Kik v. SEC + Weekend Reads 😎 - Unqualified Opinions

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What a week here in NYC!

Thank you to so many of you who came up and introduced yourselves to me and our team throughout the week at Consensus’s ChangeLog sessions, Token Summit, the Digital Asset Summit, Magical Crypto Conference, Ethereal, and the dozens of evening events throughout. It was a tremendous week for Messari, and for our global community.

The top takeaway for us comes from the policy side with our new registry member, Kik Interactive, deciding to confront the SEC and fight a potential enforcement action in court. The decision to draw a line in the sand with regulators could have massive ripple effects across the token economy, especially (and obviously) in the United States. I will have more to share on this subject next week, but for now, required reading:

• a16z’s Katie Haun breaks down the stakes in plan English.

• For the hard core / arm chain crypto lawyers, here’s Kik’s full response.

We did not know about Kik’s intention to challenge the SEC when they agreed to join our disclosures registry earlier this week, but we’re behind them philosophically. You’re going to want to tune in for the full post on Monday.

-TBI

✅ Other project updates from the Messari Registry Members:

• Crypto.com launched two new products, Earn & Credits.

• District0x officially launched Meme Factory, its decentralized registry and marketplace for the creation, exchange, and collection of provably rare digital assets.

• Fantom published its third technical paper on DAG, describing a modified version of Lachesis.

• The Maker Foundation Interim Risk Team placed an Executive Vote into the voting system, to bring down the Dai Stability Fee to 17.5%.

• Polymath announced Polymesh, a Purpose-Built Security Token Blockchain, in Collaboration with Charles Hoskinson.

• Storecoin published its Q1 2019 Engineering Updates

• Veil discussed the state of the Veil network, including why they are replacing Zerocoin with a new privacy protocol.

📚 Messari’s weekend reads:

• Differentiating against Bitcoin - Sourabh

• Taylor Swift, iOS, and the access economy: Why the normal distribution is vanishing - Alex Danco

• Arms control is dead. Long live arms control - Andrey 
  Baklitskiy

• The power of open networks - Jeffrey Amico

• Bitcoin’s security is fine - Dan Held

• Free markets and the future of blockchain - J. Christopher Giancarlo

• Vision Hill crypto hedge fund returns: First quarter 2019 - Vision Hill Advisors

Have a good weekend y’all.

- The Messari Team

P.S. Share. Subscribe. Tweet at Messari for feedback, comments, or questions.

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Messari Compression Algorithm

Content and thoughts from around the web as summarized by the Messari team.

Quick Bits (Don't read that, I read it for you)

Choke Points (Exchange News)

• ✋ Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange acquired by Circle in 2018, announced it will disable trading markets for 9 different assets for U.S. customers on May 29, 2019. In a tweet thread that announced the market change, Poloniex said, "Today’s action is a result of regulatory uncertainty in the US market." Later, the Poloniex account added: "We understand how frustrating this is [...] and we will continue to focus time and energy on supporting positive policy and regulatory developments for crypto assets." (share or read more)

• 📊 BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes shared analysis of the trading platform's users in a tweet earlier this week. In April 2019, longs and shorts used an average effective leverage of 22x and 30x respectively, Hayes wrote. BitMEX famously supports up to 100x leverage for Bitcoin ($BTC) contracts. (share or read more)

Startup Signals (ICOs, Cryptos, and Startups)

• 🐋 Research from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis finds that only 376 people hold more than 30% of all ether ($ETH). The analysis excluded known exchange addresses. Chainalysis also found that over 20% of bitcoin ($BTC) is controlled by so-called "whales," which they define as the top 500 holders of a cryptocurrency. (share or read more)

• 💳 Ripio ($RCN), a startup that works to expand crypto adoption in Argentina, will launch a new trading platform that will operate in three Latin American countries: Argentina, Brazil and Mexico. Ripio CEO Sebastian Serrano announced the new exchange at Consensus 2019. Ripio plans to integrate educational resources to the platforms services in addition to traditional exchange functionality. (share or read more)

The Powers That Be (Legal/Reg/Policy)

• 💰CoinDesk reports that Kik’s ($KIN) CEO says the company has spent $5 million engaging with the SEC over what the regulator claims was an unregistered securities sale. Ted Livingston, Kick's founder, told CoinDesk that he does not have any plans to sue the SEC for greater regulatory clarity, but he did say the agency must provide clearer guidance. (share or read more)

Did I miss something?

Send me the link, your twitter handle and your best imitation compression algorithm write up. If I like it, I’ll include your bit next issue (with attribution).

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