The Breakdown First Five - Tuesday, August 27, 2024

Welcome back to The Breakdown First Five — the 5 most interesting and/or important stories in bitcoin, crypto, and markets to start your day.

5. Free Tigran

Binance compliance executive and former star IRS investigator Tigran Gambaryan is still rotting away in a Nigerian prison after six months behind bars. With his physical and mental condition deteriorating rapidly his wife has made another impassioned plea for his release. The State department has still not elevated his case to ‘wrongfully imprisoned’ status, which would trigger additional requirements. Enough is enough. Free Tigran. 

4. Auto-Magic Settlement

Abra have agreed to their second settlement with the SEC, this time related to their yield bearing earn product. The regulator claims the service that earned interest on crypto products “auto-magically” was a securities offering. No fine was agreed to, with Abra electing to roll the dice in court. The company can now close the book on regulatory disputes and move on with new offerings. 

3. ETFs Running Hot

The Bitcoin ETFs have seen back-to-back trading days with over $200M in inflows. That’s eight positive days in a row including the biggest day in over two weeks. Analysts are pointing to Bitcoin bets being placed ahead of Fed rate cuts, noting that inflows really cranked up on Friday following Powell’s speech at Jackson Hole. Blackrock has been the outsized beneficiary, gobbling up $300M worth of Bitcoin across the past two days.

2. Zuck Uncucked

With internet privacy and censorship at the top of the news cycle, Mark Zuckerberg has written to congress to come clean about Covid-era censorship. He “regrets” bowing to Biden admin pressure to “censor” content, including humor and satire. He further explained the FBI warned Meta to downrank news about the Hunter Biden laptop. Zuck stated he will not donate during this election cycle, even to nonpartisan infrastructure efforts, in order to remain “neutral.”

1. Telegram Book Thrown

Paris prosecutors have produced a voluminous list of charges being investigated in the Telegram case. In addition to complicity with basically everything illegal that has ever happened on Telegram, CEO Pavel Durov could face charges of providing encryption services “aiming to ensure confidentiality without certified declaration.” To privacy advocates, this sounds like encrypting messages without a license and raises the concern that internet privacy is under attack.