The Breakdown First Five - Wednesday May 17, 2023

5. UK Lawmakers think Crypto is gambling

Just like your cousin who spent his rent money on Pepe, the UK Treasury Committee thinks that Crypto trading is gambling. The Committee pushed back on the government’s plan to regulate crypto to high financial services standards, instead suggesting it should be regulated as gambling, which it should be noted is tax free in the UK. 🤷

4. Lightning Labs: Making better Memecoins?

Lightning labs have announced the first major release from their Taproot Assets project (formerly known as Taro); Memecoins. The general purpose tokenized assets protocol has promise for such lofty goals as Bitcoin native dollar tokens and real world assets, but for now it could displace BRC-20 as a much better set of memecoin rails.

3. A Meme within a Meme

In a move so obvious it’s amazing it took this long, Dogecoin has gotten into the memecoin business with the launch of the DRC-20 protocol. Taking cues from BRC-20, Dogecoin now has its own memecoin trading ecosystem. Dogecoin transactions hit an all time high amid the frenzy of trading. And to think we weren’t sure this memecoin cycle would have a clear top signal!w

2. Hinman Speech Docs to be Released

Bigfoot. Loch Ness Monster. The Hinman emails. At least one of these mythical creatures will be presented to the public shortly as the Ripple case lurches towards a conclusion. The SEC’s request to seal away the emails was denied, and they’re presumed to explain why former SEC Director Bill Hinman thought Ethereum was not-a-security back in 2018. Nothing like Judicial oversight to keep the SEC….if not honest, at least on their toes.

1. Cold Wallets Compromised?

A new social recovery feature to be launched on Ledger hardware wallets blew up Crypto Twitter, with several notable security experts concerned that the feature could compromise wallet security. The attack vectors were occasionally fanciful but not without basis, and the big questions of backdoors weren’t - for many in the community - adequately answered. The trade-off between usability for newbies and rock solid security will continue to be a challenging debate, as this episode shows.

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Thanks for reading -NLW