  What you need to know today in crypto and beyond July 15, 2021 Sponsored By:  Welcome to The Node.
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Today's must-reads Top Shelf  SHAPE SHIFTERS: ShapeShift is handing over its legacy exchange platform to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) controlled by holders of its FOX token. The exchange will have no employees, no bank accounts and no CEO in somewhere between four and 12 months' time in an attempt to achieve the "radical" decentralization promised by crypto. Perhaps Binance should take note: It was again labeled as unauthorized, this time by Italy's financial regulator. HISTORIC ROUND: Blockchain-based fantasy soccer platform Sorare teased a record $532 million funding round valuing the company at $3.8 billion, according to Business Insider. The Japanese investment firm SoftBank is reportedly leading the round, which would represent the largest capital raise in the history of France's technology sector. MORE RIGS, MORE HASH: New York bitcoin mining firm Greenidge Generation Holdings is acquiring 8,300 rigs in a new partnership with CoinDesk sister company Foundry. By joining the Foundry USA Pool, the company is adding 800 petahash to the pool's hash power. Greenidge also plans to expand in South Carolina and go public through a merger with IT firm Support.com. GOVERNMENT ACTION: The Biden administration will launch a ransomware task force focusing on crypto in addition to bolstering traditional defensive and offensive positions against hackers. It is unclear what sort of proposed regulations around crypto may emerge from this task force.
–Helene Braun
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV Sound Bite  "If this industry doesn't bring financial sovereignty to individuals, the whole thing is pointless." |
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A message from CoinDesk
The Investor's Perspective on the Bitcoin Taproot Upgrade
Taproot is a bundle of three upgrades to Bitcoin aimed at improving network security, privacy and scalability. At the same time, it poses some potential drawbacks to Bitcoin including risks of low adoption, unintended privacy shortcomings and Bitcoin community disappointment and fracturing.
CoinDesk Research's newest report dives into the economic impact and investment implications of the Taproot upgrade. Download the full report.
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What others are writing...
Off-Chain Signals
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Putting the news in perspective
The Takeaway
This is a guest essay from Preston Byrne, CoinDesk columnist and partner in Anderson Kill's Technology, Media and Distributed Systems Group.
Bitcoin Doesn't Care if You Think It's Right Wing
Bitcoin is a looking glass into which we gaze and see a mirror image of ourselves.
As some estimates indicate there are currently north of 100 million cryptocurrency users worldwide, or roughly the population of Japan, limitations of time, availability of information and human working memory mean we are necessarily blind to the fullness of cryptocurrency as an ecosystem. There are use cases we cannot comprehend, inventions we have not yet seen, motivations we do not understand. When we criticize cryptocurrency, we must be mindful the content of our critique may have more to do with what we cannot see than that which we can.
We are long past the stage where generalizations about crypto are intellectually useful. This has not prevented some from trying to make them, often in 280 characters or less. Jackson Palmer's recent tweetstorm on bitcoin is one such example. Palmer is the co-founder of Dogecoin, a project that requires no introduction. Palmer eventually retreated from cryptocurrency to work at Adobe after the joke project acquired a life of its own.
In his thread, Palmer refers to cryptocurrency as an "inherently right-wing, hyper-capitalistic technology built primarily to amplify the wealth of its proponents through a combination of tax avoidance, diminished regulatory oversight and artificially enforced scarcity[.]" He criticized the industry as being a hive of dishonest media and billionaire hustlers who exploit the vulnerable, move markets with tweets and cynically evade their legal obligations.
Is Palmer right? In some cases, sure, but this is still a cheap shot, one first made – unconvincingly, in my view – six years ago by VCU academic David Golumbia. Yes, crooks and fascists use bitcoin; they also breathe air and use TCP-IP. Yes, they were disproportionately prominent in the early cryptocurrency days; this is no longer the case.
Palmer's critique hits all the right notes, using all the right language that would under normal circumstances could set off a letter writing campaign of the type that makes most PR departments panic ("Did you hear, our service is being used by – gasp – right-wingers!?"). This necessarily precipitates a deplatforming and groveling public apology, a pattern that, in the recent past, has resulted in the removal of politically radioactive individuals – Alex Jones comes to mind – from web platforms, payment processors and banks alike.
The difference is bitcoin and any cryptocurrency worthy of the name runs on game theory powered by proof-of-work, not politics. It feels nothing and answers to no one. Increasingly, we see other functions – social media, content distribution and monetization, and even entire businesses – adopting a bitcoin-style modality of decentralized operation. These services, too, will have no opinions and no masters.
Designing such systems well is no easy task. Apart from bitcoin itself there are no clear early winners. We can be sure that whatever winds up becoming decentralized PayPal or Twitter will not be cognizant of partisan language or hit pieces from think tanks or news magazines long past their prime.
Whatever conversations we choose to have in public about these systems, we will conduct them with the knowledge that however angry we get, however loudly we yell, whatever rhetoric we employ, these systems will ignore us, continue to run and continue to be used by people we loathe. One can only hope this makes us more civil with one another.
–Preston Byrne
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The cryptocurrency movement has never been so sprawling, reaching every corner of the planet.
Crypto State by CoinDesk aims to connect with local communities to explore this movement of financial disruption and how it trickles down to every corner of the globe, from DeFi investment opportunities to alternative ways to transact and store wealth.
We're making virtual stops with audiences in Nigeria, the Middle East and Southeast Asia this year. Register for the Crypto State virtual tour.
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