Welcome to the Daily Debrief, where one swallow a spring DOES make.
Our stuff
Senseless ripples. SEO-maximalist Ben Munster filed a piece today about the bizarre, counterintuitive price hike of Ripple-associated cryptocurrency, XRP. The currency soared in market cap by some $1.7 billion yesterday amid news that the company had been...bested by rival cross-border payments provider R3, which has partnered with incumbent cross-border payments provider SWIFT. Ben tapped XRP’s most eloquent shills to find out why, exactly, the price-pump took place. The answer will sort of surprise you.
Card-wielders unite. The morally onerous Tim Copeland today broke the news that crypto exchange Binance had added credit card support to its platform. This, the odious Tim says, will allow customers to buy crypto directly on Binance—normally they have to go through Coinbase, then shift over. But banks often look askance at customers buying crypto at all, as Adriana reported yesterday. So we don’t know whether Binance’s gambit will condemn yet more to bank-freezes.
Content spewers. Adriana Hamacher today let us in on a new plan to blockchainize media distribution. Blockchain “content” platform DECENT is reportedly teaming up with Fiction Riot, which lets people stream movies. It’s basically planning to let these streamers connect directly with their viewers for crypto cash, without Netflix or whatever taking a slice. Lovely.
The end of the end of journalism. Another one from Tim “Nice But Dim” Copeland. Crypto microtransaction platform SatoshiPay is apparently cozying up to Axel Springer, Europe’s largest publishing house, to help publications stave off the looming media winter by letting readers tip writers in crypto (rather like the previous story!). Axel Springer counts among its brands Business Insider and German paper Die Welt. Great publications that we all care deeply about.
Other stuff
When NEM were NEM. According to Coindesk, Singapore-based crypto platform NEM is planning to lay off an unspecified number of its 150 employees as it surges toward bear-market-induced bankruptcy. To stay afloat, it’s filing for a $7.5 million loan from its “community fund.” The old self-bail out.
Quick, decentralize! Read lawyer Angela Walch’s (a research fellow at my alma mater, UCL, for anyone who cares) analysis of how “decentralization” is often wielded as a legal defense by crypto startups with little interest in true decentralization. It probes the claims of those who insist Ethereum and Bitcoin are decentralized—as well as their motives for saying such things. A must read, if you can stomach 36 pages of legalese.
Written by Ben M, the world’s leading expert on building unpopular newsletters. Send him negative thoughts at ben@decryptmedia.com