5 Minute Crypto - daily degens update (Justin Sun SEC shenanies; Solana Saga cryptophone; Lula lulz USD; moar moar)

Two Degens (resources, interviews, on all things crypto and some AI)

Herro — this is the 5 minute crypto daily update for April 14th
As of recording
-Bitcoin is $30,417 on Coingecko
-ETH is $2,013, rising 5% in the last 24 hours after the Shapella hard fork
What’s going on in crypto land…
SEC issues a summons for Justin Sun, Tron founder and Bittorrent owner.
-He has 21 days to respond to a complaint mailed to his suspected location in Singapore
-They earlier filed charges against him for manipulating secondary market trading of TRON token
https://blockworks.co/news/justin-sun-summoned-sec-lawsuit
Gensler in the hot seat among House Republicans
-they want to know all of the SEC’s communications regarding SBF after FTX’s collapse
-in The Block’s words, Both Democrats and Republicans on the committee voiced frustration at the time over losing a chance to grill Bankman-Fried
https://www.theblock.co/post/226334/house-republicans-blast-gensler-over-bankman-fried
Inflation rises just 0.1% from March, and 5% from 12 months ago, in the latest US CPI report
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/12/cpi-march-2023-.html
Some Solana news
-their Saga smartphone will go on sale May 8, 10 months after Solana foundation first teased the product
-Android device and will costs $1K USD
https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/04/13/solanas-crypto-ready-saga-smartphone-goes-on-sale-may-8/
Crypto twitter is talking about Brazil President Lula de Silva’s Shanghai speech, to quote:
Why can't we do trade based on our own currencies? Who was it that decided that the dollar was the currency after the disappearance of the gold standard? Why can't a bank like that of the BRICS have a currency to finance trade relations between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other countries? It's difficult because we are unaccustomed [to the idea]. Everyone depends on just one currency.
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/brazil-president-de-dollarization-lula-brics-nations-currency-china-yuan-2023-4
Some recommended reads
I believe this touches on one of the core differences between the NFT collectables market and the NFT art market. In the NFT collectables market, identity is the product, community is the product, and the image is only as useful as its ability to facilitate those two value propositions.
https://www.niftytable.com/archive/scarcity-and-success-in-nft-art/
Decentralized blockchains have two key properties: “safety” and “liveness.” Safety ensures that everyone agrees on the state of the blockchain, e.g. which transactions have been confirmed. Liveness, on the other hand, ensures that the system actually processes transactions, i.e. is online
https://medium.com/@espressosys/sequencer-decentralization-and-liveness-e5af7f4b25ca
What I find interesting is this: we now have a neutral, censorship-resistant publishing layer built directly on top of the world’s longest-standing, most decentralized and unassailably powerful blockchain.
https://redphone.substack.com/p/ordgies-the-slurpening-and-why-bitcoin
That’s it for today! That took ~5 minutes. All the links will be in the show notes. You can follow @twodegenspod on Twitter and subscribe for more daily updates! I’ll try to do ‘em every day except probably tomorrow.

Outro clip from Unchained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqqi49pBt2A