  The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Dec. 17, 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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Today's must-reads Top Shelf  BIG SPENDERS: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian's venture capital firm Seven Seven Six and Polygon Network have created a $200 million initiative to invest in social media and Web 3-based projects. The initiative will back projects that explore better ways for "humans to connect online." Separately, Kraken Ventures raised $65 million to invest in crypto, AI and Web 3 startups. Finally, bitcoin podcaster Peter McCormack, a U.K.-native, has bought his hometown football (soccer, for the yanks) club. As owner and chair of Bedford FC, the prominent pundit will operate the tenth division team as a "bitcoin club" on the "bitcoin standard" and will educate players and fans about bitcoin.
SUNSETTING: Justin Sun is stepping down from the Tron Foundation, the organization he founded to oversee the development of the $8 billion TRON blockchain, which has made him fabulously wealthy. Sun, after seeing the successful adoption of bitcoin as legal tender in El Salvador, will become an ambassador of Grenada to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and trumpet the adoption of crypto across Latin America and the Caribbean.
MIND THE RUG: Crypto investors lost over $2.8 billion to "rug pulls," a colloquial term for a type of crypto scam, in 2021, according to a report by Chainalysis. The rise in scams mirrors a general rise in cryptocurrency prices this year, the report added. Rug pulls accounted for 37% of the over $7.7 billion in total illicit revenue from crypto scams this year, up from 1% of total illegal activity a year ago, the report says.
CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE: Federally insured credit unions (FICU) can partner with third-party digital asset service providers, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) announced Thursday. This includes allowing credit unions (nonprofit-making money cooperatives) can work with third parties to buy, sell and hold various "uninsured digital assets." Further guidance may be necessary to keep pace with the fast-moving crypto industry, NCUA said.
CONSPICUOUS CRYPTO: In something of an obvious statement, Goldman Sachs analysts said blockchain technology is central to the development of Web 3. In a recent report, researchers for the banking giant said blockchain is the only technology that can "uniquely identify any virtual object independent of a central authority," which will be crucial to "metaverse" development. Less obvious: Former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Jay Clayton, who was by-and-large skeptical of crypto while in office, is taking heat from the crypto community after writing a Pro-Crypto Wall Street Journal op-ed. Some have called Clayton, now a Fireblocks advisor, an "opportunist;" though he's far from the only former public servant with a private sector sinecure.
A message from Nexo  When it comes to buying, borrowing or earning on your crypto, you won't find and easier, safer way to do it than Nexo. And here's what'll happen next: you and your referrals will both get $25 in BTC within 30 days of them passing Advanced Verification and topping up the equivalent of $100 or more of any asset supported on the Nexo platform. There's no limit on the number of people you can refer, so invite as many friends as you'd like!
Overheard on CoinDesk TV... Sound Bites  "We all want to live in an exclusive area."
–Head of Metaverse Growth at Unique Network Irina Karagyaur, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover." Read her Culture Week op-ed on the explosive potential of virtual real estate.
What others are writing... Off-Chain Signals 
 How crypto is changing media and entertainment – and forging its own culture. Follow along with our continuing coverage here. The Future of NFTs Is Fungible The many NFT communities that have sprung up this year are finding that it's not so easy to manage a community with unique tokens alone. What's Next for Friends With Benefits? The crypto-backed social club is looking to remain accessible to the creators it wants to attract.
Putting the news in perspective The Takeaway  10 Books on Money (and Crypto) Hey, David Z. Morris here with a few stocking stuffer ideas for that crypto fanatic in your line. If you're reading this, chances are very good you're part of an immensely privileged slice of humanity with access to what's known as "leisure time." Chances are also pretty good that you're the type of psycho who wants to spend it as productively as possible. High up on my personal list of "Type A Maniac Life Hacks" is indulging in a great and entertaining book that also happens to teach me something.
So here, with the holidays upon us, is a "To-Do List of Educational Pleasure" for anyone who's curious about money and finance in all their surreal complexity. Some of these books are big L Literature, and others are finely crafted entertainments. Several of them are both. And they're all about that mystical institution, the thing everyone needs: lucre, beans, cheddar, lettuce, money.
This isn't meant to be a definitive list – just 10 fantastic books in no particular order. There's no time like the present.
"Bartleby the Scrivener: A Story of Wall Street" – Herman Melville (1850) Sometimes described as the first existentialist novel (really a novelette), this manifesto of refusal is appropriately set in New York's financial district circa 1850. Bartleby, for a time a hardworking clerk in a Wall Street law firm, suddenly begins to refuse all work, and indeed all activity, for no discernible reason. Despite the genuine concern of his employer, and against all apparent logic, Bartleby sticks to this principle until he dies of starvation in a debtor's prison.
Bartleby's vexatious behavior is never explained, making him a semi-mystical avatar for refuseniks everywhere. More specifically, some think "Scrivener" reflects Herman Melville's deep rage at finance and the market. Now recognized as one of the greatest American novelists, the "Moby Dick" author found little success in his lifetime. He stopped writing fiction soon after "Bartleby." His final novel, "The Confidence Man," was also focused on finance.
"Bright Orange for the Shroud" - John D. McDonald (1965) John D. McDonald is considered perhaps the greatest thriller writer of the 20th century. He penned the source material for Robert Mitchum and Robert DeNiro's respective terrifying versions of "Cape Fear," and no less a titan than Kurt Vonnegut described his work as "a treasure on the order of the tomb of Tutankhamen." In this novel, hardboiled hero Travis McGee is trying to recover a friend's money lost in a land development scam. It's a sterling slice of cynical brutality, replete with backwoods hillbillies, crooked lawyers, savage beatings, suicides and just desserts. McDonald explored financial scams again a half-century later in "Condominium" (2014), about Florida real estate.
"Cotton Comes to Harlem" - Chester Himes (1965) This hard-boiled detective classic starts with a classic web of swindles: the hijacking of a community fund that may have been a scam to begin with. Published in 1965, "Cotton" featured two of the first Black detectives in popular fiction in the personages of "Grave Digger" Jones and "Coffin" Ed Johnson. But as you might guess, these aren't the smooth investigators of Homicide or The Wire: Grave Digger and Coffin Ed pummel the bejeezus out of pretty much everyone who looks at them sideways. Its focus on grit and action is probably why this (also frequently hilarious) little book was turned into one of the first "blaxploitation" films in 1970, directed by Ossie Davis and co-starring Redd Foxx.
"JR" - William Gaddis (1975) Though it's a notoriously tough read thanks to William Gaddis' experimental style, this National Book Award Winner is at heart a hilariously over-the-top satire. The titular JR is an 11-year-old boy who conceals his identity and launches a career as a penny-stock trader, soon becoming a paper millionaire. Today, a kid like JR would probably be praised as some sort of holy guru, but Gaddis' goal was to lampoon the rising obsession with finance and stocks, even among kids who in a healthier society would be out playing in the streets. There has been some speculation that Gaddis' prepubescent JR was an influence on the character J.R. Ewing, the bullheaded, comically manipulative Texas oilman at the center of the TV series "Dallas," itself arguably a satire of 1980s excess.
"Animal Money" - Michael Cisco (2015) A book that's nearly impossible to summarize or explain, so I'll just quote "Annihilation" author Jeff VanderMeer's valiant attempt: "'Animal Money' is about five economics professors who come up with the (surreal, radical) idea of animal money after meeting one another at the hotel of a conference they aren't able to attend because they've all suffered coincidental injuries that require each to be heavily bandaged in some way."
What do these bizarre figures mean by "animal money"? Is it living money made from animals? Is it money to be used by animals? They themselves barely seem to know as the novel winds through bizarre debates and slapstick capers. It's a solid skewering of both academic pomposity and the menace of modern banking. It's also a serious, if oblique, engagement with the deep mysteries at the heart of human finance.
Read the full list on CoinDesk.
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Friday, December 17, 2021
Justin Sun Retires From TRON Foundation
