The biggest blockchain news this year, reviewed

🔟 Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) says it's "fine" if people want to invest in cryptocurrencies

• To say that the liberal senator has been vociferous in her criticism of cryptocurrencies until just before the election is an understatement.
• The comment, made in October, is a sign of which way the political winds are blowing.

9️⃣ Russia's legislature gave a green light to using stablecoins to evade sanctions, and officials are now saying they are doing so

• Call this a trend to watch, as nations that have been smacked around by dollar hegemony look for a workaround.
• See also: El Salvador and Argentina signing an agreement around crypto collaboration.

8️⃣ Alameda Research CEO and one-time Sam Bankman-Fried girlfriend Caroline Ellison gets prison

• This decision put the FTX saga 95% behind us.
• Meanwhile, Ellison's co-defendants, Nishad Singh and Gary Wang, were left free by the courts. In addition, the partner of another executive got hit with charges that she wasn't expecting.
• FTX users should be paid back next year — then we will be done. 😮‍💨

7️⃣ France arrests Telegram CEO Pavel Durov

• It felt at the time like an escalation of nation-states cracking down on digital privacy (even though the privacy on Telegram leaves a lot to be desired).
• Behind the scenes: Telegram has been a powerhouse of gains for certain crypto traders this year.

6️⃣ Meme coins

• Call this $100 billion+ market silly if you want, but good luck finding a meme coin trader who does not also think it's silly — in a fun way.
• As an investor put it on a popular crypto podcast recently, meme coins might be the first truly successful game native to web3.

5️⃣ Congress passes a crypto bill

• Both chambers of Congress voted to kill the SEC's controversial accounting rule for its regulated entities, with a resolution.
• President Biden vetoed it, but it still marks the first time the U.S. Congress has passed a measure that pertains to this technology.

4️⃣ Prediction markets catch on

• The founder who did the most to make betting on real-world events a big deal amid this year's election is having legal issues at the moment, but it's hard to imagine that this kind of gaming isn't here to stay in the U.S.

• Yes, there is a pending appeal, but will it matter? (🎰 I know what I'd bet.)

3️⃣ Crypto's mega-PAC, Fairshake, shakes out

• The $160 million or so that the blockchain industry dropped into the election won it a lot of friends in Congress.
• It remains to be seen if it was money well spent. Getting people elected is one thing, but getting policy enacted is very much another.

2️⃣ Bitcoin ETFs launch

• It was a decade-long saga, starting with the crypto exchange Gemini's co-founders, to get to the launch of exchange-traded products that represented actual holdings of bitcoin (BTC).
• It took a rebuke of Gary Gensler's SEC to make it happen, but it turned out to be the most successful launch of such a line of products.

1️⃣ Trump had some friends over

• In May, once and future president, Donald J. Trump, invited people who had bought his NFTs to hang out with him at Mar-a-Lago. From then, he was vying to be the first pro-crypto president.
• If anyone tells you they saw this one coming, they are lying.

The bottom line: The consequences of that shindig have been astounding, and it seems like they are just getting started.