Friend.tech = OnlyFans for Crypto Bros

Plus SBF would like to not be in jail

Author

Nathaniel Whittemore
August 21, 2023

The Breakdown First Five - Monday August 21 2023

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. NFT Royalty Dissent

After OpenSea announced NFT royalties will no longer be enforced, Yuga labs have announced they will no longer be supporting the platform. The Bored Ape creator has previously blacklisted royalty optional platforms. Yuga said they believe in protecting creator royalties so “creators are properly compensated for their work.” Last year Yuga brought in $148M in royalties from trading of monkey pictures & the related.

4. Coinbase goes International

Recently launched futures platform Coinbase International hit record volumes last week amid volatile market conditions. The exchange which caters exclusively to institutional traders achieved $287M in trading volume on Friday capping off its largest week. Coinbase says that its 50 institutional clients have generated $5.5B in volume during the exchange’s first 7 weeks of trading.

 

3. SEC Needs to Appeal

The SEC have filed their motion for appeal in the Ripple case, arguing that it needs a firm verdict to be used in other crypto cases. In addition, the regulator claimed that it never argued that tokens need to be shown to be securities in order to win its lawsuits. The SEC won’t appeal that particular element of the Ripple case, meaning the coins are probably not securities in and of themselves. Maybe regulation by enforcement wasn’t such a great strategy.

2. SBF Asks for Release

After spending the week in jail Sam Bankman-Fried has decided he’d much rather not be in jail. Sam has asked to be released to the relative comfort of the Courthouse interview rooms 5 days a week basis in order to work on his defense. His lawyers argue that the volumes of documents produced by prosecutors are just not practical to handle from behind bars.

1. Friends in High Places

Friends.tech continues to dominate volume on Base with high profile signups joining the social tokenization app. The protocol is now raking in $1.4M in daily fees placing it ahead of Uniswap and just behind staking platform Lido. Speculative airdrop farming has driven a bump in volume after a seed funding round was hinted to include token warrants. Several Crypto figures are using the platform like a crypto-native Patreon, offering value added content privately.

Thanks for reading -NLW