The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Oct. 27, 2021 If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here. Sponsored by Welcome to The Node.
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–Daniel Kuhn
Today's must-reads Top Shelf TOP COP: The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is ready to be the "primary cop" for crypto, its acting head said Wednesday. Rostin Behnam, during his confirmation hearing to lead the agency before the Senate, said the commodities regulator is ready to become the primary federal regulator for digital assets, should Congress expand the agency's remit. He also estimated that 60% of digital assets are commodities. CREAMED: Decentralized finance (DeFi) platform C.R.E.A.M. Finance appears to have been the target of a devastating exploit Wednesday morning that drained over $1 billion in funds, likely the largest DeFi exploit to date. The protocol's Ethereum-based pools are now empty, following a flash loan attack that involved 68 different assets and cost over 9 ETH in gas. VISA BACKED: Visa Inc. has joined Mastercard Inc. as an investor in Deserve, the startup that offers a credit card with bitcoin rewards in partnership with BlockFi. Transaction volume for the card is approaching $2 billion on an annualized basis, and BlockFi cardholders are projected to spend roughly $30,000 per year, 50% above that of average credit card holders, Deserve's co-founder and CEO Kalpesh Kapadia told Bloomberg. KRAKEN IN: SkyBridge Capital – the money management firm that's run by Anthony Scaramucci, who was briefly a White House communications director under then-President Donald Trump – is privately offering investors the chance to invest in Kraken as the U.S. cryptocurrency exchange plans to go public next year. In an email to investors, SkyBridge said it is purchasing preferred stock from an early investor on behalf of its funds and clients "in one of our largest private market investments to date." DOWN BAD: Robinhood, the zero-commission trading platform, said its crypto revenues fell to just $51 million in Q3, down from a record $233 million in Q2. Total revenue for the quarter was $365 million, short of analyst estimates of $437.1 million, according to FactSet. The company reported an adjusted net loss of $2.06 per share, versus analyst expectations of a loss of $0.67.
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Overheard on CoinDesk TV ... Sound bites "I would not be surprised if the amount of money that we spend on acquisitions over the next year or so was north of a billion dollars."
–FTX founder and CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."
What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals Long list today, but lots of incremental stories that fit within larger trends.
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Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway Crypto and Multi-Level Marketing Schemes The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on Oct. 26 sent what's known as a "Notice of Penalty Offense" to more than one thousand companies, including the crypto exchanges Blockchain, Gemini and U.K.-based Bixo. The notices, which warn businesses not to overstate the earning potential of investments or business opportunities, were also sent to a large number of gig-work platforms, multi-level marketing firms (MLMs) and franchise companies, all of which can sometimes resemble exploitative pyramid schemes.
–David Z. Morris
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