What does the next stage of crypto adoption look like? [67]
What prison populations tell us about the future of crypto
Good afternoon, friends!
As many of you know by now, I was imprisoned earlier this year by the US government for engaging in peer-to-peer crypto usage. You can catch up with everything that happened to me in this interview I did with Ryan Harper and this coverage in Bitcoin Magazine.
As such, I’ve definitely been throwing outside my normal bubble of people I’d interact with on the daily.
Interestingly, I’ve just been given official approval by the Bureau of Prisons to continue to teach my Bitcoin curriculum to my fellow inmates. The class that I’m teaching has been going on for a couple of months now, and my interactions thought me a lot about how the public perceives crypto outside the bubble.
The good news is that everyone from every stripe has an abiding interest in crypto. The downside is that most (at best) see it as strictly an investment tool or at worst a get-rich-quick scheme.
Simply put, the message about utility simply isn’t sticking. Even folks in here who buy crypto assets labor under the delusion that there are no other use cases aside from investment vehicles.
Ironically, one of the biggest ones is staring them right in the face: remittance.
In federal prisons, a vast majority of inmates have had fines and restitution assessed. Even those that don’t say that they have been de-banked. An equally large portion have also reported having family CashApp balances frozen or seized without warning or explanation. In short, Bitcoin fixes this.
Yes, these seem like inmate-specific problems for now. Prominent examples include what happened to people who sent funds to the protesting Ottawa truckers; GoFundMe seized it, and this would not have happened with uncensorable money. UkraineDAO formed and raised $6 million to bring humanitarian aid donations into Ukraine shortly after Russia invaded the country. Ukraine’s central bank also suspended e-wallets and limited withdrawals as remittances became more difficult to send into the country — further adding more use cases for crypto.
There are more than two million people in the nation’s prisons and jails, and, in truth, the basic problems for inmates and their families are the canary in the coal mine for the general population. Bitcoin presents a way to send and receive money that is outside of the control of a central authority and that puts the power back in the hands of the people that use it.
Encouraging the safe, pragmatic use of this technology in exchange for faulty traditional finance rails will encourage growth in NFTs, Web3, DeFi and all the rest.
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Blockchain Bulletin
Binance CEO pledges $2B for “industry recovery fund” for hurting projects post FTX collapse. Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, the CEO of Binance, vowed to launch an “industry recovery fund” reported Decrypt, which has grown to $2 billion now that investors have begun to join, according to a report from CoinDesk.
Magic Eden NFT marketplace integrates Polygon-based NFTs. The NFT marketplace Magic Eden announced that it is integrating the Layer 2 scaling solution Polygon network in order to support Polygon-based NFTs and reach gaming audiences, developers, and publishers, reported CoinDesk.
Arkon Energy raises $28M to expand its Bitcoin mining operations. Green energy Bitcoin mining outfit Arkon Energy announced that it raised $28 million to expand its mining operations and acquired another data center in Europe, reported CoinTelegraph.
Blockchain Behind the Scenes
Sony files patent for NFT and blockchain usage in gaming. Sony may be joining the likes of UbiSoft, Square Enix, and Zynga in looking into blockchain technology for gaming with a patent filing suggesting that it might be seeking to incorporate NFTs into its games.
FTX bankruptcy filings show a mess that may take a while to untangle. After filing for bankruptcy, the new CEO of FTX, John Ray, who oversaw the bankruptcy of Enron said that the corporate structure of the exchange was a “complete failure” in a scathing opinion.
Sam Bankman-Fried apologies for FTX collapse in weird internal letter. Former CEO of FTX wrote a letter to employees apologizing for the collapse of the exchange, outlining how he felt the whole implosion went down and that he still feels it can be saved.
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