First Mover Americas: Crypto on the Agenda at Republican Presidential Debate

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Bitcoin, SBF, ether and SEC Chair Gensler all came up at the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night. Pro-crypto candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said U.S. regulation needs to catch up to prevent episodes like FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried defrauding customers and Binance breaking sanctions laws. Ramaswamy announced a plan to drastically reduce the SEC workforce and relax regulations on the crypto industry, advocating for most cryptocurrencies to be treated as commodities outside the SEC’s jurisdiction. “It’s nothing short of embarrassing that Gary Gensler, the SEC chair, couldn’t even confirm in front of Congress whether Ethereum is a regulated security,” Ramaswamy said. “This is another example of the administrative state going too far.”

Solana founder Anatoly Yakovenko said the blockchain platform’s much-hyped Saga phone has an uncertain future following disappointing sales since it went on sale in April this year. “We have to decide if there’s a place for a smart wallet, a much cheaper version that an iPhone user could use as a secondary device,” he said during a podcast appearance. Yakovenko noted that advancements in mobile interfaces have significantly reduced the gap between specialized and regular smartphones. He added that he doesn’t use his own Saga as his primary phone, instead using it as his “NFT phone.”

More than 1,000 BTC mined during the early stages of bitcoin’s history moved to trading desks and custodian services earlier this week, an instance of “Satoshi era” bitcoin being transferred. The coins last moved 13 years ago and were mined from block rewards at an estimated total cost of $100. They now have a market value of over $40 million. There were also instances of “Satoshi era” (the period when Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto was active in the community between 2009 and 2011) bitcoin being moved in recent months. In July a wallet that had been dormant for 11 years sent $30 million worth of BTC to other wallets. Long-time dormant BTC becoming active is seen by some as a sign of stirring optimism about growing bitcoin adoption.

– Omkar Godbole