The title says it all. Visa, Mastercard, eBay, and Stripe have joined PayPal in leaving the Libra Association. Is this the death knell for the project? Will the rest of the organizations follow suit and leave? Or does this provide a chance to Libra to...

The SEC has denied the most recent bitcoin ETF proposal - this time from Bitwise. Some speculate that there simply will not be an ETF on Chairman Clayton's watch. The CFTC chair meanwhile has said that the CFTC considers ETH a commodity and expects...

The IRS dropped quite the surprise today: their first new tax guidance since 2014. Unfortunately, it seems to indicate that chains forking and airdropping users coins (whether they want them or not) creates a taxable event. Meanwhile, DevCon5 is...

First it was the NBA aggressively distancing itself from comments from Rockets GM Daryl Morey in support of Hong Kong protesters. Then it was Blizzard banning a player from competitive Hearthstone play for making a pro Hong Kong statement live on air....

Libra is back in the spotlight after the WSJ published reports that Visa, Mastercard and others are getting cold feet after the chilly reception from regulators around the world. David Marcus took to Twitter to defend the project, while simultaneously...

The SEC's $24m settlement with EOS has been all anyone has been able to talk about for the last day or so. In this episode, we look at the four camps of reactions: the "they got off easy"; "you're all commies"; "it's about the consistency"; and the...

Last week saw a 20% drop in the price of Bitcoin - much of coming in a short, 30 minute span. What it didn't see was the usual hand wringing and frantic explanations. In fact, most of last week's conversation was about totally different topics: Libra,...

News broke of Venezuela exploring whether they could use bitcoin and ether as reserve assets, prompting questions about what the potential impact of widescale adoption of bitcoin as a tool to evade sanctions might be. Libra continues to spur central...

Bitcoin (and the rest of the markets) absolutely cratered yesterday, with BTC dropping from nearly $10k to under $8k before resetting a bit. Is it Bakkt backlash? Bitmex margin calls? Or a fat load of who the hell knows? Speaking of crashes, Adam...

Much hyped Bakkt has launched, but the volume is...less than massive. What should we think about it? Is it a sign of failure; a sign that there simply isn't demand from institutions; or was this always the likely launch pattern? Meanwhile, in the...

Crypto markets are driven by memes. In point of fact, all markets are driven by memes and narratives, but emergent markets like crypto ratchet it up. In this Narrative Watch, we go meta to look at the state of meme warfare, going deep on two memes of...

Major regulatory and law enforcement clap back as SEC targets ICOBox (who would have believed that a company named ICOBox wasn't completely above board?) and an early Ethereum advisor is arrested for extortion. Get your breath back after that one,...

The FED has pumped the equivalent of half of Bitcoin's market cap into the markets over the last couple days in what some are likening to a TAF 2.0. We discuss why this, plus today's anticipated rate cuts, matter for Bitcoin. Binance US launched today...

Hashgraph is live and alts are in the green. Is it alt season or just wishful thinking? Over in the world of security tokens, NBA players are tokenizing their contracts and startups that wanted to lead the STO revolution are pivoting to help existing...

As this was being recorded, Facebook was being grilled by 26 central banks about their plans for Libra. Last week, France and Germany said they'd block the project and were exploring their own digital currencies. Libra head David Marcus felt enough...

The clash of global state power and crypto seems more inevitable than ever. Germany joins France in declaring that they will block Libra (all the while being interested to explore their own digital currency). We look at not only the news, but what...

More qualitative easing out of Europe means more "look at them they're doing it we should be doing it!" from Trump means more "Bitcoin solves this" memes. Binance is geoblocking users but next week opens up Binance.US - a regulated exchange with 6...

At Invest: Asia in Singapore today, Coindesk's heat of institutional sales in Asia hinted that the company is exploring IEOs, but wouldn't comment further. As he is wont to do, Trump got everyone talking by ratcheting up his pressure on the Fed to go...

A new product from Gemini which allows custody customers to trade without moving their coins out of cold storage has sparked discussions about bankification that go all the way back to the beginnings of bitcoin. Meanwhile, Stellar announces a ~$120m...

Despite Bakkt opening warehousing, BTC holding strong around $10k, and many new announcements, it's hard not to view the mood around crypto Twitter as lethargic. Is it simple impatience and the wrong time preference? Is it reflective of a recognition...

One of the most important global economic battles of our time is the battle to create new standards for global digital money. While bitcoin has been quietly building its case for the last decade, the story of the last few months has been all about the...

BTC dominance is over 70%, and the gap between its performance and everything else may be accounting for the strange dissonance between 3x BTC price growth in 2019 and the serious gloomy pallor on display on crypto Twitter. We look at that divergence...

To celebrate the official end of summer and beginning of fall, I asked 15 top crypto VCs, entrepreneurs and content creators including Jill Carlson, Ari Paul, Kyle Samani, Marty Bent and more 4 questions: What did we learn this Summer? What are your...

In the game of coins, you [replace the USD as the world's reserve currency or at least shore up your sovereign currency's position in the new global mix] or you die.  Over the last few months, we've seen China accelerate work on its digital...

Libra Association on the verge of losing members? That's the report from FT as members get spooked by EU antitrust proceedings. Over in the trade war, Trump ratchets up the rhetoric against China, and we explore both how it might drive Chinese...