This Week on Crypto Twitter: India’s changing stance on crypto to SEC cracking down on staking in the US

In this brand new series, we at CoinDCX want to keep you abreast of everything that has been happening on Twitter, crypto and everything in between. While the first month of 2023 had been a whirlwind of bullish activity in crypto prices, the month of February has been somewhat slower. We didn’t see any major crashes in the market, however there was a slowdown in the pace of the rally that we saw in January. However, this can be considered a natural phenomenon after nearly four weeks of continued rally in the crypto market which was led primarily by led by Bitcoin.

MONDAY – 6 FEBRUARY

The new week began on a pretty positive note for the Indian crypto industry when the Indian Finance Minister in an interview agreed that crypto assets were created with ‘very useful financial technologies’. At the onset, this might seem like a general statement but coming from one of the countries that is home to one of the largest number of crypto, Web3 and blockchain developers in the world!

India’s 🇮🇳 Finance Minister says crypto assets are created with "very useful financial technologies" pic.twitter.com/Ct77YPFa0W

— Crypto Money Mantra 💰 (@CryptoMoneyMntr) February 6, 2023

To add further spice to the beginning of this week, an email from the legendary, late American software developer Hal Finney resurfaced and was shared widely on crypto Twitter. For some context, Hal Finney was one of the people who has been credited as the lead developer on many of the initial popular console games and more incredibly – he was an early Bitcoin contributor and was also the first person to receive a Bitcoin from none other than the Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin.

In this email, Finney referred to crypto collectibles two decades before the fact actually became a reality. I know, pretty incredible stuff!

Hal Finney would like Bitcoin NFTs. pic.twitter.com/z4cO468pcA

— Dan Held (@danheld) February 6, 2023

Additional Read: Top Altcoins 2023

TUESDAY – 7 FEBRUARY

On the global front too, this week was pretty important. More on that later. First, let’s talk about the raging feud between the Gemini exchange and its creditors Genesis, which allegedly owes users of Gemini’s now-frozen Earn feature a sum of $900 million. Cameron Winklevoss, one of the Winklevoss brothers and co-founder of Gemini announced that a deal had been reached on a plan to reimburse the Earn product users.

1/ Today, @Gemini reached an agreement in principle with Genesis Global Capital, LLC (Genesis), @DCGco, and other creditors on a plan that provides a path for Earn users to recover their assets. This agreement was announced in Bankruptcy Court today.

— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) February 6, 2023

WEDNESDAY – 8 FEBRUARY

Trust Wallet, a very popular multi-chain Web3 self-custodial crypto wallet service provider took to Twitter to break down a recent loot by a new kind of socially-engineered crypto heist. This was recently executed by a organized criminal group in Italy and here’s how it went about:

1/ This week, an organised crime unit from Rome stole $4M from one of our users.

It was stated, the thief ‘took a picture’ of the user’s Wallet balance to steal the funds.

We’ve done investigating into the events and believe this is how it happened…🧵👇

— Trust – Crypto Wallet (@TrustWallet) February 8, 2023

THURSDAY – 9 FEBRUARY

This was when things started to go downhill for the overall crypto market once again. Amid rumours of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission cracking down upon the staking feature provided by crypto exchanges in the US. Around that time, Coinbase CRO Briand Armstrong took to Twitter to share his opinions on the same.

1/ We're hearing rumors that the SEC would like to get rid of crypto staking in the U.S. for retail customers. I hope that's not the case as I believe it would be a terrible path for the U.S. if that was allowed to happen.

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 8, 2023

Defending the concept of staking, he argued that it doesn’t make Ethereum or any other PoS blockchain a security – making it outside the jurisdiction of the SEC.

3/ Staking is not a security. Here’s a good primer: https://t.co/G2YLL3IPyo

— Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) February 8, 2023

Things were just beginning to heat up.

Just hours after Brian Armstrong’s tweet on the rumoured crackdown by the SEC on the staking feature provided by crypto exchanges in the US, the SEC took to twitter to announce that it had taken action against Kraken in the same matter. The SEC announced that Kraken had failed to register the offer and sale of their crypto asset staking-as-a-service program in exchange for “outsized returns untethered to any economic realities”.

Two Kraken entities, Payward Ventures Inc and Payward Trading Ltd, agreed to immediately cease offering or selling securities through crypto asset staking services or staking programs and pay $30 million in disgorgement, interest, and penalties.

— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) February 9, 2023

The tweet also highlighted that Kraken had agreed to immediately halt all staking-as-a-service operations in the crypto sector and also agreed to pay a sum of $30 million in fines for “disgorgement, interest and penalties”.

On this day, we also saw the founder of the now bankrupt Three Arrows Capital (3AC), Zhu Su announcing his next project was going to be a next generation CEX (centralized exchange) which would have a fully decentralized crypto custody for user’s funds.

1/ june/july was total darkness for me, kyle & our creditors after our bet on accelerating crypto adoption proved fatally wrong

we were crushed by the collapse of the market & the way our misplaced conviction had contributed to the pain https://t.co/eO5jLjrLU7

— Zhu Su 朱溯 (@zhusu) February 9, 2023

FRIDAY – 10 FEBRUARY

Within the next couple of hours of the announcement by the SEC, we saw Hester Peirce, the commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission going against the action of her own organisation and even shared her opinions on the event which she termed as “Kraken Down”. She also said that the SEC is hostile to the crypto sector as a whole. She also criticized the SEC’s approach in the matter, saying that it was more efficient and fair to issue guidance on staking programs rather than acting through enforcement and regulation.

My thoughts on today's Kraken settlement: https://t.co/mijt3MNN4U

— Hester Peirce (@HesterPeirce) February 9, 2023

MONDAY – 13 FEBRUARY

On the first day of the new week, we saw yet another statement coming from the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman where during the question hour, she was asked about crypto mining. She spoke about it at length, and also suggested that India is raising the matter of crypto mining, and transactions at the G20 summit that is being presided by India this time to bring about a standard operating protocol in the sector on the global stage.

In the G20, we're raising it & having detailed discussions with members so that a standard operating protocol emerges which results in a coherent, comprehensive approach where all countries work together in bringing some regulation.

– Smt during Question Hour in LS. (2/2)

— NSitharamanOffice (@nsitharamanoffc) February 13, 2023

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