tl;dr
• Polygon cuts 20%, gamer Immutable cuts 11%, and Galois Capital closes shop• CZ takes issue over a word and gets into it with Jesse Powell, Kraken CEO• Binance Chief Strategy Officer says stricter US regulations could cause downward volatility for crypto• Paxos cuts ties with Binance citing misalig...
• Polygon cuts 20%, gamer Immutable cuts 11%, and Galois Capital closes shop
• CZ takes issue over a word and gets into it with Jesse Powell, Kraken CEO
• Binance Chief Strategy Officer says stricter US regulations could cause downward volatility for crypto
• Paxos cuts ties with Binance citing misalignment and announces "constructive discussions" with SEC
• Solana Spaces shutting exiting retail business in Miami and NYC by the end of the month
• Mastercard teams with Web3 company Immersive to offer payments with digital asset in New Zealand and Australia
There has been a lot of negative news in the last 24 or so hours. Here is what is on my mind today.
1. Polygon is going to shed 20%, about 100 people, of its workforce. Earlier this year, they had consolidated several business units under Polygon Labs and this is the direct result of realized synergies. The cuts will affect staffers in the US, Canada and India. This is on the heels of Galois Capital shuttering due to FTX exposure and Australian gaming company, Immutable, laying off 11% of their workforce. Additional negative news from Compute North in the form of a court approved liquidation plan for the former Bitcoin miner.
2. CZ has issue with the word 'offshore', stating it is "overly narrow-minded, self-centered, misses the broader picture and is unhelpful to the development of our industry". I can understand where he might have taken issue with the word used by Jesse Powell, CEO of Kraken, but I can also see how the word could be meant to specifically mean the world beyond the borders of the United States. Jesse could have worded his statement far better. That said, CZ, Jesse, we can ill-afford for two of our industry's brightest to be at odds when we have such a concentrated global effort to bring us down. Here is when we need to have thicker skin with each other and work together to bring about global regulatory change.
3. Binance's Chief Strategy Officer says stricter US regulations can trigger major industry volatility to the downside. I completely agree. The US has done a poor job of providing clear guardrails for the industry and follows the same pattern of reaction as they have had with other industries when they were in their respective nascent stage. The latest being the cannabis industry. I am hoping as adoption rises, more eyes open and brains finally get engaged.
4. Paxos officially cuts ties with Binance, Charles Cascarilla, CEO of Paxos stated this has nothing to do with recent regulatory actions, rather that the evolution of the market caused the relationship to no longer be in alignment. Uh, yeah, OK. Sounds more like Binance may have told them to keep them out of it given Paxos now says they are in "constructive discussions" with the SEC.
5. Solana Spaces to shut the doors on their retail operation. I never really understood the idea behind the retail space situation to begin with. You are going to open a brick and mortar to get people to adopt the Metaverse. It just made no sense to me. Unfortunate since one of my friends is a Manager in the NYC location.
6. Mastercard is at it again with yet another partnership, this time in Australia with Immersive. A Web3 company. The partnership will bring crypto payments to New Zealand and Australia. This will allow people to leverage their digital assets wherever Mastercard is accepted. This denotes the huge strides and making it easy for people to use their money. I think it is high time we make it easy for businesses to easily and directly accept crypto as payments. Rebel Reach has the answer and it is our native crypto implementation. Drop me a note if you would like to learn more about our offering.