Riding The Wave News Summary #33
Facebook whistleblower warns Metaverse will repeat ‘all the harms’, Ripple claims ‘a very big win’ in SEC case, & more
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News
Table of Contents
Tweets
Facebook whistleblower warns Metaverse will repeat ‘all the harms’
Ethereum Developer Says Merge Delayed Until a ‘Few Months After’ June
Tweets
Facebook whistleblower warns Metaverse will repeat ‘all the harms’
Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has taken aim at Meta in a new interview, suggesting that its version of the Metaverse will simply repeat all of its past mistakes.
In 2021, Haugen leaked thousands of internal documents from Facebook to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and The Wall Street Journal. Her experience working for the company has left her with concerns about privacy issues and letting the corporation amass data about every aspect of user’s interactions in the Metaverse.
“I’m super concerned about how many sensors are involved. When we do the Metaverse, we have to put lots more microphones from Facebook; lots more other kinds of sensors into our homes,” she said.
“You don’t really have a choice now on whether or not you want Facebook spying on you at home. We just have to trust the company to do the right thing.”
Yen has also raised concerns about Big Tech controlling the Metaverse in the past, telling Newsweek last year that Meta was “building a new infrastructure where they control everything. They control the device, they have the VR headsets, you’re now in their world, on their devices, on their platform.”
While the Metaverse may seem like an issue for the distant future, in China, citizens are living it every day in a different way.
WeChat is the social media platform of choice in China. It has a mind-boggling user base of over one billion. Of those, 850 million are active users. The application is amassing data about users in China on a scale never seen before. And, the Chinese government can monitor every word, picture and video on it.
Imagine having that power over the Metaverse.
It’s definitely concerning when a company has so much access to our daily lives & unfortunately as technology becomes more intertwined with our daily life it will only get worse. Even if you want to assume that the company’s intentions are morally good, the risk of them getting hacked is insane. Currently, we have wearable devices that measure health information such as heart rate, phones that track our location & that we have our conversations on, & home devices (Alexa & Google home) that have access to our conversations & many of our home appliances.
In the future with the metaverse developing we might have even more invasive tech ranging anywhere from wearable input devices in the forms of full-body suits to direct brain to device interfaces which Neuralink is attempting.
Due to how private this data is (currently available & in the future) and how dangerous it is should it be stolen the best case for society would likely be to have it enabled by blockchain-based technologies so that people can’t steal them or leverage them for personal gain.
Ripple claims ‘a very big win’ in SEC case
Presiding Judge Sarah Netburn denied the SEC’s request to reconsider shielding documents under privilege related to a June 2018 speech made by SEC’s then-director William Hinman. In the speech, Hinman said Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) are not securities.
The SEC previously did not object to those documents falling outside deliberative process privilege (DPP) protection, as it suggested they only concerned Hinman’s personal views and not SEC policies.
The DPP exempts some documents in a case from being disclosed by the government so it can confidentially review existing policy based on the materials of the documents.
The SEC subsequently changed tack to argue the speech reflected Ripple’s policies rather than Hinman’s personal views and should be shielded.
Judge Netburn said the SEC should not contradict itself in trying to flip-flop on its assertions. In her decision, she wrote:
“The SEC seeks to have it both ways, but the Speech was either intended to reflect agency policy or it was not. Having insisted that it reflected Hinman’s personal views, the SEC cannot now reject its own position.”
Despite this seemingly important ruling, the case isn’t winding up yet, and the SEC now has two weeks to appeal the decision.
Much of the crypto industry is fixated on the proceedings of this case as its outcome could spell out the future of SEC filings against crypto companies for sales of unregistered securities.
I would be surprised if this case sped up. With the speed it has previously progressed and likely will continue to I wouldn’t be surprised if the US published laws on the topic before it finished.
Binance CEO CZ Praises France’s ‘Pro-Crypto Regulations’
Speaking at the annual Paris Blockchain Week Summit today, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao lauded France’s “pro-crypto regulations” as he announced that the crypto exchange is getting floorspace in Paris start-up incubator Station F.
CZ told the summit: “France is very uniquely positioned to be the leader of this industry in Europe." The Binance CEO described the country as "very pro-business, pro-crypto regulations” and said that the “government's attitude towards this industry has been phenomenal."
“Starting in France as a launchpad for Europe, we aim at using this space as our creative and innovative base”, said CZ in a press release accompanying the news.
Binance is banking on pro-crypto regulators to expand its operations globally, after years of arguing that the company had no headquarters.
Not every country has been quite as accommodating as the French, though. In 2021 alone, Japanese, Dutch, Italian, British, Cayman Islands and Malaysian Italian regulators all either issued consumer warnings about Binance, or took steps to limit the exchange’s services in their territory.
This is one of the exciting effects for countries that are early crypto adopters or even just neutral in their policies. Just as how the internet is a tool so are blockchain & cryptocurrency. By attracting all of the talent related to these new tools these countries can potentially establish themselves as great areas for crypto similar to what silicon valley is for the internet which is an extremely lucrative source of income for a country.
Ethereum Developer Says Merge Delayed Until a ‘Few Months After’ June
Tim Beiko, a leading Ethereum (ETH) developer working on the blockchain’s transition to proof-of-stake (PoS) – known as The Merge – has said the major network upgrade will not be completed in June.
“It won't be June, but likely in [a] few months after. No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of [proof-of-work – PoW] on Ethereum,” Beiko wrote on Twitter.
The comment from Beiko came after an Ethereum miner on Twitter asked him if miners would be “left out to dry” as they transition to PoS – which does not require mining – moves forward.
“I would strongly suggest not investing more in mining equipment at this point,” Beiko replied the miner by saying in a thread where he also shared a new update from Ethereum core developers about the latest Merge updates.
Meanwhile, speculation has also emerged online that The Merge may become even more delayed than a “few months after [June]”.
Writing on a Reddit forum for Ethereum miners, one mining pool operator who said they have been “reviewing the code and running nodes on the merge testnets,” said that they “don't believe they will be ready until 2023.”
I hope the shift speeds up & gets Ethereum out of proof of work/proof of stake limbo although I wouldn’t be surprised if it saw more delays. Switching is an extremely challenging process, especially when you want to do it without any network downtime or other issues. This is one of the challenges Eth is facing and will continue to face as the leader in the altcoin space with the culture of moving fast and breaking things. When you move fast in software development you win in the short term but in the long term, you accumulate technical debt which costs you more to fix, can create new problems, & can make it more challenging to adapt and change direction (Ex: Proof of Work → Proof of Stake) in the future.
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