Dear Bankless Nation,
After testing the patience of the judge trying his fraud case, FTX scammer Sam Bankman-Fried had his bail revoked this week and has landed in jail...
For our weekly recap, we dig into:
- SBF is in Jail
- PayPal debuts stablecoin
- Elon denies $X token
- Base L2 goes live
- Friend Tech captures crypto interest
- Bankless team
📅 Weekly Recap
1. SBF is in Jail
Sam Bankman-Fried's luck has run out. He's finally behind bars.
On Friday, the judge in the case revoked his bail, accusing him of trying to influence witnesses while under house arrest. This all stemmed from him sending journalists Google Docs diary entries from Alameda's Caroline Ellison who is testifying against him – something that really pissed off prosecutors.
After the ruling, SBF was immediately sent to be booked at a detention center in Brooklyn, a location the judge remarked was “not on anyone’s list of five-star facilities."
“He has gone up to the line over and over again, and I am going to revoke bail,” the judge said, according to an NYT report.
it is profoundly funny that SBF is going to sleep in jail tonight partially because he violated his bail conditions by using a VPN to watch a football game for literally no reason pic.twitter.com/HZLofUEnMY
— James McLeod (@jamespmcleod) August 11, 2023
2. PayPal debuts stablecoin
Another week, another tech giant deciding to double down on crypto!
Tech payments giant PayPal has long-flirted with crypto, and they announced this week that they're diving deeper into the space with the launch of their PYUSD stablecoin.
The PayPal USD coin is "100% backed by U.S. dollar deposits, short-term U.S. Treasuries and similar cash equivalents,” according to the company. It will be issued by the Paxos Trust Company.
Its new offering enters a stablecoin market that has seen a year of turmoil, particularly following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank which caused a temporary depeg of Circle's USDC token and pushed more users towards Tether.
3. Elon denies $X token
While Elon Musk has at times served as a Doge hype man, his support for the broader space hasn't been very consistent, lobbing critiques at the industry and tending to treat it all as one big Dogecoin-esque meme.
Nevertheless, speculators have continuously wondered whether Musk was interested in entering the crypto game more directly with a native token for his platform, especially after recent announcements that he wanted X to become more of a financial hub for users.
This week, he poured cold water on that speculation, posting that they "never will" launch a crypto token.
And we never will
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 5, 2023
4. Base L2 goes live
In a major milestone for Coinbase's DeFi efforts, Base successfully launched this week.
The L2, built on Optimism's OP Stack, had already been live to developers and degen memecoin traders, but Coinbase opened the rails to users more broadly on Wednesday afternoon. More than 100 apps are either live or soon will be, the company says.
Base opens a new revenue stream to Coinbase and could serve as a major boon for the world of DeFi as the exchange creates more seamless onboarding for their network of customers!
No more waiting in line: the “Buy” feature in MetaMask Portfolio lets you instantly convert your money into crypto using top providers. Embrace the speed and convenience of our direct-to-wallet on-ramp and go from fiat to DeFi with ease.
5. Friend Tech captures crypto interest
Crypto Twitter went wild for a new crypto app on the Base network called Friend Tech, which lets users buy shares of connected Twitter accounts to join private chatrooms with said user. It's a formula we've seen a few times, perhaps most notably with the platform BitClout.
People are particularly excited by how the app utilizes the Progressive Web App (PWA) standard to get around Apple's anti-crypto rules and give users a deeper browser-based experience.
Whether this platform actually holds the attention it has received is an open question, but for now people are racing to score invites to this new social app.
🔵 Base is full of exciting onchain opportunities for early pioneers and @friendtech is one of them!
— Bankless (@BanklessHQ) August 11, 2023
Here is what is going on with the web3 social dApp that has caught crypto Twitter by storm: A THREAD 🧵👇
PS: Scroll to the end for an invite to the party 😎 pic.twitter.com/gqLqhYvZ8f
📺 Bankless Weekly Roll-Up
Other news:
- SEC Pumps Brakes on ARK 21Shares Bitcoin ETF
- Visa Trials Ethereum Gas Fee Payments Using Cards
- Kraken outpaces Coinbase as most liquid US exchange for altcoins
- Solana cuts price of its Saga phone by 40% four months after launch
- DeGods Ditch Polygon, Moving y00ts to Ethereum and Returning $3 Million Grant
- SEC Says It Plans to Appeal XRP Sales Ruling in Ripple Case
- Microsoft AI Integration Sends Aptos Token APT Soaring