Since its earliest days, Kraken has hewed more closely to the AnCap libertarian ethos of crypto than just about any other American fintech. San Franciscan Jesse Powell brought the company to life in summer 2011 and by 2013 it presented as an alternative to the friendly AOL style welcome mat of Coinbase. Now headed by Co-CEOs Dave Ripley and Arjun Sethi, Powell became chairman in 2023 when Powell was subjected to what looks to have been some nasty weaponization of the Justice Department. Powell’s home was searched and the feds confiscated his computers, laptops and cellphones, according to the New York Times. The probe officially ended two years later with…
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Stanley Druckenmiller Bigs Up Stablecoins
Money maven praises crypto – again
Those of us around from the early days of crypto will recall how incredibly validating it felt when one of the giants of establishment finance would say something encouraging. In 2020, for example, Modern Consensus ran a story headlined “Bitcoin stabilizes above $15K after Stanley Druckenmiller says he owns BTC.” To have an eminence grise like Druckenmiller give his imprimatur felt like the velvet ropes were starting to crack open. Yesterday, that same voice invited crypto fully into the club. “I assume our whole payment systems will be stablecoins in 10 or 15 years,” Druckenmiller remarked in an interview with Iliana Bouzali (about the 3:40 mark). The interview was taped…
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NYTimes Blockbuster: We Got Satoshi
Carreyrou claims bitcoin inventor is Adam Back
You’ll never get me to say anything bad about the guy who uncovered the full extent of the Theranos con. In this time of Passover, had John Carreyrou done nothing but write Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup and the Wall Street Journal articles that preceded it, it would have been enough for us. But Carreyrou’s assertion today in the New York Times that he’s solved the mystery of Satoshi and it’s Adam Back … we don’t think so. Carreyou begins his million-word Times article describing how he had long been obsessed with solving Bitcoin’s original riddle – the identity of its inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. By…
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Is Brazil the Next Frontier for Crypto?
Election in this fall pits familiar names amid evolving crypto
The announcement last week by Ripple of a “major expansion of its presence across Brazil” should be viewed not just as a press release by a company but a broader sign of institutional digital asset adoption in one of the world’s fastest-growing financial markets. And that adoption will only accelerate if Trump ally and crypto friend Flávio Bolsonaro is elected president this Fall. According to Ripple’s announcement, Ripple will seek a Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) license from the Central Bank of Brazil (BCB). That accords to Brazil’s new virtual asset regulatory framework and also reflects the “compliance-first vibe” that has been Ripple’s hallmark over the company’s decade-plus history. With…
