Scenius Sync (Issue #137)
Trump issues Digital Financial Technology Executive Order, SEC Rescinds SAB 121, DOGE ETF is on the way, & Ross Ulbricht is free
Scenius: The intelligence and the intuition of a whole cultural scene. The communal form of the concept of genius.
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Essential News 🗞
Trump Issues Crypto Executive Order to Pave U.S. Digital Assets Path
U.S. President Donald Trump has come through with an eagerly awaited executive order on crypto that directs his administration to establish friendly policies to put the industry on solid U.S. footing and looking into establishing a "digital asset stockpile." The order created a working group, chaired by Trump's czar for crypto and AI (venture capitalist David Sacks). The group has to identify all regulations that currently touch crypto within 30 days, recommend modifying or rescinding those regulations within 60 days and file a report with new recommendations within 180 days.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) rescinded Staff Accounting Bulletin (SAB) No. 121, signaling a shift in its approach to regulating crypto-assets under Commissioner Hester Peirce, who now heads the agency's newly formed crypto task force. Introduced in March 2022, SAB 121 required companies to record a liability and a corresponding asset for crypto assets held on behalf of users. Under the revised framework, companies will now evaluate obligations to safeguard crypto-assets using broader accounting standards, such as U.S. GAAP contingency rules and IFRS guidelines.
BlackRock CEO wants SEC to ‘rapidly approve’ tokenization of bonds, stocks
In a CNBC interview, Fink highlighted how tokenizing Real World Assets (RWAs) on a blockchain could benefit investors and institutions. Adopting tokenized equities enables BlackRock to achieve cost savings across processing operations. BlackRock would no longer require proxy voting as a task after tokenization implementation.
Trump Frees Silk Road Creator Ross Ulbricht After 11 Years in Prison
After being sentenced to life in prison and spending more than a decade behind bars, Ulbricht will walk free, thanks to Donald Trump—and to the president’s ever-closer ties to the American cryptocurrency world. For close to two and a half years after Ulbricht created the Silk Road in 2011, the dark-web site facilitated the sale of vast amounts of narcotics, as well as counterfeit documents, money laundering services and, at times, guns, for hundreds of millions of dollars in bitcoin payments. In 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison, a punishment beyond even the 20-plus years that prosecutors in the case requested. Since then, a Free Ross movement has steadily pressed for Ulbricht’s release, first in a failed appeal, then in petitions for clemency. Many of Ulbricht’s supporters have long argued that the Silk Road was a principled libertarian experiment in free trade, one in which Ulbricht allowed only “victimless crime”
US court rules against Tornado Cash sanctions
A U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas has ordered that a previous court decision supporting sanctions on crypto mixer Tornado Cash be reversed. In August 2022, the Office of Foreign Assets Control designated Tornado Cash a sanctioned entity, citing North Korea’s use of the mixer to commit cybercrimes, such as laundering stolen cryptocurrencies.
Innovation & Adoption 💡📈
MicroStrategy launches 2.5 million perpetual preferred share offering called STRK
MicroStrategy on Monday officially launched its previously announced convertible preferred stock offering available to institutional investors and select retail investors. Called STRK, MicroStrategy will offer 2.5 million shares of MSTR's Series perpetual strike preferred stock. The perpetual strike preferred stock will have a liquidation preference of $100 per share and accumulate cumulative dividends at a fixed rate that will be determined at the pricing of the offering, according to the press release. Regular dividends on the perpetual strike preferred stock will be payable quarterly if declared by MicroStrategy’s board of directors. MicroStrategy intends to use the net proceeds from the offering for general corporate purposes, including acquiring bitcoin.
Bank of America CEO Says Banking Industry Ready to 'Come in Hard' on Crypto Payments
Bank of America boss Brian Moynihan said \ that U.S. banks would be open to using cryptocurrency for payments if regulators permit it. In an interview with CNBC, the CEO of one of America’s biggest banks said that all banks send money digitally nowadays—and that BoA already knows about blockchain technology and has been “studying it for years.” But he added that regulators haven’t been clear on how banks could use a cryptocurrency. “If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with," he said, "you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,”
Bitwise files Dogecoin ETF registration
Crypto index fund manager Bitwise has submitted a registration filing in Delaware for a potential Dogecoin exchange-traded fund. "Today's satire is tomorrow's ETF," Bloomberg's senior ETF analyst Eric Balchunas told The Block in November 2024. "You could ask yourself, 'is DOGE a bridge too far?' and I would say we'll see. I think someone's gonna try it because why not?"
Circle Enters Tokenization Race by Acquiring Hashnote, $1.3B Real-World Asset Issuer
Crypto firm Circle acquired Hashnote, the issuer of the $1.3 billion tokenized money market fund USYC, in a push for yield-bearing collateral. The acquisition highlights the close relation between two of the hottest trends of crypto adoption: stablecoins and tokenization.
As Ethereum Stagnates, MetaMask Expands to Bitcoin and Beyond
MetaMask is making a multi-chain push, expanding beyond Ethereum as users increasingly explore a broader range of crypto ecosystems. Earlier this month, Consensys advertised a job posting for a product manager responsible for MetaMask’s “end-to-end Bitcoin experience,” designing and delivering potential future products. The posting references experience with Ordinals and Runes—Bitcoin's equivalents of NFT and meme coin protocols, respectively—as a plus. And while “anything is on the table,” Montoya said basic Bitcoin functionality will undoubtedly be the starting point.