Unchained - Why a Coinbase Listing May Not Be a Good Thing for a Token - Ep.311

Episode Date: January 21, 2022

Fais Khan, author of the Startups and Econ newsletter, dives into his recently published research report, "You Don't Own Web3": A Coinbase Curse and How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail. Show highlights: whether tokens perform better before or after being listed on Coinbase what relationship a16z, a venture capital firm, has to Coinbase why Fais believes that the poor performance of VC-backed tokens after being listed could be the result of insiders dumping other reasons for a token’s poor performance after being listed on Coinbase besides insiders dumping what type of coin/token went up 1,800% in 2020 why Fais is suspicious of how quickly certain VC-backed tokens were listed on Coinbase whether Fais believes Coinbase or a16z is actually doing something nefarious  what sort of regulatory actions he believes would improve crypto what advice Fais has for token investors Thank you to our sponsors! Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021   Episode Links   Fais Khan https://twitter.com/Faktastic11    Article https://startupsandecon.substack.com/p/you-dont-own-web3-a-coinbase-curse Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, all. I just wanted to share with you a blurb that Raul Powell, co-founder and CEO of Real Vision, wrote about my book, The Cryptopians, which comes out February 22nd. He said, Laura Shin brilliantly lays out the untold story of the rise of Ethereum amidst the crazy times of the crypto boom of 2015 to 2017. A story of high drama played out in the big stakes world of cryptocurrencies and cutting-edge technologies with a cast of characters worthy of a thriller novel. The only difference is that this incredible tale is all true, and the hero of the story, Ethereum, has gone on to even greater things. This impeccably researched book is a must read for those wanting to understand the complexities and realities of creating one of the world's great technologies. If you have not yet pre-ordered a copy of the Cryptopians, then don't forget to.

go to Bitley slash Cryptopians. That's B-I-T-R-Y-S-C-R-Y-P-T-O-P-I-N-S to pre-order your copy today. Again, the link to pre-order is Bitley slash Cryptopians. And now, on to the show. Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no-hype resource for all things crypto. 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 Main Tree Meteor to cover cryptocurrency full-time. This is the January 21st, 2022 episode of Unchained. With the crypto.com app, you can buy, earn, and spend crypto in one place. Download and get $25 with the code Laura, link in the description. Today's guest is Fassel Khan, author of

The Startups and Econ Newsletter. Welcome, Fassell. Hey, Laura. Thanks for having me. You wrote a, well, I'll call it insightful. Another word might be biting analysis on your substack of the connections between VCs and alt coins. And it was titled, How VCs Sell Crypto to Retail. And it was subtitled, the one where Mark Andreessen blocks me. What was your newsletter about? My main goal here was to dig into whether investors benefit from,

investing in Coinbase or in coins on Coinbase. I think most users on Coinbase are retail investors. They're not super sophisticated. So they might not be looking at things the way like an advanced crypto trader might. I think most advanced crypto traders are not on there. And so what I wanted to see was how do coins perform after they're listed, which is when most retail gets access to it. And how do they perform against what I'm?

would call like the main benchmarks Bitcoin and Ethereum. And what were your findings? Basically, it looks like most of the return for coins other than Bitcoin and Ethereum comes before it's listed on Coinbase. And then after that, most of them tend to do worse than either of those coins. And those returns actually got worse over time. So there's kind of a pop at the beginning, which I think Masari and some of these other research places called the Coinbase effect, but no one's really shown long-term what happens to these coins. And so if you look over any timeline, like six months, 12 months, two years, three years, they're getting worse as time goes by.

Yeah, the framing that you put at the beginning that I found interesting was Mark Antreason actually has a seat on Coinbase's board of directors. meanwhile, Coinbase lists his coins to the public. Isn't that a conflict of interest? So before we actually get to that, because I think there was, toward the end, I actually was surprised by some of your conclusions, you eventually found that these VC-backed coins did the worst. Can you give us some examples of, you know,

what the findings were, especially also compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum? Yeah, so I was talking about Coinbase listings in general, but then it got really interesting when I looked at A16Z. There's a couple of different explanations for why things might do worse after they're listed on Coinbase, but one of the things I was interested in is, is it because insiders start selling? And so A16Z probably has had the most listed on Coinbase since then,

and their coins, I think the average Coinbase listing had underperformed Bitcoin by 8%. and for A16Z it was like, you know, 22%. So it was significantly worse. And when you go over 12 months, they were underperforming Bitcoin by like 55%. So it was definitely material. And if you look at the coins that Coinbase didn't list, which is kind of a really interesting thought experiment,

those coins kept going up. And especially the A16Z coins, There were a couple like R-Weave. And I'm trying to remember the other one. They had one more coin where both of those had 10xed after Coinbase rejected them, which is hard to come up with another explanation other than like that insiders were selling after the listing. Yeah, I just wonder. So do you feel like that is likely the reason then?

I think there's one other alternative explanation. and it's probably more favorable to Coinbase, which is that if Coinbase is like the most liquid and well-run exchange, then there isn't going to be wash trading. There's better market surveillance. And so some of these coins, when they're only listed on like Pancake swap or some other tiny exchange, they might be very easy to manipulate. But then once they're on Coinbase, they're much harder to manipulate.

Okay. Yeah, although I don't think PanSk, pancake swap is tiny necessarily, but still, I get your point. And then talk a little bit more about the comparison between those coins, you know, the ones that are VC-backed versus the ones that are not, and how they perform against Bitcoin and Ethereum. Yeah. So the ones that were VC-backed, so like the A-16-Z, those also, like, you know, they underperformed Ethereum. And, Bitcoin by quite a bit, but even just looking at like what percentage of coins. So basically, if you look at A16 Z's listings, every single one of them has underperformed

Ethereum since listing. So it's not even like you have one coin that did really badly and that's bringing down the average. Like this is pretty consistent across the board where the A16Z backed coins are doing worse than the. than the rest of the listings. And if you look at Coinbase Ventures and A16Z together, they do it even worse. So that was kind of an interesting finding.

That was only five tokens, but all five of them have had like major negative returns. And those are, yeah, the ones that had been backed by both. One thing that I found interesting about this comparison to the performance of Eath in particular was, you know, at first my thought was because as you note, the older the coin, the worse the performance. And so I kind of was like, oh, it could just be that older coins either, you know, have grow more slowly as they get bigger. So therefore the price appreciation is less than for a newer coin. Or it could even just be that those older coins are of poorer quality because they, you know,

are older technology. What's your take on those theories? I think that would be a good explanation. you didn't have the non-listing trend. So if you look at the Coinbase, especially if you zoom in on like 2020, so Coinbase debuted 13 coins and rejected 18 coins. So it's a pretty big sample.

And all the debuts averaged to 200% return in dollar terms, but lost to Bitcoin by 3% and Ethereum by over 60. but the rejects, like the ones Coinbase didn't reject, this is 18 different tokens. They averaged out to 1,800%. So nine times the return in USD terms and 300% in Bitcoin terms.

So way, way outperforming when you're just looking at. And I think that's a good time frame too, like a year and a half. Like there hasn't been enough time for that to say like, oh, this is like, you know, some ancient coin that nobody cares about. With Amex Platinum, $400 in annual credits for travel and dining means you not only satisfy your travel bug, but your taste buds too.

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CBC News. And so there was a point in your analysis where you said that the fact that the A16C backed coins that are listed on Coinbase have worse results than Coinbase's overall listings, you said this to me smells of insiders selling. But then at another point in our interview, you kind of said like it may not be that. So what is what kind of what is your theory about what actually is happening here? I think it's probably both.

I think insiders are probably selling. We don't know if it's A16Z or if it's the employees. I think, you know, if they gave us a little more transparency, then we could let them off the hook. But you can see this trend, actually, Scott Galloway did a blog post a couple days ago and did a chart of insider ownership versus the year. And if you look at all the coins that were launching in like 2016, 2017, that had less VC backing,

you know, the team might take 10%, something like that. And now they're taking 20, 25% for the team and 20, 25% for the VCs. and they're basically going up to 50% in all of these major coins that have come out in the last few years like Flow, Avalanche, Internet Computer, and some of those are great examples of coins that did like really badly after a listing. Like internet computer has lost like 90% of its value, even in dollar terms, I think. Yeah, yeah, there's, I know there's a lot of chatter about what is happening with that coin, which is related to the DFINITY project.

Okay, so in a moment, we're going to look at some other factors that Fassel analyzed in his piece, but first a quick word from the sponsors who make this show possible. Join over 10 million people using crypto.com, the easiest place to buy, earn, and spend over 150 cryptocurrencies.

Spend your crypto anywhere using the crypto.com visa card. Get up to 8% cash back instantly, plus 100% rebates for your next. Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime subscriptions. Download the crypto.com app now and get $25 with the code Laura. Link in the description. Back to my conversation with Fassel. So another interesting analysis that you made was at how quickly the Coinbase backed coins

had been listed on Coinbase versus when they were listed on Binance. What were your findings there? looking at well one thing i found was that coin base seemed to list its own coins at a smaller market cap so the average market cap was sub one billion versus you know the average non-coin based backed coin uh tend to be a bit bigger and so that got me thinking that you know are they being more aggressive with their own investments uh and there were a number of examples

where Coinbase usually lists after Binance because Binance is like the more aggressive exchange, especially in terms of regulatory terms. But for a number of their own investments, they, Coinbase had listed it first. And there's a few coins that actually Binance has never listed. And I think the majority of them are backed by either A16 or Coinbase. So there's a number of ways you could explain that, I guess. You know, probably once they make an investment, the team start talking, you know, start looking at when could they potentially list. In some cases, actually got really interesting. There were coins where they started evaluating whether to list them more than 18 months or sometimes even two years before the token started trading.

So it was like way, way ahead of the potential of any trading. And a lot of those became what I call it day one listings where Coinbase listed them from the first day that you could trade them anywhere. And actually, I'm thinking about putting this into a part two. Some of those day one listings have also performed pretty badly. Wow. Okay. Yeah, I find some of what you were saying really fast. fascinating because, you know, you would imagine, like, obviously A16Z has amassed this huge crypto regulatory team. And so you would imagine that any coins that they had backed would be kind of like

really in that sort of straight and narrow, or maybe not all of them literally, but you know what I'm saying? They would tend to be more in that camp. And so it's kind of strange that some of those are not even listed by finance. And then Coinbase has listed those. So one other thing, that I wanted to ask about was, you know, just in general, there's been this big debate in crypto. And it's kind of really stretched on for a few years because I would say in 2020, it started with the VC coins versus fair launch coins argument. And then this year, it sort of morphed into this like Web3 slash VC backed coins versus maybe like Bitcoin or even maybe ether, I guess, because that wasn't VC backed. But after your analysis, where do you stand

on this side of the debate? I mean, I'm all for experimentation and, you know, pushing the boundaries of what we can do with technology. But I think if you're going to be creating this kind of perfect machine for you to print money, which is kind of what A16Z and Coinbase have done, where A16C can create a great halo effect before the listing, and then Coinbase creates liquidity. then I think you have a lot of responsibility to be transparent about what you own,

when you owned it, and just be more forthcoming in that regard. In general, I think there's definitely a lot more Web3 projects than we need out there, but that's probably true of any startup kind of industry, whether that is, you know, like rag sharing startups or home sharing startups. So there's definitely going to be tons of failures. The question is, are these securities? Should they be available to the public? How much information should there be for people to evaluate?

Because I think a lot of people just get on Coinbase. They look at the chart for the last month or whatever. And if it's going up, they buy some and they really don't think much past that. So something that I also found interesting, you know, you actually say at the end, after you do this huge analysis that kind of casts some suspicion on any activity between A16C and Coinbase, you actually conclude that you don't think there's anything nefarious going on at either company. So why not? They do make some efforts to be transparent.

They used to say all the coins that they were evaluating, which I think was an effort at transparency to, you know, show their listing process because they were criticized for that back in 2018 when they listed like a 16g coins that no one was really using and then they said that they have like you know strict internal processes and things like that so i don't think they're lying when they say that the question is like you know if we think about google or goldman uh would we trust their financial statements if no one was auditing them like maybe but i would guess that Out of 500, you know, companies in S&P 500, I would bet that, you know, at least 10% would start cheating if there wasn't an auditor.

And I think we have the same situation. And crypto, it's almost too tempting, you know what I mean? Like you can invest in a startup and, you know, list it on your exchange six months later and get almost immediate liquidity and just keep cycling that money into, you know, greater and greater returns. So you kind of touched on this a little bit, but at the end of your newsletter, you do have suggestions for regulatory solutions to this situation. Talk about those ideas. Yeah, yeah. I think earlier you mentioned what I think about Web3. And what I will say is that I think A16Z has done a lot in trying to suggest rules.

like the industry should have a self-regulatory body and other potential policies. I definitely think that's a bit of the fox guarding the chicken coop kind of a situation. So I think anyone involved in a regulator should be definitely more cautious about listening to their advice. I think like some of the common sense things that would make sense here is like 13D is a regulation where if you own more than 5% of a company stock, then you have to disclose that. I think something similar should be in place for, you know, tokens because it's available to retail investors the same way a public, you know, public market security is. So we should have kind of similar rules around that.

I think something else that would make a lot of sense is, I think everyone's talked about this, to be honest, but more clarity around. unlike utility coins and governance tokens. I think Matt Levine had a newsletter today where he just like jokingly call them securities over and over and said they're only not securities because you get to people say they're not securities. And I think that's almost shocking that the SEC has,

to my knowledge, not said anything about governance tokens because I can't imagine that there isn't some concern about failing the Havie test. So I think those are a couple of areas that are pretty important. And then accredited investor rules like, yes, I think the web three people are right that everyone should get to participate in the startup ecosystem. But that doesn't just mean like a free for all where everyone can buy the coins that you said are going to change the world just because you say they do.

Where you can fundraise just because you wrote up a white paper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. you paid someone else to write a white paper actually. So obviously I'm, you know, sure my listeners know that I'm a journalist and so nothing on the show is investment advice. But I just wondered, you know, now that you have done this analysis, do you have kind of

a sense of like a different way that you'll be approaching when you buy tokens or if you're going to even continue doing that? It's a good question. I mean, I think if you want to play around on question. point base, I think it's probably, when something lists, there's probably an opportunity to day trade. And I think, you know, that's probably also another thing factoring into the returns is that people are looking at dollar returns and, you know, selling whenever they have a 5% loss the way a day trader does. So that's one way to do it. As a U.S. citizen, I don't have

access to a lot of other coins anymore, since most exchanges have cut me off. But I'll definitely take a closer look at circulating supply and token release schedules. I was actually shocked that some of the tokens that are getting listed, they're getting listed when only 4% or 5% of the supply is circulating, which means, you know, 25 to 20 times more supply is going to come online than the next 3D, 5, whatever years. Like, that's such a formula for losing money. And I never imagined, to be honest, that you could get listed on a repeatable exchange with that low circulating supply and that much dilution coming. But there's actually quite a few examples. Yeah.

Yeah. No. As you know, I, or maybe you don't know, but I just finished a book about the 2017 ICA Krasse. And, yes, people who read the book will learn a lot more about that kind of thing. Oh, yeah. I'm very excited to read your book. especially about my old employer consensus. Ooh.

Well, yes, Joe Lubin is a co-founder of Ethereum. So he is definitely a character in the book. Okay, well, this has been a super fun discussion. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Where can people learn more about you and your work? You can check out my substack. It's called Startups and Econ. So startups andecon.

com. Great. All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on chained. Yeah, it was awesome. Thank you. Don't forget. Next up is the weekly news recap. The scorebed app here with trusted stats and real-time sports news. Yeah, hey, who should I take in the Boston game? Well, statistically speaking. Nah, no more statistically speaking. I want hot takes. I want knee-jerk reactions. That's not really what I do. Is that because you don't have any

knees? Or? The score bet. Trusted sports content, seamless sports betting. download today. 19 plus Ontario only. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or the gambling of someone close to you, please go to conicsonterio.ca. Thanks for tuning in to this week's news recap. The Fed drops its CBDC report. The Federal Reserve released its long-anticipated white paper on central bank digital currencies on Thursday, explaining the Fed's current views, plus requesting feedback on questions regarding the privacy, financial stability, and usage of a potential CBDC. Fed did not commit to issuing a CBDC or digital dollar. The Federal Reserve would only pursue a CBDC in the context of broad, public, and cross-governmental support, wrote the Fed, adding,

the Federal Reserve does not intend to proceed with issuance of a CBDC without clear support from the executive branch and from Congress, ideally in the form of a specific authorizing law. Interestingly, the paper did discuss what a potential CBDC would look like. A potential U.S. CBDC, if one were created, would best serve the needs of the United States by being privacy protected, intermediated, widely transferable, and identity verified. Notably, the Fed's definition did not mention either crypto or distributed ledger technology in its definition of a CBDC. In fact, in the 40-page report about issuing a CBDC, the Fed only mentioned crypto 13 times and stable coins 17 times.

When it did discuss crypto, the analysis was biting. Cryptocurrencies have not been widely adopted as a means of payment in the United States. They remain subject to extreme price volatility, are difficult to use without service providers, and have severe limitations on transaction throughput. Many cryptocurrencies also come with a significant energy footprint and make consumers vulnerable to loss, theft, and fraud. The Fed was also tough on stable coins, calling for Congress to promptly enact legislation.

In related news, on Wednesday, two FDIC insured banks, NBH Bank and New York Community Bank, conducted the first USDF transaction. USDF is a stable coin created by a group of FDIC insured banks in the U.S., including Sinovus, New York Community Bank, and Sterling National Bank, the 48th, 45th, and 77th largest banks in the U.S. by assets. The stable coin operates on the Providence blockchain and is redeemable for cash at a one-to-one ratio at any of the member groups. As of now, the FDIC has not confirmed whether USDF would qualify for pass-through insurance, which would protect holders against losses up to $250,000. Russia arrests members of Reville Ransomware Group.

Authorities in Russia announced the dismantling of Reville. the ransomware crime group this week. The Federal Security Service, Russia's top domestic intelligence agency, successfully rated 25 residences tied to Reville, arresting the person the U.S. government says, who was behind the colonial pipeline attack, and the government also seized roughly $6.8 million in currency, including crypto, according to a press release. The FSB said its actions came at the appeal of U.S. authorities. In November, CNN reported that Attorney General Merritt Garland estimated that Reval ransomware had been deployed in an estimated 175,000 computers worldwide and caused at least $200 million in ransom payments to be made.

Of that $200 million, at least $15 million in ransom payments has been confirmed to be received via Bitcoin after Reval's successful attacks on Colonial Pipeline, which paid out roughly $4.4 million. and to the Meatpacker JBS, which paid out $11 million. In related news, Russia's central bank believes that the country should ban cryptocurrency activities, according to a report presented by the director of the Bank of Russia's Financial Stability Department on Thursday. It suggests that an optimal solution for Russia would be to ban crypto mining and that

new laws and regulations are needed to shut down crypto-related activities. Interestingly, the report did not suggest. banning ownership of crypto. The world's 21st largest city intends to add crypto to its balance sheet. Eduardo Paias, the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, announced last week that the city plans to convert part of its treasury into crypto. We are going to launch crypto Rio and invest 1% of the treasury in cryptocurrency, said Paias at Rio Innovation Week.

Rio de Janeiro also has plans to offer tax breaks for citizens who pay in crypto. We are studying the possibility of pay. paying taxes with an additional discount if you pay with Bitcoins. You take the discount of the single quota of 7% of the IPTU, which is local property tax. It becomes 10% if you pay in Bitcoin, explained Rio de Janeiro's finance secretary Pedro Paolo. In related news, El Salvador is coming under fire from Moody's Investor Service for doing what Miami and Rio de Janeiro aspire to do, buy Bitcoin. According to Bloomberg, El Salvador's Bitcoin trades, which says, seem to come directly from President Naim Buckele's personal device,

appear to be down roughly 14% based on the timing of Buckeli's purchase announcements. An analyst for Moody's described El Salvador's BTC trading to Bloomberg as quite risky, particularly for a government that has been struggling with liquidity pressure in the past. The analyst also noted that El Salvador's holdings of 1,139 BTC does not pose a significant threat to its debt obligations. However, increased buying could induce greater risk to repayment capacity, remarked the analyst. Notably, El Salvador faces an $800 million bond that matures in January 2023. Moody's already downgraded El Salvador to a rating of CAA1, which judges El Salvador's bond

to be a very high credit risk. When Investing.com posted on Twitter that Moody had downgraded El Salvador's debt due to Bitcoin trades. Naip Buceli replied, Breaking, El Salvador DGAF. I'm sure you all can figure out what that means. Judge Rules Ripple can gain access to SEC communication. Ripple won a battle against the Securities and Exchange Commission last week when a federal judge granted them access to emails regarding former SEC Director of

Corporation Finance William Hinman's 2018 speech in which he said, putting aside the fundraising that accompany the creation of ether, based on my understanding of the present state of ether, the Ethereum network, and its decentralized structure, current offers and sales of ether are not securities transactions. With a decision, the SEC cannot claim that emails about Hinman's speech are privileged, meaning Ripple will have access to communications from Valerie Stepanek, the SEC's CryptoZar, and other regulators discussing the wording of the speech.

Notably, the federal judge's reasoning was that she felt the speech concerned Hinman's personal views rather than SEC policy. Although Hinman and the SEC admit that agency staff discussed his speech, it appears that this speech was merely peripheral to actual policy formation and not an essential link in the SEC's deliberative process with respect to Ether. Accordingly, emails concerning the speech or draft versions are neither pre-decisional, nor deliberative agency documents entitled to protection. Speaking of regulation, per Bloomberg, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said this week that crypto exchanges should expect stricter scrutiny in 2022. I've asked staff to look at every way

to get these platforms inside the investor protection remit. If the trading platforms don't come into the regulated space, it'd be another year of the public being vulnerable that SEC chair reportedly said in a virtual conference on one. Wednesday. OMG. Defy 2.0 takes a hit.

OM, the native token of Olympus Dow, crashed to an all-time low of $98.35 on Monday, marking a 91% decline from its all-time high in April 2021. According to Defy Lama, Olympus Dow's total value locked has also plunged by over $1 billion since December 1st. Olympus Dow is a decentralized reserve currency protocol. Each OMM token is backed by a basket of assets, like Dai or Frax, in the Olympus Treasury, giving each token a baseline value below which it should not fall. Essentially, the purpose of OMM is to act as a store of value not tied to the USDA.

Ome tokens are generated when users bond other cryptos, such as dye, frax, or WBTC, to the Olympus Dow Treasury. This allows Olympus Dow to own its liquidity. Olympistow also allows Ome holders to stake Ome tokens in return for more Ome tokens. Ome has often traded for above the treasury of Olympostow, allowing for Olympistow to print more Ome

via staking rewards, a.k.a high APY, to dilute the value of Ome back to the value of its treasury. This has created a virtuous cycle in the past as users stake Ome to earn more Ome, which they then stake again. However, when users

stop staking their OM and cash out, the price of OM can be wiped out quickly, as happened Sunday night, according to Crypto reporter Colin Wu. EtherScan shows a sushi swap transaction in which roughly $10 million in OM was traded for dye, causing 25% slippage on OM trades and over $5 million in liquidations. Since the initial sell-off, Ome has yet to recover, with the token price sitting under $120 Thursday morning, down 46% from seven days before. crypto.com hacked for about $33 million. On Monday, the crypto exchange, Crypto.com, disclosure, a sponsor of my shows, announced on Twitter that it would be suspending withdrawals from the platform after receiving multiple reports

of suspicious activity. Several hours later, the firm requested users sign back in and reset their two-factor authentication. On Thursday, in a post-mortem, crypto.com confirmed the suspicions of on-chain analysts by revealing that 483 customers lost 4,836.26 ETH, and 444.93 VTC, totaling roughly $33 million. The exchange says the hack occurred when transactions were approved without 2FA being input by users. Crypto.com says that no customers lost funds as most unauthorized transactions were prevented by the exchange. and other customers were fully reimbursed. Going forward, crypto.com is introducing a security program for qualified exchange users that restores up to $250,000 in stolen or lost funds due to a third-party accessing the account. Walmart, dipping its toes into the Metaverse? Based on a CNBC report,

it appears that Walmart is ready to join the Metaverse. Trademark filings from late December show that Walmart is preparing to make and sell virtual goods and mint virtual currencies, including NFTs. CNBC reports that Walmart filed seven trademark applications. However, in a statement, Walmart hedged against saying it will actually be using the technology. We are testing new ideas all the time, the company said. Some ideas become products or services that make it to customers. And some, we test, iterate, and learn from. The news comes roughly six months after Walmart posted a job on LinkedIn looking for a visionary leader to develop a digital currency strategy. The Meta-Metaverse will have NFTs. The Financial Times, citing several people

familiar with the matter, reports that Meta, for which disclosure, I write a bulletin newsletter, is drawing up plans to allow users to create and display NFTs on their Facebook and Instagram profiles. In addition, Meta is looking into building an NFT marketplace. Novi, Meta's crypto wallet, could play a key role in its push into NFTs. However, as of now, plans are still in the early stage. Speaking of NFT integrations, Twitter Blue, the paywalled version of the social network, announced the launch of NFT profile pictures on iOS, where users can show off their expensive JPEGs to the world. Time for FunBits!

This Dow has it all wrong. Spice Dow is an investment Dow that crowned around $3 million to purchase a rare copy of a proposed adaptation of the famous sci-fi novel Dune in November. This week, the Dow tweeted their plans for the book, which included, produce an animated series based on it, and support community projects. I guess no one told them that buying a copy of a book does not give them the copyright to it. I have genuinely spent 10 minutes staring at this, but no, it really does appear to be true that a bunch of crypto bros just spent 2.6 million euros, 100x the asking price,

for a book at auction in the mistaken belief that they would therefore own the copyright in it, wrote Gary Brannon on Twitter. All right, thanks so much for joining us today to learn more about Fassell and his findings. Check out of the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shepard. with help from Anthony Yoon, Daniel Nuss, Mark Murdoch, Shishonk, and CLK transcription. Thanks for listening.