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Disney reportedly lays off its metaverse team, and the U.K. Treasury cancels its NFT plans, but on the bright side, NFTs for tickets are having a moment.

The conference has been running since 2018 but topics and speakers for this year’s TABConf event will be chosen partly based on proposals from the general public via GitHub.

With crypto exchange Coinbase (COIN) last week receiving a Wells Notice signaling impending action from the SEC, and with the CFTC this week suing Binance, another crypto exchange, it feels like the crypto industry is at war with the U.S. government. This could get bad.

The U.S. sold 9,861.17 bitcoin ($216 million) on March 14, according to a court filing.

Justin Sun, founder of the Tron blockchain, said Friday that his term as Grenada’s Ambassador to the World Trade Organization was coming to an end. The announcement came just hours after he shared screenshots of an internal registration system and said he still remained a diplomat. 

“In the coming months, I will be focusing on the smooth transition of my duties to my successor,” he wrote on Twitter. “Afterwards, I plan to take some time to rest before continuing my career as a public servant, with a particular focus on digital economy and crypto regulation.”

The Grenada Broadcasting Network reported earlier this week that Sun had been stripped of his status as ambassador sometime after elections held in June, when the New National Party, which had granted Sun the position, was ousted by the National Democratic Congress. Sun, who has styled himself “His Excellency” on social media accounts, was appointed as WTO ambassador by the government of Grenada in December 2021.

Sun said he achieved “significant progress” during his tenure on various fronts including negotiations and policy advocacy. 

‘Highlights of my tenure’

“One of the highlights of my tenure was serving as the head of Grenada’s delegation at the 12th Ministerial Conference,” he wrote. “I had the opportunity to address the conference and discuss trade issues with representatives from around the world.”

The WTO and the government of Grenada did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Block. Sun, in a follow-up up message, said he had just learned of the changes. 

Sun’s diplomatic status, as well has his location, has fueled speculation in the face of pending legal challenges. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission earlier this month charged Sun, and three of his companies including digital asset network company Tron Foundation Limited, over the unregistered offer and sale of two “crypto asset securities.” 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

In an interview ahead of Consensus the mononymed podcaster discusses how he built the foundation to collaboratively build a Web3 media empire.

Bitcoin options volume and open interest on CME have reached an all-time high amid the banking crisis and a bitcoin rally. 

Open interest, the total number of contracts outstanding in the market, hit $1.3 billion this month, up 67% since the start of 2023. Volumes of bitcoin options are similarly buoyant, jumping to $1.67 billion from $832 million last month — the previous all-time high was $1.1 billion in January. 

Crypto derivatives previously saw an influx following the collapse of FTX as institutional traders moved to regulated venues. The latest rally in volumes is being linked to banking uncertainty and a “risk on” environment by some as cryptocurrency prices have risen since January.

Banking uncertainty and bitcoin’s function as a hedge is causing its price to rise, Luuk Strijers, chief commercial officer at Deribit, told The Block. As a result, people are positioning for further upside, with traders buying puts (the option to sell at a specific price) to protect from sharp sell-offs.

Bitcoin’s correlation to equities fell in March, and Strijers noted that when the correlation between bitcoin and the S&P falls, options activity rises. Bitcoin is up 70% since the start of the year, trading above $28,000, while the Nasdaq Composite is up over 15%.

Paradigm co-founder Anand Gomes echoed a similar sentiment, telling The Block bitcoin remains the “main story.” Following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, risk is “back on in a BIG way,” and there’s been large upside buying since then. “It’s been relentless,” he said. 

“For context, we just did 50% higher volumes in March than the previous month’s high,” Gomes said.

Bitcoin’s best quarter in years

Bitcoin is on track for its best quarter since the first of 2021, barring any shocks today. 

The leading cryptocurrency by market cap benefited from less liquidity as moves higher are more exaggerated in low liquidity environments. Liquidity has dropped to 10-month lows, according to Kaiko analysts, as market makers lose access to USD payment rails in light of the U.S. regional banking crisis.

“Crypto markets are at their most volatile when liquidity is low. Prices have less support to both the downside and the upside, which could explain bitcoin’s rapid 17% surge since the start of the month,” Kaiko’s Conor Ryder said.

Bitcoin is viewed by some, including Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood, as a safe haven during the banking crisis. It experienced significant inflows as stablecoins like USDC faltered, leading bitcoin’s dominance (the market cap of bitcoin relative to the market cap of the entire crypto market) to reach its highest point since last June.

Bitcoin traded higher into the Fed’s last interest rate decision before paring gains just after Chair Jerome Powell’s speech earlier this month. However, with hopes of a Fed pausing on rate hikes on the horizon, the price of bitcoin has begun to inch higher again, as it continues to trade around $28,000 — a “critical resistance to the continuation of this rally,” according to market maker B2C2’s Adam Farthing.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The NFT artist spoke to CoinDesk about his “disruptive” creative agency Gasoline and how he is using NFTs to push the boundaries of art and culture.

Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz didn’t mince words at a Thursday conference in Miami hosted by the FII Institute, where he told a crowd that the crypto industry was “under assault” by regulators in the U.S.

The Block’s East Coast Managing Editor Nathan Crooks caught up with Novogratz after the event and asked about his thoughts on “Operation Choke Point 2.0,” a term being used by some in the industry to speculate about the possibility of a broader, coordinated crackdown.

(The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.)

The Block: You just finished telling the audience here that the crypto industry is “under assault” by regulators in the U.S. There’s been a lot of talk in some spheres about an alleged “Operation Choke Point 2.0.” Do you think it’s real?

Mike Novogratz: Yes, 100%. I think it’s real. Think about Signature Bank, how they were so quickly shut down. Now, listen, we weren’t under the hood there. But when you look at Republic Bank and Signature Bank — Barney Frank, who’s on their board, was like “this is crazy, they were shutting it down.” My friends in banking were like “there’s no reason that needed to be shut down.” They could have done the same thing they did with Republic and the other banks, given them a lifeline. And so, that was because they’re associated with crypto, and maybe associated with Trump. That’s not the way our government is supposed to function. It just isn’t.

And we see it all the time now, the constant regulation through enforcement. The cost of that to the innocent players, because every time there’s an FTX, every single player in the ecosystem gets a subpoena for information about FTX. That costs a fortune. I look at our legal bills at Galaxy, and our audit bills, it’s 4x what they would be at a normal company. That’s a tax that Gensler and Co. are putting on our industry, trying to get the banks not to bank people. You know, that’s real. We’re smart enough, or lucky enough, to have a lot of banking sources, but lots of our portfolio companies we’ve been helping, and a lot of our peers even, to try to get banking … people just don’t want to bank crypto, and so you’re back to small banks that people haven’t heard of banking big institutions. It absolutely makes no sense. In the long run, the U.S. is going to lose. Hong Kong has got really progressive regulation, Abu Dhabi. So you’re just seeing people move out of the U.S. The frustration is that it’s not a big enough issue, that the broad political base cares.

TB: We’re here in Miami, at an international, Saudi-sponsored conference. We heard a speech from Mayor Francis Suarez, who’s been very pro-crypto in the past. Is a city like Miami, which has tried to position itself as a global hub, going to be restrained by the federal U.S. government, for example? 

Novogratz: The hope is that we have checks and balances in America, that we have a judiciary that for the most part is apolitical, not completely apolitical, for the most part. You’re going to see, when you read the Coinbase Wells notice, I’d take my chances that they’re going to win. When I read the Paxos Wells notice, I’d take my chances they’re going to win. They might not. But the SEC doesn’t have a real good case, and so I’m hoping that we have a firewall in our judiciary. The Republican House is very pro-crypto, just follow Tom Emmer. And so you’re not going to get bad legislation. It’s just this White House, and there’s no one really to stop them right now because they’ve got the debt ceiling to worry about. They’ve got the banking crisis to worry about.

It’s shocking. We’re so worried about crypto. Bank of America’s non-mark-to-market losses are bigger than the market cap of Bitcoin. Like we should be worried about other things, but you would think crypto is the only thing they worry about. You know, Gensler just asked for more money to have to go after the crypto bad actors. Like we’ve had AI exploding, we should be regulating AI and less on crypto.

TB: Do you see this becoming an issue in the upcoming presidential election at all?

Novogratz: I think it’ll become an issue in the elections. What the Democrats learned, and then seemed to forgot after Sam Bankman-Fried, was that there are 50 million Americans that own crypto and like it a lot. Of that 50 million, I would bet you 15 million are single-issue voters. Like “screw with my right to store my wealth how I want to, and I will fight you.” And so pre-Sam, you saw a lot of Democrats coming around, and it was becoming bipartisan. And Sam made everyone look stupid. He made the industry look stupid. He made Democrats look stupid. Ironically, he almost gave as much to Republicans, quietly, but that’s not the story. The story is that he was the Democrat’s biggest donor. Politicians are politicians, and so they’re all running for the hills.

TB: We heard former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speak just a bit earlier about the U.S. dollar. Do you think a lot of the current administration’s actions are coming because they’re worried about the survival of the U.S. dollar (as a global reserve currency)?

Novogratz: There’s a little bit of that. Broadly, it just doesn’t register for enough people to care. And so Elizabeth Warren, for some bizarre reason, hates crypto, and she’s got a lot of sway in the financial side of the Biden administration. But for Yellen and Lael Brainard to be anti-crypto, that cuts something deeper.

When Balaji [Srinivasan] says we’re gonna go to a million (the price of bitcoin), I’m like, “Oh, God, don’t, don’t get what you wish for.”  If we went to a million, that would be a loss of civil society in America. Like I don’t want us to go to a million real fast. I’d like us to go to a million over 5 or 10 years. Bitcoin is a report card on the stewardship of our finances, here and abroad. I always cheer for the U.S. to have good stewardship. It’s a really hard hand to play right now with the amount of debt we have, debt to GDP at 125%, with interest rates are 5%. But the math doesn’t work. And so we’ll inflate it away. And that’s why bitcoin is going to go up. But when you talk about hyperinflation, that scares policymakers, and then they see bitcoin as a threat. They don’t see gold as a threat, but it’s the same damn thing. And so I think the community needs to be a little careful about the hyperbole that everyone speaks with, because it definitely seems to be part of this anti-crypto.

TB: Speaking of the price of bitcoin, where is it going?

Novogratz: These are big weekly closes, monthly closes, quarterly closes. If you just look on the charts, now we’re at $25,000 to $40,000 range, heading higher. So like, we’re at roughly $29,000 as we speak. $35,000 is probably the next target. Are we going to go there in a straight line? Probably not. You’re going to need to see the economy slow. We’re going to have a credit crunch. The credit crunch isn’t gonna happen overnight. But if you think regional banks, which had credit growth of 15%, if that shrinks to 5%, that’s 2% of GDP. And so the Fed will be talking rate cuts in the fall. And once that happens, that’s that next leg for crypto.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The latest price moves in bitcoin (BTC) and crypto markets in context for March 31, 2023. First Mover is CoinDesk’s daily newsletter that contextualizes the latest actions in the crypto markets.