Chain Reaction - 31st October 2022
An awesome week with our monthly meetup taking a more networking focus with our latest event at Haymarket HQ. This was part of the Spark festival celebrating tech across Australia. Here’s a little video from the event.
There was also meetups in Adelaide and Perth on the same night so the connections continued across Australia.
We also announced that we're proud to be partnering with NFT Fest and will be speaking at the event on the 23rd 24th of November.
We will be running a meetup on the 22nd November prior to the main event so if you’re free for that please do come along - link here: https://www.meetup.com/aus-defi-association-melbourne/events/289299777/
News
Great to see local crypto VC Upside DAO get a bit of press in the AFR with their launch last week https://www.afr.com/technology/this-fund-just-raised-5m-to-solve-crypto-s-warped-model-20221019-p5br44
In DeFi news we see MakerDAO move towards more decentralisation with this latest vote that will see them move towards more sun DAOs https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2022/10/24/makerdao-members-support-founders-endgame-plan-to-break-up-into-metadaos-21b-of-transfers/
The UK is seeing some upside from the Prime Ministerial change last week as Rishi Sunak takes over. He wanted to build the UK as a Crypto hub when he was Finance Minister so we shall see https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/10/24/crypto-friendly-rishi-sunak-to-become-uk-prime-minister-following-truss-exit/
Treatment of crypto in local tax https://www.afr.com/technology/your-bitcoin-gains-are-now-officially-in-the-tax-law-20221020-p5brgz
Also in enforcement news, we saw local regulator ASIC take action against BPS Financial, the group behind Qoin. This was for making false or misleading claims and engaging in unlicensed conduct. More details here but this should serve as a warning for others - https://asic.gov.au/about-asic/news-centre/find-a-media-release/2022-releases/22-287mr-asic-sues-bps-financial-for-alleged-misleading-statements-about-crypto-asset-qoin/
It was great to see some of our web3 friends taking strides with K Safe, a driving ratings app that encourages safety, made the news headlines https://www.linkedin.com/posts/ksafeapp_ksafe-on-channel-9-news-activity-6991576146953846784-1Wd7?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_android
Also, our friends at Jubi DAO had some updates with product pre-sales at the UpsideDAO launch
Additionally, Steve Vallas, former CEO of Blockchain Australia announced a new role as a technology advisor at Skafold. He's also helping run the upcoming NFT Fest which we're part of.
Videos
Some great videos to check out this week if you’ve missed the news. First up on the Reddit NFTs/Digital Collectibles situation
Also, whilst this was last week’s news, jump to 9:00 of this video as The Defiant crew go through the SBF (Sam Bankman-Fried) controversy with DeFi as he puts in calls for regulation
It’s an important topic as we see this sort of debate becoming prominent on our shores here too, especially as the government puts more effort and focus into understanding crypto.
In-depth reads
Finally, here’s a few in-depth reads. First of all a bit of crypto history from Matt Levine of Bloomberg News, simply titled “The Crypto Story”. In it, he explores the origins of crypto, where we’ve been and where we’re likely going. It’s lengthy, but well worth it. https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2022-the-crypto-story/?leadSource=uverify%20wall
Thanks to Joey Beverley for highlighting this originally on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/posts/joey-be_blockchain-technology-research-activity-6991183323138068480-jIfp?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Deep diving into crypto is something we’ve seen a few legal firms do and it’s great to get this piece out from the folks at HSF (Herbert Smith Freehills), some of whom have spoken at and attended our events. Check it out - https://insights.hsf.com/techquake-cryptocurrency/p/1
Data
The market got bullish again which pushed BTC well above the $19k USD it had been hovering around for a while. Even ETH was well above its $1.3k at over $1.5k USD. How long will it last though, we shall see.