Happy 5th Birthday, NY BitLicense - You Jerk
Plus the biggest bitcoin options expiry ever on the way
Happy Wednesday, Blockfolians
The Lede
It’s the 5 year anniversary of the NY BitLicense. While the program was designed to be a model for smart crypto regulation, what it did in practice was drive companies like the Kraken exchange out of the state.
To celebrate the anniversary (well, more to use it as a teachable moment), CoinDesk did a series of articles on it, including:
Despite Architect Lawsky’s Hopes, Few States Copied NY Rules
New York Moves to Lure Crypto Startups as BitLicense Turns Five
The BitLicense is a fascinating case study in the global competition for business. New York may have thought that they were getting out ahead of the curve, but the reality is they pushed a huge amount of talent to other places. Every jurisdiction needs to make the decisions it thinks are right, but they also must remember that they’re competing with every other place doing the same thing.
Enjoying Blockfolio’s Market Refresh? Sign up to have it delivered every day.
Highly Relevant Reading
The USDC stablecoin is moving to a multichain network architecture, starting with Algorand
Uh oh - Brazil has put a halt to WhatsApp’s recently launched payments service
DeFi tokens doing that 2017 thing as Balancer’s governance token surges 200% in its first day trading
$188m worth of ETH that is associated with the PlusToken Ponzi has moved for the first time since December
Community Commentary
Like it or not, Venezuela’s Maduro government is stackin’ sats
Is the real power of crypto in its permissionlessness not its decentralization?
A Really Big Number We Should Be Paying Attention To
>$1,000,000,000
That’s the value of the bitcoin options set to expire on Friday. As one commenter put it: “this is definitely the largest BTC option expiry by a country mile.”
Final Thought
Meme warfare is real.