Unchained - Unconfirmed: FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried Gives the Tom Brady/Gisele Bundchen Backstory - Ep.251

Episode Date: July 2, 2021

Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO and founder of FTX, explains FTX’s sports-centric advertising model and talks about what is on his regulatory wish list going forward. Show highlights: why Sam is so excited to bring Tom Brady and Gisele Bündchen onto the FTX team how FTX decides on who to sponsor why so many of FTX’s sponsorship are targeting US customers what makes the sports industry such an attractive place to advertise for FTX how FTX’s tokenized stocks work what Sam learned from the GameStop/Robinhood situation what makes FTX’s tokenized stocks different from Binance’s offering how FTX is dealing with regulatory obstacles what item is on the top of Sam’s regulatory wishlist whether FTT is a security   Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unchainedcardearnfeb2021     Oasis: https://oasisprotocol.org  NEAR: https://near.org     Episode Links   Sam Bankman-Fried Twitter: https://twitter.com/SBF_Alameda  Previous Unchained appearance: https://unchainedpodcast.com/why-the-gamestop-insanity-is-so-similar-to-crypto/    FTX Website: https://ftx.com Carbon credits: https://bitcoinmagazine.com/business/ftx-bitmex-to-become-carbon-neutral  Tokenized Stocks FTX guidelines: https://help.ftx.com/hc/en-us/articles/360051229472-Tokenized-Stocks  CoinDesk: https://www.coindesk.com/ftx-follows-binances-lead-with-move-into-tokenized-stocks    FTX Sports Deals NBA: https://www.coindesk.com/ftx-miami-heat-nfts  Tom Brady: https://decrypt.co/74771/tom-brady-and-gisele-bundchen-invest-in-ftx  TSM FTX: https://www.sporttechie.com/tsm-esports-signs-210-million-sponsorship-with-ftx-crypto-exchange MLB: https://www.coindesk.com/ftx-sponsors-mlb-umpires-to-wear-crypto-exchanges-logo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unconfirmed. The show that reveals how the marketing names in crypto are reacting to the week's top headlines and gets the insight scoop on what they see on the horizon. I'm your host, Laura Shin, a journalist with over two decades of experience. I started covering crypto six years ago and as a senior editor at Forbes was the first mainstream media reporter to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the July 2nd, 2021 episode of Unconfirmed. My book, The Cryptopians, Idealism, Greed, lies, and the making of the first big cryptocurrency craze is available for pre-order. Go ahead and purchase it on Amazon, Barnes Noble, Bookshop.org, or any of your favorite bookstores. Head over to Unchainedpodcast.com to find an easy link for pre-ordering.

The crypto.com app pays you up to 8.5% interest on your Bitcoin. Get $25 when you download the crypto.com app with code Laura. The link is in the description. MIR is an open source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications. overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low-cost, and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. Learn more at N-E-A-R-D-R-G. The OASIS Network is a privacy-enabled blockchain platform for open finance and a new data economy. Start building your next idea on the OASIS Network. Today's guest is Sam Bankman-Fried, founder and CEO of FDX.

Welcome, Sam. Thanks for having me. FTCS had some interesting news this week. Well, actually, it's not so different from other weeks. Tom Brady and Chiselle Bunchin became part owners of FTCS. How did that happen? Yeah, and we've been talking to them for a little while about working together. And, you know, we've obviously been spending a lot of time over the last six months

trying to find, you know, ways to get our name out there more. And so that was sort of, you know, one of the big pieces of context. here just given that we we're pretty proud of our product but as as you know one of the latest entrance to the game on the exchange side we're definitely lagging in terms of you know raw user base number but you know I think the other thing is that they're just excited to work with us and we're excited to work with them and that just goes a really long way I mean I know that you know Giselle's really excited on the the charity side just you know work with the foundation on giving it. And I think, you know, Tom's been excited about crypto for a while. And so it was,

it was just a really good fit. And so Tom also tweeted his excitement about the partnership with the video of himself showing a Bitcoin logo that hits and shatters the moon. Did FTCs come up with that with him? And if so, how does your team come up with that idea? I think that was him and his team, honestly, coming up with that. At least I was not involved in coming up with that and did not know it was going to happen until it did. So. Oh, interesting. Okay, well, that's clearly a sign of his enthusiasm. Oh, yeah. An FTX also recently inked a sponsorship deal with Major League Baseball

to have FTCs patches on all umpire uniforms starting next month. And another one with TSM, which is a professional e-sports team. And they even renamed themselves TSM FTX. And of course, everyone knows you also became a sponsor of the Miami Heats Arena. So in general, how does FTCS think about sponsorships and about getting the word out about crypto? Yeah, so, you know, there's a ton of things you can do, obviously, and many of them are somewhat interchangeable. You know, many of, you know, sort of the blander ones are not that different than just running Facebook ads.

And that's not to say anything against Facebook ads. You know, we haven't really done them, but maybe, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll start. But, but what they don't do is they don't, you know, do that much for your image or your brand. And, you know, they're sort of dilutive, if anything. And, and so I think, you know, when we think about these, There are a few things that we're thinking about, but the biggest things are what are the people, the organizations that really a lot of people pay attention to, that a lot of people listen to,

and what are the ways to partner with them that people will see? And then the second piece of this is what's a way to do it that feels sort of exciting and authentic and new and fresh rather than just dilutive? And, you know, I sort of go back to just so many of the advertisements that you see on TV. so many of the brand endorsements, you see, do you watch them? And I sort of feel like, I don't think that person's family was convinced to use that product, you know? Like, like, you see this endorsement, like, I literally think that like their kids and their mom have no interest in the product after having seen, you know, they're like the closest person in the world

to them, just, you know, film endorsement for it. And I think that's the biggest thing we're trying to avoid is, you know, is just this sense of like completely commercial, completely bland and completely replaceable, you know, fluff, which, you know, I think like it's not who we are. And I think it just doesn't do that much. And so the biggest things that we're thinking is, you know, what's something here that's going to seem cool and authentic and exciting? And so FTCX has two presences, one in Asia and one in the U.S. But a little bit of A lot of these sponsorships, sponsorships that you're doing do target a U.S. audience. So why is that? Yeah. I mean, I think there are a few pieces to it. And certainly like, I mean, look,

one thing you could say is I grew up in America. Like maybe that's just what I have the ear for, right? And I do think that there's some truth there in that like, you know, it's taking me a lot longer to figure out what would even be meaningful things in other countries because I didn't have, you know, 26 years steeped in their cultures, you know, to, to, to, to, to, you know, to, be able to tell. And it's so easy to mess these up. And it's so easy to think you got a great deal. And then it's a dud and you can never figure out why. And I think we see this. And, you know, I'm kind of honestly, one thing we see this with is, you know, there are these like, you know, U.S. sports team sleeve patches that are that are going around right now about two thirds the price of an arena naming, right? And they're just like, like no one cares about them. It's just like, you know, super consistently, like no one can name a single one of them. They don't stand out at all. And what incentive you sort of looks like is money grabs probably being a little bit too strong here, but this sort of sense of a team being like, man, how many times can we sell something?

Like what if we take every inch of like square space and separately try and market that as like, you know, our whole, you know, brand that we're sharing with you type thing. And, you know, I think when it comes to things that I have an ear for, I can kind of tell quickly, like, no, no one cares about that. versus like, okay, no, that's, that's something that really is meaningful, whereas in other countries, I just don't know as much, but we do have people on staff who do. And so I think that's not the full answer. And I think a big piece of this is, frankly, the U.S. is where our name recognition is probably lagging the most.

And a lot of this is because FTX U.S. didn't open up until a year ago, you know, at which point, you know, FtX.com was already, you know, like 10th or 15th biggest venue globally. And so I think it's just like, you know, it's only been around half as long. And so we have even more ground to make up in the states than we do globally. And why the emphasis on sports in particular? It's a good question. And, you know, we are looking at some other things as well. I think that there's a heavily overlapping user base and dynamic, which is one piece of this.

I think they're just, you know, among the most recognizable, recognizable people. and recognizable organizations, you know, you don't have the equivalent of like, you know, what's in a of sort of like, you know, the premier clubs, the, you know, things like that in other industries. That's not to say there's nothing to do there, but I think that it's quite a bit more finicky and difficult to figure out what it would even mean. And again, not to say we shouldn't be doing it even, and it is something we're kicking around. I think that a number of these things fit really cleanly in the sports paradigm. And, you know, if you thought about a musician, for instance, like what would be the equivalent of like an arena naming rights? Like there sort of isn't, unless,

I mean, you know, something tells me that, you know, we're not going to see, you know, Beyonce renaming, you know, her act to FTX Beyonce or any. And I would not do that if I were, like, that would be a big mistake on her part. That's, you know, so. Well, it would, I mean, I was thinking maybe just Madison Square Garden or. the Barclay Center or something like that. Yeah, totally agree. So most venues don't come up most years. Most of these deals are like 20-year deals.

And so each year, you know, there's maybe five or ten that are opening up. We actually got a little bit lucky. There were way more openings when we ended up getting, you know, the Miami, you know, Heaterina than in most years or at least more effective openings because of COVID. I mean, it was, you know, formerly American Airlines Arena. And I don't know why American Airlines didn't renew. Like, I don't have any privileged information there. But if I had to guess, I don't know, it's an airline company, COVID, like, sort of, you know, they had three stadiums. I think they've now cut down to two. Doesn't seem like a shocking decision. Yeah. Yeah. And you mentioned about Chiselle being head of environmental and social initiatives. And obviously you, yourself, are very active politically being one of the biggest donors to Joe Biden's campaign. And I just feel like crypto is kind of at this interesting crossroads right now where it's kind of intersecting more with mainstream movements. And, you know, such as like the environmental movement in the NFT space in particular or, you know, it's also doing things like gaining adoption in places like El Salvador, which some people and parts of the crypto community feel like, you know, kind of is, I guess, opposite some of the values of crypto.

But I just wondered, like, how do you think FTCS can push these values-oriented? goals amongst these different groups that sometimes are at odds with each other. Totally. And, you know, I think that's a good point. And the biggest thing I'd say is we don't want to push this on people. You know, we don't want to prescribe for people what they do. I think the way we think about this is we can set an example. And, you know, it's up to other people what they do. There are things that I'm super passionate about, you know, things Giselle is. And things that, frankly, a lot of our team care about a lot. And, you know, we're really honored when, you know, whenever we see people in the community sort of joining in on it.

And I think that's sort of one of the most impactful parts of doing this from our perspective is being able to, you know, to reach out to the community. But, but on the other hand, you know, if it's not for you, that that's totally fine. And so I think that, you know, one thing that that we're doing is, you know, we're going green. So we're going to be buying offsets for all of the, you know, carbon produced by deposit, you know, crypto deposits and withdrawals through FTCS. And I think we're probably going to do more than that as well. And, you know, look at what we can do to try to fund some sort of more cutting edge research

in or, you know, development into ways to mitigate climate change. But, you know, I think that's something which hopefully Giselle, you know, has thoughts on her as excited about. You know, I know that she has expressed a lot. I think it's something internally a number of us do. A number of people in the industry do. And, you know, really excited to the extent this helps other people think about how they can help the world. But, you know, if this is, if you don't care about this, that that's, you know, totally up to you. All right.

So in a moment, we're going to discuss some of the other recent news involving FTCX. But first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Designed for the next generation of blockchain, the OASIS Network is the first privacy-enabled blockchain platform for open finance and a responsible data economy. Combined with its high throughput and secure architecture, the OASIS Network is able to power private, scalable DFI, revolutionizing open finance and expanding it beyond traders and early adopters to a mass market.

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rebates for your Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 by using the code Laura. The link is in the description. Back to my conversation with Sam, thank you and free. So FDX also just enabled tokenized stock trading. What's your goal with that offering, like, who do you think you can attract as a user that you're not attracting now? Totally. There's a few different pieces to it. So one of it is, you know, just look at these existing users and giving them, you know, it's sort of, you know, anytime that they have to tab out to another app in order to trade another asset class, we sort of feel like, man, like, you know, is that app doing a better job than we are? And if so, what can we do there?

I think that's one piece of it. Another piece of it is just looking at there, you know, are tons and tons of people who have interest in trading crypto and also have interest in trading stocks. I think like one of the most poignant moments for me in this. And I apologize that I said this before to you, but it just really sticks with me is, you know, the sort of the moment that, that a bunch of burgers, including Robin Hood, restricted buying of game stock. Like literally that hour, hundreds of millions of dollars float into Dogecoin. And as there's just a really strong signal of like, it's the same people, like these same people who are buying GameStop or buying Dogecoin. And I think, frankly, the same people who are buying Tesla and Facebook are probably buying Bitcoin and Ethereum.

And so I think that like we're seeing, and you sort of like hinted at this before. Like we're seeing more and more convergence between, you know, as crypto gets closer and closer to mainstream, mainstream is getting closer and closer to crypto. You know, because of this, there are just a lot of people who want to trade both stocks and crypto who want to invest in both. And we want to provide a platform where they can do that. And so I think that's sort of one piece of it is just the generic like, why not both philosophy. But I think there's a few other things. One thing is, you know, FTX is now basically the only venue in the world that offers real liquid 24-7 equities trading.

Traditionally, equities exchanges are only open like 35 hours a week, which made a lot of sense when you had to be physically in a pit with everyone else physically there at the same time to do a trade. Now it's all online. it's all global. There's no need to have that restriction, but basically no other exchanges have lifted it. We saw an opening to be, you know, one of the few venues open in the middle of the night, US time. So that's sort of another opportunity that that we saw there. We can cross-margin it with everything else on the platform internationally. And so that's sort of another really cool thing, which again, there's no reason other people haven't done it other than that's a little bit complex if you haven't built out this system. But you can use your Apple stock as collateral to buy Bitcoin.

or you can use your Ethereum as collateral to short Facebook. And what this allows is one integrated seamless trading experience where you can do whatever trades you want, as long as you have enough total collateral to support it. So that's sort of the background on offering equities in general. And at this point, I think it's basically public domain that we are in the process of activating a burger dealer license in the United States as well. And so far there's just been, you know, offshore, but, uh, but that, you know, might not be true for long. The other thing, though, and the thing that we just did is, I mean, I say we did it, but, you know, we didn't do the happy lifting here. You know, uh, Dagon CME worked with, uh, often in Germany to create,

basically regulatory regime for actually tokenizing, truly tokenizing these equities. And what that means is that for the first time, there will be, you know, fully backed stock tokens that you can transfer on the blockchain, that you can move to your private wallet if you want, that you can have control over, and that are redeemable for the underlying equity. And they'll be trading on FTCS, and you know, they'll be creatable and redeemable as always. But, you know, there's also now the green light to make these movable. And I think that is really exciting. because it is basically for the first time really actually bridging the gap between equities and blockchain. This is all very fascinating.

And I think some of the description that you gave there of the tokenized stock offering is meant to differentiate FTCS's offering from the one by Binance. Is that correct? Like, because Binance, I believe they follow the market hours, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah. There's this much more like sort of, you know, the traditional Robin Hood. type experience. Yeah. So, you know, FTCX and Binance are similar in a few different ways, you know, with having a U.S. venue and a one based in Asia. And obviously we're seeing now Binance's approach of playing it a little bit on the looser side with regulation is starting to see blowback

and they're even kind of being booted from some companies, countries. So how does FTCS avoid the same fate? Yeah, totally. And, you know, obviously I can't speak to, you know, what's happening, you know, with them. And I will say they've done absolutely phenomenally over the last year as a company. I mean, their growth has been, you know, they're the only exchange that's been growing at the same rate that FTCS has over the last couple years. But it's super impressive because, you know, they started from a high point and then kept growing and growing rapidly. So, you know, and kudos them for that growth. I think when it comes to the regulatory side, obviously, you know, there's been some differences in our approach. I've been, you know, certainly happy to have been doing

things the way we are. I think the biggest thing that I would say here is it's easy to run a business that will never run a foul of regulators if you just don't do anything. Right? That's that the, I mean, it's sort of trivial, but it's like worth noting, right? If your business literally is just a company with no business and no, no activities, you're not breaking any laws. And the reason I say this is this is how I think a lot of people think about crypto regulation. They just have a single dimension of do more versus do less. If you have do more, it's more illegal. If you do less, it's more illegal. And I totally get why you would have that prior. And to be clear, if you're just like acting without any regards for the law, then that is correct.

Like, if you're just taking random actions without thinking about the legal consequences, then yeah, the more you do, probably the more laws you're breaking. But the key thing which I think, and again, this sounds sort of silly and obvious to point out, but I really do think is the thing people miss, is that, you don't have to act randomly, right? And in particular, regulators' goals aren't to kill industry. And this is really, really deeply true in most jurisdictions that you talk to them, and this isn't just a line they'll say. They have a mandate from up high.

Like the actual country cares about fostering industry. Like, you know, regulars aren't trying to just like create a perfect bliss of no activity because in the country it implodes. They're trying to work with businesses if they can. And so I think the right way to think about regulators, and obviously, look, it is different in each case. But the right general prior here isn't that they're trying to fuck you over. The right prior is they're trying to find a way to let businesses grow while also having whichever protections they think are important. For users, for the country, you know, whether you're talking about anti-money laundering, whether you're talking about, you know, sort of retail customer protection or anything else.

And what this means is that, like, I do think that there are ways to have an ambitious business that does a ton and maybe does even more than others while also being extremely compliant. And, you know, the big thing there is basically like just thinking hard about what is it that regulators do or don't want. Looking at the legislation that's on the book, but looking beyond that, looking at the comments made by them, looking at the history of actions, talking to them, getting a sense of what they consider to be a good. actor, you know, what they, you know, especially when you're looking at, at gray area industries or industries where regulations just haven't been written yet, right? You can't just say, ah, there's statute 17. This is the answer, right? It's more nuanced in that. It's understanding, like, do the regulators in this jurisdiction see their existing, you know, commodities, you know, regulations as extending to cryptocurrencies, or do they see crypto as a new

asset class pending, a new set of legislation. Like that's sort of a classic question, which, you know, when the commodities legislation was written, it crypto didn't exist. So they're not going to say whether or not, you know, ripple falls under that category. And so, you know, really trying to work with regulators. And, you know, our general philosophy is we want to be able to build the products that our users want. But we want to do that in a compliant way.

And sometimes that means applying for. licenses. And so anywhere that we can get licensed, we will. And, you know, we have we, we have a bunch of licensing. We're applying for a bunch more. And we're reaching out to a bunch of countries that don't have licensing regimes yet and saying, hey, you know, we'd love to be a guinea pig here. We'd love to work with you on building out a regime for, you know, whatever it is for corrective derivatives. And so applying for licenses when we can get them so that we can do it in, you know, the most straightforward manner from a regulatory perspective. And when there is no relevant license for business, you know, understanding is this something that the regulators are comfortable with?

You know, usually we guess, you know, usually we read that right. No one always gets it right. You know, everyone will sometimes misjudge that and then being extremely responsive to regulators. When they reach out and say, hey, we actually are not comfortable with what you're doing here, you know, saying like, oh, sorry about that, you know, didn't realize that, you know, super appreciate that. Super happy to shut this off. But we also want to talk with you about, is there a path forward to doing this? Is there a license that we should be applying for? Should we be talking to you about what that might mean in the future? And, you know, rather than seeing licensing and regulation as just an attempt to kill the industry, see it as like an attempt to

have an industry that is pro-social and, you know, good faith and, you know, working with that as best we can. And do you have anything that you would kind of name as like at the top of your regulatory wish list right now? Totally. Absolutely. Biggest thing by far always for us is clarity on derivatives. This is the, you know, no competition for us in terms of what's the most important. You know, when it comes to AMLKYC, which is probably the most important part of regulation when it comes to financial services, there is more or less clarity. Like, you know, there's lots of, there's lots and lots of case law on what duties, financial businesses, have to, you know, to know their customer and prevent money laundering. Now, there are some

open questions there which I do think that are one of which the world is going to have to grapple with is to what extent does it, is it a meaningful statement to try and think about whether an autonomous smart contract has a duty to know its customer. Like, what does that even mean? So, okay, there are some open questions there, but by and large, it's like, yeah, we have an AMLKIC policy. You have to. When it comes to securities regulations, in most countries, it's not a big problem for crypto. The United States is definitely on the more strict end there. And we would definitely appreciate more clarity from the SEC. I think we're not alone in that in thinking that like there's a whole swath of tokens

where it's just like no one knows, whether they're going to be considered unregistered securities or commodities or utility tokens or some new designation. You know, there's. And so I do think that matters. But the truth of the matter is, you know, three quarters of volume globally goes up in tokens that the SEC has signaled are not secure. Right? Like between Bitcoin, Ethereum, and then, you know, sort of most of the older tokens, you can add up to a lot of volume pretty safely. And so on that side, we would appreciate more clarity, but it's not the most important thing. The most important thing for us by far is almost no jurisdictions in the world have come out with comprehensive frameworks for derivatives, for crypto derivatives. And, you know, I think they're sort of aware of this. This is sort of like on the 10-year roadmap for each of them. But the problem is that like two thirds of volume trades and derivatives in crypto, like this is the majority of the space is happening in futures.

And so I think that's just by far the biggest thing that we would love regulatory clarity on. All right. Yeah. And actually earlier when you were saying for some of the other coins where you're not sure if it's a security or commodity, I was thinking that probably applies to FTT. Am I right about that? You know, I think in many, many jurisdictions we've gotten clarity that it, you know, that it is a utility token, but not in all of them. And I think that is absolutely an example where, you know, obviously we haven't listed that on on FTXUS. And, you know, that's an intentional decision. And I think that is certainly something where, you know, we would love SEC clarity. And I think there's a whole host of tokens where, you know, frankly, these are things that don't have direct analogs where they're not, you know, they're not, they're not, they don't quite necessarily. obviously fit into like like it's not like like an edible commodity or like a precious gem it's not like you know a voting equity it's not like like is it the currency and i don't i don't know i mean right and so you're sort of like really the answer is what is the cryptocurrency i mean it's it's a new type of thing and um you know it's a sort of utility tokens basing crypto is one where you know i think long run we're not going to see them classified as existing objects

long run, we're going to see new regulations coming out that define them as a new asset class and come out with some set of rules around them. But that hasn't happened yet. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, in the U.S., we're really going to have to see because I just feel like I'm seeing kind of a huge range from some of the different lawmakers. So we'll see what happens. I mean, you listen to the hearing today and there's just, yeah, a really wide range of opinions. Yeah, yeah, almost disturbingly wide. And when I say that, I mean, for all the education that I think the industry has done, like there's some views that maybe seem a little bit less informed.

Some of them were certainly out there. But I think a lot of them are also, yeah, I don't know, it's reasonable. You could also reasonably think something very different. You know, it's and you know, whatever the regime is, it is. And the biggest thing is like preventing scenarios where there's no, where there's no reasonable path forward. That, that's the thing that's most frustrating. You know, if you tell us like, you know, just go for it, but don't be a dick.

And don't do anything scammie. Don't do anything that takes advantage of users. I don't do anything that like helps money laundering. And don't do anything you obviously think you shouldn't do. And we'll give feedback as it goes along. We can work with that, you know? And if instead you say, look, you can't do anything until you have a license. Here's the license.

Here's the application process. Super happy to work with that. The most frustrating thing is you need a license, but also we haven't come up with one yet. Right. Yeah. Yeah, right now it's a little bit slow moving here in the U.S. But all right.

Well, I had a ton of other things I also want to ask you about, but maybe we'll just have you on for the longer show sometime soon because I truly think there's so much that your various firms are doing in the space. And frankly, for any given one of them, we could spend an hour discussing some of the topics. There's so much going on. Always happy to come on. Okay.

All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show this week. It's been such a pleasure. It's been fun as always. Don't forget. Next up is the weekly news recap. Stick around for this week in crypto after this short break. Did you know nearly $338 million worth of the NFTs were sent last year?

And in 2021, that number is growing faster than ever. If you're looking to make your first NFT, check out NIR's fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. NIR is investing 80 million NIR tokens and community-led projects over the course of five years to power sustainable innovation through its ecosystem, with fundraising opportunities and support for DAWS and DAPs to engage fans and reach new audiences. Come learn why NIR is the infrastructure for innovation at N-eA.org. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap.

First headline. NIDIG is bringing 24 million people direct access to Bitcoin. 24 million customers across 650 banks will soon have access to trade Bitcoin on their mobile devices. Michael Del Castillo of Forbes reports that NCR, an enterprise payment giant, and NIDIG, a digital asset manager, have partnered with community banks and credit unions across the country to give clients access to cryptocurrency trading services directly through mobile applications. As part of the deal, financial institutions do not have to directly hold cryptocurrency and deal with the subsequent regulatory hoops.

Instead, institutions can opt to have NIDIG as their crypto custody provider. Partnering with NCR marks NIDIG's fifth collaboration with a financial services provider since the start of 2021. The firm has already announced similar deals with FIS, FIS, FIS, FIERV, Q2, and Alchemine technology, bringing Bitcoin directly to many customers at those institutions. institutions. Next headline. NFTs are back. Maybe they never left. On Thursday, NMOCA brands, a company that provides digital property rights through NFTs, announced a $139 million raise that values the company at $1 billion, hinting that big money still has interest in the NFT market. In fact, NFT headlines just kept rolling in this week. At Sotheby's, an NFT of the original World Wide Web Source Code sold for $5.4 million. All proceeds from the sale will go to initiative supported by Tim Berners-Lee, who developed the code.

Christie's also sold a large NFT collection this week, auctioning off a set of tokens from Fawocious to the tune of $2.16 million. The collection, says the block, was inspired by an 18-year-old artist's experiences as a young transgender artist growing up in an abusive household. On Thursday, Minta Bowl and NFT platform raised a 13 million. $1 Series A, seeing participation from Ripple and MetaPers. Mintable is looking to double its workforce thanks to the influx of cash. Coin Fund also set plans to launch Metaversal, an NFT investment vehicle.

Vanessa Gray-Eye, head of portfolio growth at Coin Fund, told the scoop that there is still so much demand for NFT exposure. She added, even though you see a slowing down in the consumption, I think we are going to see a lot of tools around lending, around the financialization of NFTs that are are going to make the NFT space even larger than other spaces like defy, etc. Next headline. Coinbase unveils plans to expand. On Monday, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter with a bold statement, tweeting,

Our goal is to list every asset where it is legal to do so. Armstrong's tweet thread made it clear that Coinbase is, quote, asset agnostic and believes in a free market with consumer choice, emphasizing that a Coinbase listing is not an endorsement of a token. His tweet came after the exchange added Pocodot, Shiba Ino, and Dogecoin within one month. Based on a report from DeCripped, Coinbase has aggressively picked up the pace of its asset offerings. In 2020, the exchange only added 21 tokens. So far this year, the company has already added 29 new tokens.

Coinbase's custody division has also expanded, announcing support for 74 additional tokens, more than double the number of assets available to custody on the platform in just six months. This week, Armstrong also posted a blog announcing that Coinbase wants to, quote, become the place people also go to actually participate in the crypto economy by building what he called the crypto app store. He hints that the first step in building a crypto app store is allowing users to self-custody in the main Coinbase app. In addition to expanding asset listings and app store plans,

Coinbase debuted a crypto savings account offering 4% APY on USD. DC. Next headline. Bitcoin's mining difficulty could drop 25%. According to data from blockchain.com, Bitcoin's hash rate, its measure of computational power working to secure the blockchain network, has plunged to 90 terra-hashes per second. The lowest it has been since May of 2020. Hash rate has been on the decline since mid-May, coinciding with the first rumblings of China banning Bitcoin mining. With hash rate plummeting, Glass Node estimates that Bitcoin mining difficulty could drop 25% during its upcoming adjustment, marking the largest such drop in history, and the first time since 2018, the Bitcoin's mining difficulty dropped three times in a row.

The adjustment is set to occur roughly around when this podcast publishes Friday, July 2nd, at Block 689472. Glass-Node reports that Bitcoin miners who stay operational during this turbulent period of hash rate migration will most likely, quote, become even more profitable over the coming weeks, as mining equipment that would have become obsolete remains online and effective due to a global shortage of semiconductors and the amount of hash rate power in transit. For miners who've been shut down, Glassstone speculates that there could be massive cell pressure coming from two areas. First, a decline in mining revenue due to the Bitcoin price falling 50%

from its peak. And two, logistical expenses and risk from relay, relocating or liquidating equipment may necessitate the sale of BTC to cover FIA costs. Next headline. Arc Invest files for an ETF. Ark Invest is throwing its hat into the Bitcoin ETF ring, according to a filing with a securities and exchange commission. If approved by the SEC, the fund would trade under the ticker ARCBBZ Exchange. Arc Invest is partnering with 21 shares to launch the ETF. Ark is joining eight other ETF applicants, including Fidelity, Galaxy, and NIDIG, among others. However, it appears the SEC is in no rush to approve a Bitcoin ETF application. In the past two weeks, the regulator has postponed its decision on Valkyries and VanX's

Bitcoin ETF filings. Next headline. Crypto markets were the talk of the house on Wednesday. Cryptocurrency was the main subject of conversation during Wednesday's U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Hearing titled America on Fire. Will the crypto frenzy lead to financial independence and early retirement or financial ruin? The block reports that much of the

discussion featured a comparison between the financial crisis of 2008 and the current state of the crypto markets. Two other bits of regulatory news. The Financial Action Task Force delayed the finalization of its draft guidance until October. The draft guidance, if implemented, could have

a massive impact on defy and self-hosted wallets due to its strict language surrounding VASPS or virtual asset service providers. FADOV's guidance also includes the travel rule which would force VASPS to transmit information to each other for transactions over $3,000, a rule that would significantly hamper many decentralized applications. FinCEN released the first iteration of a document titled Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism National Priorities, which identified A priorities, one of which was, quote, relevant virtual currency considerations. The agency plans to issue regulations to specify how financial institutions should incorporate the priorities into anti-money laundering programs at a later date.

Next headline. Robin Hood files for an IPO. On Thursday, Robin Hood, the popular and somewhat infamous stock trading app filed for an IPO with the SEC. The company aims to raise $100 million and plans to trade under the ticker symbol, Hood, on NASDAQ. The S1 filing shows massive growth for the company, which is more than doubled the number of accounts on the platform and tripled its assets under custody in just one year. According to the filing, crypto trading made up 17% of Robin Hood's Q1 revenue, which totaled $5202 million. This is up from 4% in Q4 of 2020. Notably, a big chunk of that growth came directly from Dogecoin, which accounted for 34% of the firm's crypto transaction revenue, meaning Robin Hood made roughly $30 million for being a meme middleman.

The company's S1 filing comes in the same week that FINRA hit the trading app with a $70 million fine for, quote, systemic supervisory failures and significant harm suffered by millions of customers. All right, time for fun bits. The B word. Mark your calendars for July 21st because Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey have agreed to discuss Bitcoin with each other at an event titled The B Word, though the event is not yet 100% confirmed. As usual, Musk's acceptance of the invitation was somewhat odd. Here is the back and forth to end the pod. Here's Jack, advertising the B word conference. The Bitcoin development community above all else, as more companies and institutions,

get into the mix, we all want to help protect and spread what makes Bitcoin, open development, so perfect. This day is focused on education and actions to do just that. Elon. By curious? Oh, right. Bitcoin. Ha ha. Jack. Bizar. Let's you and I have a conversation at the event. You can share all your curiosities. Elon. Laughing my fucking ass off. Oh, M. G. Jack. Let's have the talk. Elon, for the bit curious. Very well then. Let's do it. Winkface. Jack, done. We'll set it up. Based on the two CEOs, Twitter back and forth, it sure looks like July 21st could be quite the event. All right, thanks for tuning in. To learn more about Sam and FTX, be sure to check the links in the show notes. And heads up, everyone. The Unchained newsletter has switched from a weekly news recap to a daily blog in order to keep up up with the crazy pace of crypto news.

Each morning, you'll get four to five quick headlines, a crypto meme or two, and a few recommended reads. Head to Unchainedpodcast.com or to my Twitter profile to sign up. Unconfirmed is produced by me, Laura Shin, without from Anthony Youne, Mark Murdoch, and Daniel Ness. Thanks for listening.