In this week’s edition of The Context, SBF has a new residence and some of crypto’s best journalists are looking for a home. Here are the top stories and how they were covered, along with YAP Global’s take:
[SBF Bail Revoked ❎]
U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan has revoked Sam Bankman-Fried’s bail. The former FTX CEO is now being housed at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center (MDC) until his trial on fraud charges begins in October. 👩⚖️
What Journalists Said 🔍:
This didn’t come out of nowhere, explained CoinDesk. Prosecutors said SBF violated the terms of his bail by trying to contact FTX US’s former general counsel and using a virtual private network (the defense claims it was to watch the Super Bowl). 🏈 “The last straw, however, was Bankman-Fried's sharing part of former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison's private diary with the New York Times.” 🧃
For sure, Bankman-Fried has been the “most annoying defendant of all time,” wrote Slate. 😠After proving to be “an extremely poor financial executive and steward of his customers’ money,” SBF’s alleged “jackassery” as a defendant means he’s losing his plush digs at his parents’ Palo Alto home. 🏡
What are his new digs like? The Daily Beast called the MDC “notoriously dirty and dangerous.” ☠️ Yahoo Finance painted a similarly grim picture of the facility, which has also housed "El-Chapo" and Jeffrey Epstein. The MDC is so bad, said Quartz, that even the prosecution suggested a different location. 📍
PR Perspective 📢:
Since an Icarus-like fall from fame last November, SBF has attempted to (very) publicly prove everyone’s worst fears about crypto right. This development is another obstacle for Web3 CEOs and founders, who are tasked with framing SBF as merely one bad actor in the space—not a representative of the entire industry.
[CoinDesk Lays Off Staff Ahead of Sale 📉]
CoinDesk, one of the earliest and best-known crypto news publications, is laying off approximately 40% to 45% of its editorial staff as the publication’s owner, Digital Currency Group, prepares to sell the company to an investor group.
What Journalists Said 🧑💻:
“DCG has been hit hard by the downturn in the cryptocurrency industry,” noted Axios, which broke the news.
Ironically, CoinDesk’s solid reporting may be “a potential motivating factor” for DCG to sell, said Protos. Ian Allison and Tracy Wang won a George Polk Award for articles that helped precipitate FTX’s collapse. “The knock-on effects of that reporting have led to a number of bankruptcies across the ecosystem, including at CoinDesk’s sister company Genesis.” 👎
It’s a sad day. The Association of Cryptocurrency Journalists and Researchers acknowledged the outgoing journalists’ “tremendous talent” and thanked them for their “contributions…in the crypto space.” 🌌
PR Perspective 📢:
Although not as established as mainstream media, crypto news sites are necessary to the industry. Crypto publications, and by extension crypto journalists, champion innovation and adoption. They learn about new technologies and educate readers at a comparatively native level, while mainstream publications tend to offer more top-line and cautious analyses that focus on a limited suite of narratives. These layoffs (and the others before it) are a big loss for the crypto space.
[Europe Has Its First Bitcoin ETF 🥇]
Almost two years after it received approval from the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, the first spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) in Europe has been listed. 2️⃣ Jacobi Asset Management’s BCOIN is live on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange. 🇳🇱
What Journalists Said 🔎:
While exchange-traded notes “are commonplace in Europe,” Jacobi lays claim to the first exchange-traded fund, noted CoinDesk.
The former are “debt instruments typically collateralized by the underlying exposure, such as bitcoin,” said Blockworks. By contrast, an ETF “directly holds bitcoin, letting investors tap into its price without directly buying or handling the cryptocurrency.” (See our DeFi Definition below for more.)
“Europe has beaten the U.S.” to the punch, said Decrypt. 🇪🇺🥊 And Jacobi might have launched the ETH even sooner had the demise of FTX and Terra not caused the firm to delay its plans. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, has never approved a spot Bitcoin ETF. 🇺🇸
PR Perspective 📢:
This is a reputational victory for both Jacobi as an industry leader and Europe as a competitive bloc. Regulatory approval in Europe will provide more credibility to the industry, helping its reputation to shift from risky endeavor to legitimate investment option. Furthermore, beating the U.S. to the first spot Bitcoin ETF highlights Europe’s competitive edge.
[Tweet of the week]
https://twitter.com/litcapital/status/1691883043093434728
[TradFi Translations]
A segment exploring one particular aspect of TradFi.
This week: “Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs)” by Vasundhara Singh.
With the news that Europe has its first Bitcoin ETF, search rates for ETFs are surely experiencing a notable surge. But what are ETFs, and why are they important to crypto?
A cryptocurrency exchange-traded fund (ETF) is a type of investment that gives investors exposure to a digital asset (or group of them) without having to directly buy and store the digital assets themselves.
Similar to traditional ETFs, a crypto ETF pools funds from multiple investors and uses these funds to invest in one or more cryptocurrencies, which are held by an asset manager. The ETF is then listed and traded on traditional stock exchanges, providing investors with a convenient way to buy and sell shares in the fund just like they would with any other stock.
The advantage of a crypto ETF lies in its simplicity and accessibility. Instead of dealing with the complexities of purchasing and securing individual cryptocurrencies, investors can rely on the expertise of fund managers to handle this. Furthermore, it offers a level of regulatory oversight and transparency, which can be reassuring for more risk-averse investors.
Leading global asset management firms such as BlackRock and Fidelity have filed Bitcoin ETF applications in the U.S. If the SEC approves them, these ETFs should help improve consumer confidence in crypto. A positive public and government reaction to ETFs could also boost bitcoin liquidity and bullishly impact prices.
The usual disclaimer: This newsletter collates the main themes and headlines of the week in DeFi/crypto/metaverse/Web3/NFT land and tries to provide unbiased context. It's aimed at anyone who wants to keep an eye on the space. It's put together by a team at YAP and doesn't contain any promotion of our clients (if one is mentioned, we'll flag that).
The team: Founder Samantha Yap and consulting editor Jeff Benson, Sam O'Donohoe, Ewan Brewster, Damian Alvarez, Andrew Wickerson, Tiffany Mac Sherry, Becky Corbel and Delon Chan. Your feedback is, as always, welcome. Ping us at thecontext@yapglobal.com. Old newsletters can be found here.
This newsletter is prepared by YAP Global, an international P.R. Consultancy focusing on helping cryptocurrency, Decentralised Finance (DeFi) and Web3 brands through impactful storytelling. Find out more about us here.