#195 - Gary Gensler grilled 🍳

GM and welcome to Decentra Daily.

We're the web3 newsletter that's more refreshing than an ice-cold Coke.

Today,

1. Congress finally asks the SEC what's up

2. Project watch: Opepen, Trump & Starbucks

3. A Franklin movie?

Plus, all the web3 headlines, memes, and Tweets of the day.

D-Daily takeaway 🥡This is the biggest 24 hr change we've seen so far. Almost all collections in our index are down, due in part to crypto's strong month.

What's this? 🤔Our floor price index tracks the biggest, most influential pfp projects, art collections, and gaming assets.

SEC chair appears before Congress

Even if you're not a crypto fan, you should probably feel uneasy about the Securities and Exchange Commission's free-wheeling lil' tyrant, Gary Gensler.

With Gensler at the helm, the SEC has spent the last couple of years engaged in a campaign against crypto that feels more personal than rational.

The US agency seems to despise crypto exchanges, which provide users with convenient trad-fi off-ramps and make it easy to trade cryptocurrencies.

For example, the SEC raised charges against longstanding exchange Bittrex on Monday, accusing its former CEO of running an unregistered company.

A big part of Gensler and the SEC's gameplan is to get crypto assets classified as securities, bringing them under their purview.

(And to be fair, the government's commodities agency, the CFTC, is doing the same thing – trying to force a definition of crypto = commodity).

Gensler's latest scheme for becoming Sith lord of crypto? He wants to redefine what "exchange" means so that crypto exchanges better fall under the SEC's remit.

Ah, the old reverse UNO card.

With all Gensler's dodgy dealings, the SEC has finally attracted the attention of Congress.

Yesterday, Gensler was called to explain his recent actions in front of the House Financial Services Committee and its Chair, Patrick McHenry.

– and it was s-u-weet.

Gensler squirmed under questioning, unable to give straight answers to pretty much anything.

Here's Gary flailing under McHenry's yes-or-no question of whether ETH should be classed as a security:

One of the SEC's primary tactics to ensnare crypto companies has been to encourage uncertainty, making it pretty much impossible for exchanges to know where they stand with guidelines and regs.

So, it's kinda nice to see Gensler hoisted by his own petard.

Also good viewing: Rep. Warren Davidson wants Gensler fired

For making it practically impossible for crypto companies to comply with ever-changing rules, Davidson wants Gensler removed from his job and replaced with an Executive Director that would report to a board.

Here's Gensler admitting to Rep. Bryan Steil that he's never personally interacted with crypto: 

Which basically means that Gensler is the same as my Dad – lots of opinions, but has never installed MetaMask.

And lastly, here's Rep. Emmer giving Gensler a good ol' fashioned telling off

"An incompetent cop on the beat." 😂😌

On the web3 wire 

Matt Damon's Crypto.Com ad was for clean drinking water 💦Remember that cringy ad where Matt Damon encouraged ppl to ape into the '21 bull market? Damon says the only reason he did the ad was to raise money for water.org.

ETHGPT: a useful bot for exploring the Ethereum blockchain ⛓️This project loads ChatGPT with specialist Ethereum knowledge from sources like go-Ethereum and ethresear.ch.

Manifold launches “Multiburn" 🔥The feature allows creators to set mechanisms where collectors burn multiple NFTs from different collections to create tokens.

Notable Tweets ✅

NFT updates: Opepen, Trump Cards & Starbucks Odyssey

Here are some eye-catching updates from three of the currently most-discussed NFT collections. 👀

Opepen

• Opepen is Jack Butcher's pfp collection

• The tokens are already minted and the artwork is being developed in public

• Over the past weeks, Jack has been experimenting with AI-generated collection artwork

• On Monday, he posted an extensive thread update with some concrete details

The thread went down well with the markets. Within the Jack Butcher ecosystem, Opepen has reached an ATH relative value.

Trump Trading Cards: Season 2

• The second series of Trump's NFT collection has dropped and sold out

• The previous collection of fantasy/fan-fiction images had a volatile floor price, but offered potential profits for savvy traders

• However, the release of a new set of NFTs seems to have destroyed season 1 value.

Starbucks Odyssey

• The First Store Collection is the 2nd NFT drop on Starbucks' Odyssey platform

• Each of the 5000 "Stamps" costs $100 USD and contain unique collages based on images from the original Pike Place coffee shop

• The drop precedes the expected full public rollout of Odyssey, the company's web3 rewards program.

Could there be a movie about Franklin's rise and fall?

It looks like Franklin Caldwell, better known as Franklin in the web3 world, has hung up his seed phrases and retired from NFT trading.

After selling more than 20 Bored Apes and Tweeting about needing liquidity to pay off gambling-related crypto loans, he deleted his Twitter account.

(Check out this thread by @web3bandit for some sleuthing on what exactly went down).

Franklin was one of the earliest and richest whales in the BAYC ecosystem – at one point holding 67 Apes.

He also repeatedly raised eyebrows with high-stakes crypto gambling and trades designed to manipulate the market. 

Now that Franklin's story arc seems to have ended, at least one famous screenwriter is eyeing up his story

His name's Ben Mezrich, he's web3 savvy, and he's the writer behind some big movie adaptations.

On Ben's resume:

• Bringing Down The House - His book about a group of MIT students who learned to count cards, which became the movie 21.

• Accidental Billionaires - which turned into the amazing The Social Network.

Last year, Big Short author Michael Lewis spent months shadowing Sam Bankman-Fried during the unraveling of FTX.

The rights for his forthcoming book have already been the subject of a bidding war, with Apple tipped to produce the show.

Decentra Daily's featured game: The Glimmering

Wanna learn to play 5e DnD, plus be part of the next kick-ass blue chip project? ⚔️

GRIPNR is the web3 company behind Tabletop RPG, The Glimmering. On March 30th, they’re doing something we’ve never seen done before – launching a Genesis NFT Collection and game platform on the same day.

Holders of GRIPNR's Genesis Collection Heroes will receive:

• A lifetime subscription to the On-chain Play Platform

• Early access to all future games built on the GRIPNR protocol

• Access to all of GRIPNR’s published materials (deep delves, heroes guide, game modules, etc.)

• Added value and rarity to NFTs through gameplay

PLUS preferred access to mint The Glimmering Mutant Apes, an exclusive collection in partnership with J1mmy.eth, launching this summer.

It’s time to BE LEGENDARY. 🦾 Start by heading to the GRIPNR Discord.

Meme of the day

Have a great day! 👋

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