First Five - Tuesday April 25, 2023

5. Lazarus sanctions back from the dead

OFAC has announced another round of sanctions against North Korean hackers Lazarus Group, this time identifying the OTC traders that facilitated the money laundering for the group. Despite all protestations to the contrary, turns out Crypto is really easy to trace. More concerning are revelations from DOJ charges that some US Crypto firms may have hired DPRK hackers. Yikes.

4. 100M shiny gold-backed Zimbabwe digital dollars

The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe has announced a plan to stabilize their free-falling currency by allowing citizens to swap it for gold-backed digital tokens. The Central Bank says they will need to bolster its gold reserves from $23M to $100M to carry out the plan, but are people really going to trust digital representations of gold coins backed by the full faith and credit of Zimbabwe. If only there were some alternative….

3. Grimes using smart contracts to distribute royalties to AI created music

Buzzword salad or actually pretty rad? The music industry has been in a tizzy since an AI song featuring the synthesized, unauthorized AI vocals of Drake and The Weeknd went viral a couple weeks ago. Not Grimes though, she thinks it’s cool, and has offered anyone who puts her vocals on AI tracks a 50% royalty split, which will be distributed via - yup, a smart contract. Put us in the “actually pretty rad” camp

2. Do thank you

After being arrested in Montenegro and sued for securities fraud, Do Kwon is taking the hopeful step of asking the Court to dismiss an SEC lawsuit against him. The argument claims that the SEC has no jurisdiction over his busted stablecoin. Given that South Korea just indicted another 10 people today involved with Do’s schemes, it seems pretty unlikely that homie can legal finagle his way out of this consequences.

1. Coinbase takes the fight to them

Coinbase has sued the SEC for ignoring its petition for rulemaking from last July. CLO Paul Grewal said that Chair Gensler was exercising a “pocket veto” by refusing to acknowledge their petition and avoiding any opportunity for a decision to be questioned in Court. The fact that we have to breathlessly root for a court of law to temper regulatory excess is a sad state of affairs, but it’s pretty satisfying to feel the industry on the offensive for once. We are all Coinbase.

Latest episode: “Where Bitcoin Fits as Argentina Faces a Dollar Shortage and 100%+ Inflation”

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading!

-NLW