Riding The Wave News Summary 134
Policymakers Didn't Regulate Crypto 'Because They Thought It Would Essentially Die': Barclays Head of Digital Policy, Arbitrum Foundation Sold ARB Tokens Ahead of 'Ratification' Vote; ARB Falls & more
Welcome to Riding The Wave. If you have questions or feedback, please reply to this email. If you are new to the Newsletter, please check out what we provide on our about page and consider subscribing. Within the Newsletter, I provide News Summaries, Weekly Status Updates, & Deep Dive Articles on Specific Topics (Ex: How do I pick which coins/tokens to buy?). More details here
News
Table of Contents
Tweets
Arbitrum Foundation Sold ARB Tokens Ahead of 'Ratification' Vote; ARB Falls
CZ, Binance, influencers face $1B lawsuit for unregistered securities promo
Tweets
Policymakers Didn't Regulate Crypto 'Because They Thought It Would Essentially Die': Barclays Head of Digital Policy
The latest uptick in regulatory action around the globe may be due to policymakers finally waking up to cryptocurrencies.
On a recent panel at the Citi Digital Money Symposium in London, which touched on crypto regulations in the United Kingdom, Europe, and the United States, Barclays head of digital policy Nicole Sandler argued that the apparent late arrival from policymakers was actually intentional.
"I think one thing certain policymakers have said is that they left this market to do what it wanted to do because they thought it would essentially die," she said. "And it hasn't died, it's grown, it's grown, it's grown."
"It wasn't that it was nascent and they couldn't regulate it, it was a choice to see where the market went," she said. "And now they know that they have to regulate it. But the problem is regulation takes a long time from start to finish."
Still, insisted Sandler, the FTX collapse had "nothing to do with the technology."
And though regulations would've certainly helped, the exchange's downfall revolved primarily around a "bad actor," she said, adding that the firm's terms and conditions "didn't say you can take your client funds and use it for something other than what they've said."
Arbitrum Foundation Sold ARB Tokens Ahead of 'Ratification' Vote; ARB Falls
The Arbitrum Foundation began selling ARB tokens for stablecoins even before its governance community of tokenholders had "ratified" the organization's nearly $1 billion budget, according to a blog post from one employee early Sunday.
The price of ARB fell after CoinDesk's report of the post, with the token falling to $1.17, down 9% in the last 24 hours.
According to Patrick McCorry, the Arbitrum Foundation – a centralized organization responsible for promoting Arbitrum, a faster and cheaper blockchain for transacting on Ethereum – thought of the omnibus governance package Arbitrum Improvement Proposal (AIP-1) as a "ratification" of decisions it had already made, such as receiving 7.5% of all ARB tokens.
To that end, the Foundation "has begun to use these tokens in the interest of the DAO, including conversion of some funds into stablecoins for operational purposes," McCorry said in the Foundation's first official comment on a mounting governance crisis.
“The point of AIP-1 was to inform the community of all of the decisions that were made in advance,” McCorry said, pushing back at perceptions that token holders had a say in the matter.
McCorry’s post offered Arbitrum’s first official response to a debacle that exploded Friday after governance hawks called out the Arbitrum Foundation’s “special grants” program. According to the proposal, the Foundation is getting 750 million ARB tokens (around $1 billion) to spend without tokenholders’ approval.
McCorry said there’s a “chicken and egg problem” in setting up decentralized governance structures. In the case of Arbitrum, “certain parameters need to be decided” ahead of time, including the structure of a “security council” that wields emergency powers, deciding voting mechanics, and of course, the funding.
CZ, Binance, influencers face $1B lawsuit for unregistered securities promo
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Riding The Wave to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.