Do Ripple executives’ statements imply that XRP is a security? | An interview with David Silver: The attorney on a crusade to clean up crypto’s act | Buffett Bet 2.0: Crypto asset index vs. S&P 500
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Do Ripple executives’ statements imply that XRP is a security?
An interview with David Silver: The attorney on a crusade to clean up crypto’s act
“The higher the price of XRP, the more money Ripple makes by selling XRP, the more money Ripple is worth, the more power Ripple has to incentivize partners, and so on.”” — David Schwartz, CTO Ripple
The Big Block
In the slow dance between the SEC and cryptocurrencies, nothing has garnered more interest – or more confusion – than a single question: “Is this token a security?” Due to recent SEC enforcement and comments, the conditions required to answer that question are becoming a bit clearer. Yet, murky origins and numerous public comments ensure that it is still an opaque question in the case of Ripple and XRP.
Despite the legal uncertainty around XRP, the large investment firm Grayscale offers its customers the ability to gain exposure to the price movement of the asset through XRP Investment Trust, which currently has $4.6M in assets under management. R3 recently launched Corda Settler, an open source application that allows Corda users to settle using any payment method, with XRP being the first payment rail. The Ripple management team regularly talks up pilots of product that require the XRP token in their public statements.
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Around The Block
An interview with David Silver: The attorney on a crusade to clean up crypto’s act
David Silver is a big fish in a growing pond. A lawyer by trade, Silver half-jokes that he’s led nineteen of the twenty largest crypto cases domestically this year, and claims to have overseen the first crypto lawsuit in history.
But the corporate attorney turned investment-fraud lawyer earned his crypto trophy almost by accident. His first introduction to the volatile digital currency occurred one evening in 2014 at a charity dinner, four years after leaving Washington DC to start his own law firm in Miami. A guest at the event volunteered to give him five Bitcoin – promptly setting up a wallet and making the transfer. Silver had no idea at the time that he had just been given what would become a digital pot of gold and a subject that would define his career. — More
Buffett Bet 2.0: Crypto asset index vs. S&P 500
Morgan Creek Digital, a unit of Mark Yusko's Morgan Creek Capital Management, issued a Warren Buffett-esque challenge on Thursday. The Digital Asset Challenge (or Buffett Bet 2.0) is a bet that Morgan Creek's Digital Asset Index Fund will outperform stock-index S&P 500 (SPX) over the next 10 years starting January 1, 2019. Morgan Creek Digital is betting it will and is looking for a Wall Streeter to take the other side. Readers might recall Buffet's $1 million bet that a passive investment in the S&P 500 would outperform a sample of five actively managed hedge funds. — More
UnitedCorp launches lawsuit against Bitmain, Roger Ver, and Kraken — More
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US Government offering $800K grants to anti-forgery blockchain startups — More
Two Sigma and ConsenSys back U.K. custody startup in $8 million fundraise — More
BitGo has plucked a finance vet out of retirement to lead institutional custody — More
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