcoin
• Matt and Nic's predictions for 2025

Sponsor notes:

• Coin Metrics, State of the Network’s 2024 Year in Review
• In Coin Metrics State of the Network Issue 291, we revisit major stories that shaped the digital asset industry in 2024 with a data-driven lens

Janusz and Red from Bitcoin Layers join the show. In this episode:

• Innovation on Bitcoin, previously and now
• Technology vs consumer adoption
• The future of BTC use cases

More about Bitcoin Layers

Matt and Nic are back with another week of news and deals. In this episode:

• Nic comes out against the SBR on Bloomberg
• More Prometheum nonsense
• MicroStrategy acquired an additional 15,350 BTC for roughly $1.5 billion, bringing the company's total holdings to 439,000 BTC. Microstrategy was also added to the Nasdaq 100 this week, which will lead to the stock's inclusion in several large ETFs including Invesco's QQQ.
• Anchorage Digital has received New York BitLicense approval, enabling them to offer digital asset custody and trading services to more customers in the state such as RIAs and other institutional asset managers.
• The US Senate scrapped a vote to renominate SEC Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw in response to immense backlash from the crypto community, led by Coinbase-backed non-profit Stand With Crypto, for Commissioner Crenshaw's treatment of the digital asset industry.
• A Texas state representative, Giovanni Capriglione, introduced a bill for the state to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve.
• Riot Platforms, the publicly traded Bitcoin miner, acquired 667 BTC this week for $67.4 million to add to their balance sheet, bringing their total holdings to 17,429 BTC.
• The NFT collection CyberKongz announced they had received a Wells Notice from the SEC.
• A California judge sided with Coinbase in a suit brought by BiT Global over the exchange's delisting of wBTC. Coinbase had recently moved to remove the asset, a tokenized version of BTC tradeable on Ethereum-based networks, following BiT Global, a custodian closely affiliated with Tron founder Justin Sun, assuming custody services for wBTC.

Sponsor notes:

• Coin Metrics, State of the Network’s Q4 2024 Mining Data Special
• A quarterly update on Bitcoin mining in Q4 2024