Kyle Lawrence [00:00:00]:
Chevron gets overturned. Is the Micah actually a good statue for crypto? And crypto freezed Julian Assange. All that and more, coming up on Block and Order. Welcome to Block and Order, the show that explores the legal issues facing the world of web three and beyond. I'm Kyle Lawrence, and with me as always. Come on, everybody. Let's make this guy more famous than the hawk tuah girl, Moish Peltz.

Moish Peltz [00:00:31]:
Oh, God, that's too famous. Kyle, let's. Let's scale it back. I want to be, like, 30% that famous.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:37]:
You want to be infamous, like in three amigos? Would that be better?

Moish Peltz [00:00:41]:
No. Well, yeah, I guess. Infamous.

Kyle Lawrence [00:00:44]:
It means more than you gotta pick one. You know, a lot of people I'm noticing, or giving her a hard time, or you're seeing all this curmudgeonly, old timey stuff about, oh, welcome to America. You're famous for doing absolutely nothing. But you know what? The older I to get, if I were walking down the street, bombed and gave some random interview and said something completely ridiculous, and then throngs of people wanted to be my friend and throw tons of money at me, I think that'd be pretty awesome.

Moish Peltz [00:01:09]:
Well, you did go to school in New Orleans, so that makes sense. It's kind of like you can't. You can take Kyle out of New Orleans, but you can't take no out of you. Look, we're going to be in Nashville in a couple of weeks, and you're going to have your chance again, if that's what you want, Kyle.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:22]:
It's true. I mean, I'll have an ample opportunity to make a complete fool out of myself and get rich off of it. And I cannot wait to.

Moish Peltz [00:01:29]:
We might have to record an episode of Block and Order in Nashville.

Kyle Lawrence [00:01:33]:
I think we have no choice at this point.

Moish Peltz [00:01:34]:
Yeah. All right, so to the top of the order, we are looking at SEC versus Binance. Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the district court for the District of Columbia issued an order on a motion to dismiss, which was filed by Binance, Binance US, and CZ, which dismissed some, but not all, the claims against those entities. I think primarily important was the decision about whether or not crypto assets are themselves securities. So Judge Jackson rejected the SEC's allegations. This is the embodiment theory that the tokens somehow embody the investment contract themselves. But no. So there's tokens and there's sales of a token pursuant to an investment contract, which is what a lot of the legal crypto defense bar has been saying.

Moish Peltz [00:02:29]:
And so Judge Jackson dismissed the agency's claims relating to secondary market sales of tokens and some other related products and services. So, Kyle, how important do you think is this decision in the plethora of both crypto decisions in the past couple of weeks, and also just, you know, more generally, Supreme Court jurisprudence seems like the courts have been on fire the past couple of weeks.

Kyle Lawrence [00:02:54]:
Well, it's certainly nice to see some momentum heading in the right direction. And you hit the nail on the head when you talked about the idea that comes through in this decision, that the tokens themselves, the assets themselves, are not securities. And I think that's a very common misconception, one we encounter all the time when we talk with issuers and we talk with even regulators. And that's kind of mixed messaging. It's that the tokens themselves, the assets, are not securities. It's the manner in which they are sold to investors that makes them, quote, investment contracts, and if they satisfy the Howey test, making them an investment contract. Thus they are securities governed by the federal securities laws. So it is nice to see some consistency which followed the ripple case.

Kyle Lawrence [00:03:34]:
That was one of the first major one to have that domino fall. And it's just good to see that courts are following in those footsteps. You're starting to see the narrative take hold that it's the manner in which these things are sold, and hopefully that's an omen or a positive omen of things to come. It's also worth noting that the court rejected these allegations that crypto tokens somehow embody investment contracts in and of themselves. And I think that's a key takeaway from the case. Where do you think we go from it?

Moish Peltz [00:04:03]:
You're right about this. Now having this how the legal process works, especially when we're in this regulation by enforcement, there needs to be enforcement. There needs to be a jurisprudence that says green light, red light. Yes. No, I think this was actually, this decision was 80 something pages, I think was probably the most comprehensive discussion of this idea of whether secondary sales are actually, is the securities sale pursuant to Howey? I think the analysis there is probably the most in depth. I think it does kind of stand on the shoulders of a lot of those decisions we've been talking about on the show for the past, almost year now. And, yeah, I mean, it's going to give us a little bit more of that flavor of, in which exact context is a secondary sale of a crypto token going to be subject to the securities contract kind of framework?

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:03]:
Well, certainly in instances and similar to ripple, when Judge Torres ruled that the programmatic sales were not securities. It's because the people buying them, they're not buying them necessarily from the issuer. Most of the time, you have no idea who you're buying it from. So how can that satisfy the Howey test? It doesn't make any sense.

Moish Peltz [00:05:19]:
Yeah, but I think the question still is. Right. Like, if you're from a practical level, like, okay, great, great decision, but I still have to worry about, like, how to do this stuff. And so it gives us a little bit more information, but it doesn't put anything to bed. And you still have people asking, well, I mean, it still doesn't make it clear. Right. For people that are trying to do sales, that are trying to compensate people that are trying to do whatever tokens. There's still a lot.

Moish Peltz [00:05:44]:
A lot of gray area and still not. Yeah, so...

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:48]:
Well, if it puts the question to bed, then we wouldn't have a show anymore.

Moish Peltz [00:05:52]:
Come on.

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:55]:
Definitely.

Moish Peltz [00:05:57]:
You heard it here first, folks.

Kyle Lawrence [00:05:59]:
Yeah, definitely an interesting development, but that brings us to. That's a great segue into the next topic on the order, which is, as I'm sure everybody heard, Chevron has been overturned. And I'm sure that you're seeing a lot of scuttlebutt, depending on your partisan news entertainment channel of choice, what everyone wants to think about that. But at the end of the day, Chevron has been overturned by the United States Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision. Chevron was established in 1984 and effectively grants or granted federal regulators with broad authority to interpret ambiguous statutes brought down by Congress, which allowed these agencies to enforce their own interpretations with deference from the courts. We see that time and time again from the SEC. Chief Justice John Roberts had criticized Chevron as unworkable, stating it allowed agencies to change regulatory course without congressional authorization. This decision now requires the courts to independently evaluate agency actions based on statutory limits.

Kyle Lawrence [00:06:56]:
The main concept you want to take away is called Chevron deference, which the court reasoned is irreconcilable with the federal Administrative Procedures act, which commands that the reviewing court, not the agency, must decide all relevant questions of law. Moish, what do you think about this? A lot of talk about this, but I'm curious as to your thoughts.

Moish Peltz [00:07:14]:
What are my thoughts on Chevron? Well, look, we all went to law school, and for the past 40 years, this is everything people are taught about agency law in law school. So there's a whole category. Maybe everyone's heard Chevron the past week, but our last few days. But what does it mean? And it deals with the mechanics of how administrative agencies and the executive branch of government, how they interpret legislation and. And provide guidance and. And make rules, and then whether those rules are going to. So, you know, I'm a little bit pissed, right, that everything I know about Chevron I learned in law school is now, you know, depleted, you know, I guess, deprecated. We don't get a refund for our law school classes back then.

Moish Peltz [00:08:04]:
I don't. I don't know how much impact this is going to have. Right.

Kyle Lawrence [00:08:07]:
Yeah.

Moish Peltz [00:08:07]:
If anything, I think this is an argument that the SEC actually should do no more rulemaking because they're not going to get any deferents when they do it. Right? So, yeah, all right, screw rulemaking. Let's just enforce, enforce, enforce, and let the judges figure it out anyways. So that's a little bit of a scary proposition that, you know, now, I think. I think the other. The flip side of this is, when Congress passes legislation, they now have an opportunity to say, here's what we know. Here's what we don't know. We are specifically authorizing the agencies to interpret or to go, in fact, find and to figure out the regulatory muddle in the middle.

Moish Peltz [00:08:55]:
But until Congress gives them that authority, the courts don't have to listen to them.

Kyle Lawrence [00:08:59]:
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I hear what you're saying. I just feel like this is, you know, defeat the new boss same as the old boss kind of thing, because you're just replacing one master for another. You know, the. The sort of push to get this overturned was, we're tired of this, you know, government overreach and blah, blah, blah. So now instead of, you know, a government agency telling you what to do, you're gonna have a judge in Montana telling you what to do. That doesn't make any sense to me. I'm sorry.

Kyle Lawrence [00:09:23]:
And there's a. I don't know what the old proverb is. I know it from Charlie Wilson's war. It's the we'll see. It's little boy gets a bicycle. Everybody says, how wonderful. Wiseman says, we'll see. And then he breaks his leg, and everybody says, how terrible.

Kyle Lawrence [00:09:37]:
He says, we'll see. Then they go to war. The little boy has a broken leg. He can't fight in the war. The effort says, how wonderful. Weizen says, we'll see. That's where we're at. We'll see.

Moish Peltz [00:09:45]:
We'll see. There was the penultimate episode of Bluey had a we'll see episode, which I heartily recommend. Everyone with and without kids, go check out. But, yeah, it's for sure. This is a. Well, we'll see.

Kyle Lawrence [00:10:03]:
Yeah. All right.

Moish Peltz [00:10:10]:
All right, next on the order, we are talking about certic and Kraken. So Kraken is a major us crypto exchange. Certic is a major. What do we call these people? They are auditors for crypto smart contracts and projects. What a cool business. That didn't exist until five years ago. It's a research company that helps crypto companies audit smart contracts and does a lot of for hire work in the industry. Now, what they did was they identified certic identified an issue in the Kraken exchange that was basically a technical bug that would allow malicious actors to print assets in their Kraken account without actually spending the money.

Moish Peltz [00:10:58]:
So they informed the Kraken team, who patched the issue within a few hours of being identified. But then Certic basically held them over the barrel of a gun, as has been reported, trying to get paid, and actually withdrew $3 million, which seemed like way more than they would need to prove that the bug was real. And there's this big storm about whether certic was acting ethically or was actually a white hack hacker in the situation or whether they had crossed the line into the black hack by being so aggressive and actually taking out money and refusing to return it and asking for a king's ransom. Kyle, what do you think? Cerdic. Black hat or white hat or somewhere in the middle?

Kyle Lawrence [00:11:45]:
Yeah, you know, it's funny, because the. The dichotomy between white and black hat is something I was certainly thinking about when reading about this, actually. Did you know that there are six classifications of hats, including. I did not know that either.

Moish Peltz [00:11:57]:
My mental models only has room for three hats. Kyle, that's it.

Kyle Lawrence [00:12:01]:
Well, I'll take the other three. But the only one I remember was a gray one. I remember what it is, but, yeah, so, you know, I've been a proponent of. Look, you know nothing. Not that I advocate cheating, but, you know, if you ain't cheating, ain't trying kind of thing, because we've talked about the mango guy, who's exploiting not vulnerabilities, but the way the system works. And you can exploit it just like a video game, you know, hack, you know, like in Mario Kart, as my nephews always destroy me in it. But these guys seem to have crossed that line into unethical hacking, not like ethical hanking hacking, where the banks hire people to test security vulnerabilities to see where the. The landmines are these guys seem like they went in with purpose and kind of purposely defrauded company.

Kyle Lawrence [00:12:41]:
They knew what they were doing. And it seems like when you just hold someone's feet to the fire like that and claim these funds like that, you kind of know what you're doing. I don't like to cast aspersions. We don't like to be judged during executioner. But where they smoke this fire, and I think these guys cross the line into black hat territory. I don't know if you agree.

Moish Peltz [00:12:58]:
Yeah, you know, I don't know enough about what happened, but it certainly seems like that that's how Kraken felt.

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:04]:
Well, yeah, right.

Moish Peltz [00:13:06]:
And I think it's interesting because so much of this, like, white hat hacking, I think, is by custom and by just the way that, like, the world works when it comes to security research and, and, you know, penetration testing and all these things. And some of it's by consent and some of it's not. And then when things kind of go wrong, there's kind of this, like, yeah, we'll. We'll do, we'll figure it out. We'll all, we'll all help each other. But I don't think there's a lot of, like, you know, black letter law, like, you must do it this way. And so it leads to these weird ambiguities where people get to kind of push the boundaries. And, you know, obviously, they're trying to get paid for finding an exploit that could have caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damage, and they're saying, well, we want a little piece of that.

Moish Peltz [00:13:51]:
And, you know, so I get from the, you know, from that point standpoint as well, too.

Kyle Lawrence [00:13:56]:
If only there was a regulatory body to fill in the ambiguities and what is, and what is not allowed.

Moish Peltz [00:14:01]:
Well, they can't now.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:02]:
Well, exactly. So much of that movie moving right along. Moving, moving right along is a great segue. Julian Assange is back in the news, everybody. On June 24, Julian Assange was released from Belmarsh prison in London after he was a guest of the government for over five years. His release was due in part thanks to donations from crypto holders. The WikiLeaks founder will now head back to his native Australia through the remote us island of Saipan. I have no idea where that is, if we're being honest.

Kyle Lawrence [00:14:35]:
Where he will plead guilty to charges of violating us espionage laws does not sound good. So a crypto lawyer and founding member of Assange Dao, a collective of cyberpunk advocates advocating for Assange's release said the crypto ecosystem bankrolled Assange's freedom. Back in February of 2022, Assange Dao launched a fundraising campaign through crowdfunding platform Juicebox. And the Assange Dao had raised an estimated total of 17,422 etH, which amounted to $59.5 million. Moishe, we've seen other Daos doing similar things. Ross Albert was one we talked about Constitutiondao. What do you think about this? Is this the best use of daos? Do you think they really played a part? What are your thoughts on this?

Moish Peltz [00:15:17]:
Yeah, I mean, look, I think you said they raised 17,000 ETH, which is about $60 million, and they spent about 37 million of that. So I understand on his, his legal defense and I guess related publicity and campaigning. So, look, I mean, he got, he's definitely served five years, and he was, there's these pictures of him, like, kind of shuffling in and out of, you know, the different, you know, diplomatic kind of spaces where he was hiding. And I think his plea was for time served right. So it sounds scary, you know, like the espionage act. He's pleading guilty, but he got time served, right, because he had to fly in a private jet to Saipan to.

Kyle Lawrence [00:15:59]:
Have a district court judge, just like everybody does.

Moish Peltz [00:16:03]:
All, the whole thing is kind of crazy. But look, at the end of the day, it's hard to imagine that he would not have been freed had he not had a war chest of all this money to pay for his attorneys and to help kind of move things along through the political process.

Kyle Lawrence [00:16:21]:
Well, what happens to the rest of that money? If they raise 60 and they spent 37 million? Where does that go? Does it go to him? Does it go to the DAO? I'm just curious to see what happens to that. I haven't even looked.

Moish Peltz [00:16:33]:
Yeah, I don't, you know, I haven't heard about whether, if someone out there in the audience knows what Assange Dao is doing, whether they still have that, you know, $20 million Delta, and if they're now, I would presume they could vote on, you know, if you're a DAO and you've got $20 million left over after, like, hey, we did it. We freed the guy. What do we do now?

Kyle Lawrence [00:16:53]:
Right?

Moish Peltz [00:16:54]:
And that's the cool thing about being in a DAO is like, you know, people that are involved and are part of that and still have their tokens and are still can probably hop on the discord and say, hey, what are we doing with the $20 million probably throwing a party in Sapon or something else. I don't know.

Kyle Lawrence [00:17:10]:
Yeah, I think one thing, constitution DAO, we were mentioned before they tried to buy the actual constitution, which I just love that project. I love talking about it every chance I get. And in there, the donors received people tokens in exchange for the ETH that they donated. And in here with Assange DAO, everybody received what are called justice tokens. And just the last we checked, according to Etherscan, there were 6067 holders. So if any one of them are watching, please let us know. Just curious to see what comes next for this really interesting and fascinating use of the tech. I like it.

Moish Peltz [00:17:43]:
Yeah, maybe we'll do a follow up on what Assange DAO is going to do. But, you know, I would think if there are justice holders, that there's probably other people out there that have been, in their view at least sure, you know, wrongfully detained, that they can go now and seek justice. All right, well, onto a next topic, which is near and dear to my heart, actually, before I even start this topic, Kyle, can I even. I think I'm conflicted. Can I even talk about NBA top shot at this point?

Kyle Lawrence [00:18:12]:
I guess there's one way to find out. Just let her write, man.

Moish Peltz [00:18:16]:
Full disclaimer for our audience out there. I was an early purchaser of NBA top shot moments, and I still hold a bunch of them. And there was recently a settlement announced in the class action by a certain Mister Friel, where they came to a settlement where Dapper got to take a position and say, these are not securities. These top shot moments, which was one of the big claims, and we had covered earlier a decision about whether they were or nothing securities. And the judge had previously ruled they could plausibly be securities. So here the parties are settling it, saying they're not. But it did actually require NBA top shot Dapper Labs to make some business changes. I think there's two big ones which we can discuss, Kyle.

Moish Peltz [00:19:07]:
One of which was relinquishing flow tokens from the treasury of the private company back to the DAO, essentially to the project, to the protocol. And the other is they, over the past year or so, have also enabled four additional marketplaces which can now authorize and display and sell NBA top shot moments. So one of the complaints was, you know, it's closed ecosystem, you can't sell them anywhere else. So they actually made a change there. And lastly, there's Dapper Labs agreed to pay about $4 million out in settlement proceeds, which for me means I will get about twelve cents per moment that I still hold, which I acquired between June 15, 2020 and December 2020.

Kyle Lawrence [00:19:51]:
Drinks on moish, everybody.

Moish Peltz [00:19:53]:
So drinks on me. I now have to decide whether to submit my settlement class member claim by August 30, 2024, and I'll have a very, very tough decision to make.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:03]:
Well, I mean, I was going to ask if you were going to do it, what would be the reason not to?

Moish Peltz [00:20:07]:
I mean, well, I think. I mean, everyone should make their own decision, speak to their own legal counsel. But when you submit one of these class action settlement claims, you. You forfeit your right to make your own claim. So, you know, in exchange for, I would assume, like, $3, I'm gonna forfeit a class action claim against NBA top shot. I think I'll probably be okay making that decision, but, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do with $3. Also. I don't.

Moish Peltz [00:20:35]:
I think I don't even know if it's like, if I'm getting cash in my pocket or if I'm getting, like, something in my NBA top shot or.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:42]:
Just some other token. Right?

Moish Peltz [00:20:43]:
I don't know, like a.

Kyle Lawrence [00:20:45]:
Like a penance token or something like that. Although that probably exists, right? Here's some more flow tokens. You could have as many as you want. Really?

Moish Peltz [00:20:57]:
That would actually be kind of cool. I would. I would like it to, like, everyone gets. If you want $3 USD, here it is. If you want, we'll ten x you up with flow tokens. I would take a deal. That sounds kind of cool.

Kyle Lawrence [00:21:09]:
It's funny because when we first partnered up together, you told me that this was sort of your aha. Moment with crypto was NBA top shot. It's just interesting that life has come full circle now for you.

Moish Peltz [00:21:23]:
Yeah, this is another one of the we'll see kind of moments here. I got the top shot early. Oh. The whole thing kind of lost his money.

Moish Peltz [00:21:31]:
Oh it's a class action suit now. Oh. So, you know, the story continues saga.

Kyle Lawrence [00:21:37]:
There's no such thing as bad publicity. Maybe there is.

Moish Peltz [00:21:43]:
Well, look, I think. I think. I think this is a nice result for NBA top shot to avoid class actually being formed and having a much more significant absolute decision.

Kyle Lawrence [00:21:53]:
Yeah, I'm just. I'm kind of joking, but, yeah, I can do. Yeah. That's good. Well, our last main topic for this evening circle snags the first ever stable coin license under the markets in crypto assets. The fabled European Union. Mika. Mika is definitely better to say than markets in crypto assets.

Kyle Lawrence [00:22:18]:
It doesn't have the word act at the end of it. And therefore, it. I have trouble saying it, so I'm just.

Moish Peltz [00:22:24]:
We only have acts on this side of the pond.

Kyle Lawrence [00:22:27]:
Correct. And, you know, we do everything better here in America. I said it anyway. Circle has obtained the electronic money institution license or an EMI, making it the first global stablecoin issuer to comply with the mica. The license allows circle Mint France to issue the EURC stablecoin and USDC in the European Union. Before Meca went into effect on June 30, some exchanges had delisted euro denominated stablecoins such as tethers yurt encircles. USDC is the second largest stablecoin globally, trailing only tethers USDT. The move position circle to capture market share across the EU's 27 member trading blocks, serving as 450 million people.

Kyle Lawrence [00:23:08]:
And just interesting about Mika. Under Mika, they call stablecoins EMTs or emoney tokens. And any company seeking to offshore crypto services within this block of 27 members, which are the countries, whether it's custody trading, portfolio management advice, will need to be authorized by only one of the 27. So that's just a nice path to. To compliance.

Moish Peltz [00:23:31]:
Yeah.

Kyle Lawrence [00:23:32]:
Which is pretty good.

Moish Peltz [00:23:34]:
I have to say, Kyle, I have not heard anyone pronounce e-u-r-t as Yurt.

Kyle Lawrence [00:23:40]:
I have no idea if that's what it is, but that's all I'm calling it. Yeah, Yurt. It's what it should be, right? What? Yert?

Moish Peltz [00:23:47]:
I don't know. I don't think anything should be called Yurt.

Kyle Lawrence [00:23:51]:
Doesn't sound right except actual yurts. Well, I mean, I'm just thinking, you know, linguistically, Europe, yurt. I mean, that's just. It's only logical.

Moish Peltz [00:23:58]:
Euro. Euro tethers.

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:00]:
Euro tethers. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going with yurts. Tell us in the comments what you think. Whether I think I'm right, because obviously I said it. I wouldn't have just, I think if.

Moish Peltz [00:24:11]:
I was a regulator and someone said, hey, can you approve my yurts?

Kyle Lawrence [00:24:15]:
My yurt? They'd probably do it because they thought you were insane. Well, Moish, without getting into circle specifically, what do you think of Mika generally? Now that we're starting to see the dominoes fall and it's gone into effect as of June 30, now, you're going to see a lot more of these entities like circle. What does it mean? How does it compare to where we're at? Just curious. Penny for your thoughts?

Moish Peltz [00:24:38]:
Yeah, look, I think it's great that there is a regulatory regime and that there are market participants that are doing the work and qualifying and getting approved and going out into the world and doing their thing, I'm concerned that there's a pretty small pool of people that are going to be able to possibly qualify under Mika to do a lot of these, like, top level things, circle obviously being one of them, but also being a very well funded, you know, high, you know, well backed company. And you're seeing tether, which is also very well funded, saying, no, we can't do it right or we're not able to right now. So my big concern, and I think the feedback I've heard anecdotally about Mika is that unless you're one of these really large players that's ready to kind of dive into this regulatory morass and soak up the legal fees, and it's just, it's not a market you want to play in. And I'm really concerned about the future of the. Of the EU in crypto, about making it feasible for small and medium sized enterprises to play an issue and do cool things in that market. So hats off to circle. But let's see. We'll see.

Kyle Lawrence [00:25:57]:
We'll see.

Moish Peltz [00:25:58]:
We'll see who else is able to follow in their footsteps. And I'm concerned that the only people that are going to be able to do that are going to be really well funded, well heeled institutions.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:10]:
That's true, and it's a fair point. And without belaboring the topic, one thing that I do like about Mika is that it's 166 pages long. And the reason why that's relevant is that you can read it and we can argue about whether it's too expensive to comply. And if you're not tethered to or backed by an EU currency, you'll be outright banned or your transactions are limited to a million per day. Like, there are limits and there are certainly problems with it. But 166 pages, why is that important? The securities act of 1933. I could line the floor of every house on this block. If there's a flood with the.

Kyle Lawrence [00:26:45]:
With how long it is, it's impossible to read, it's impossible to follow. I've been doing this 20 years, and I know most of it, but it's impossible to know it all. And I do appreciate that they tried to make it at least somewhat digestible for the people. That's just something that we don't do here. So I don't know.

Moish Peltz [00:27:01]:
Yeah. All right, so we are now moving on to the lightning round portion of our show today. So start off, first topic. Logan Paul has filed a defamation lawsuit against YouTuber Coffeezilla over videos alleging Paul's involvement in a scam related to his failed cryptozoo NFT project. So Paul acknowledges that the project was a scam, apparently, but also that he was deceived by advisors he brought on. So the lawsuit alleges that Coffeezilla knowingly made false accusations to get attention against Paul. And Paul is seeking damages and, you know, also seeking to hold liable the other advisors involved in the project. So, Kyle, what do you think, should Logan Paul be throwing defamation lawsuits out there?

Kyle Lawrence [00:27:55]:
Isn't truth an automatic defense to defamation? If you admit that it's a scam, doesn't that mean that you automatically lose the defamation suit? I don't know. He's only seeking $75,000. I don't think he needs the money.

Moish Peltz [00:28:06]:
Well, that's the jurisdictional amount for. But, yeah, I mean, he admits it's a scam, but I think the question is probably more narrowly focused as his participation in the scam, whether he knowingly, like, deceived people and did it to screw people over.

Kyle Lawrence [00:28:27]:
He probably didn't. I mean, I don't know him personally. He probably didn't really know. He just got hired and, you know, maybe got thrown into it. But I. This seems like drawing more attention to it. Whereas nobody, probably only a select few people knew about it. Now everybody knows about it.

Moish Peltz [00:28:40]:
So, yeah, it's definitely a Streisand effect lawsuit here. So also in the news, be careful.

Kyle Lawrence [00:28:46]:
Yeah, right. Be careful. Also in the news, US Representative Matt Gaetz, everybody's favorite, introduced a bill to allow federal income taxes to be paid in bitcoin, aiming to integrate digital currencies into the us financial system. Sounds great in theory. There was nothing really else proposed. In addition to that, for me personally, I am not using my bitcoin to pay in taxes. This sounds a little bit like sycophancy if you ask me, but that's just my personal opinion.

Moish Peltz [00:29:10]:
Well, yeah, it's one of those examples that, like, a good idea can come from anywhere, you know, look, if I could pay my taxes with bitcoin and not itself generate a huge tax bill by selling bitcoin, right, then I would do that. So that might be a great idea to unlock, like, capital gains that I would otherwise incur. So I would love to know more about it and see what the options are. But I mean, look, there's a lot of people that their tax bill comes due and they're like, actually, I don't have any money, but I do have lots of crypto. So, like, why not? Like, we say this to everyone? Like, if you have to other law firms, if you're a lawyer and someone wants to be your client, they want to pay you in crypto, are you going to say no? Are you going to say, like, sure. Like, we accept crypto. So that's our mindset. Why shouldn't the US treasury be the same way?

Kyle Lawrence [00:30:03]:
Can't be lawyers in crypto if you don't accept crypto. Just throwing that out there.

Moish Peltz [00:30:09]:
All right, next one. The US CFTC is now conducting an investigation to jump trading and their activities in the cryptocurrency market as reported by Fortune. So, Kyle, what do you think about larger prop shops essentially being, being investigated for their crypto activities now by the CFTC?

Kyle Lawrence [00:30:31]:
I mean, to be honest, I don't really know much about this. This is kind of the first time hearing about it. The investigation apparently doesn't imply any wrong doing. So I'm not really sure what they're getting at here, but it's interesting to see this tug of war between the CFTC and the SEC on these different things. So I'm curious to see what, what actually happens out of this.

Moish Peltz [00:30:51]:
Yeah.

Kyle Lawrence [00:30:52]:
Nigeria's Federal Inland Revenue Service has dropped tax charges against binance executive Tigrin Gambarian. Free Tigran. We reported a couple episodes ago that he had been stricken with malaria, and it was just a truly terrible situation. But now the charges have been revised that only binance, represented by its local entity, remains named. Tigran is still involved in a separate money laundering case brought by Nigeria's Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, in which he's currently still detained in prison. But this is definitely a step in the right direction.

Moish Peltz [00:31:23]:
Step in the right direction. But, you know, Free Tigran, for sure. It's crazy that they dismissed part of the claims, but not all of them. So, yeah, while this is great, step the right direction. He's still stuck in prison in Nigeria. Let's bring home our US citizens. Next one. Vanek has filed with the SEC to launch the first Solana exchange traded fund.

Moish Peltz [00:31:50]:
Kyle, you're wearing the shirt. You're rocking the soul. What do you think? Is this the first of many to come?

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:01]:
I mean, I would think it would have to be. I know I was no grand prognosticator when I said during the ETF episode that this was going to happen. I mean, obviously it was going to happen. I'm just glad that it's starting to happen again. It's just more adoption. This the more we have of these things, the better off the entire ecosystem is. This is great for crypto. It's great for Solana.

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:20]:
I love Solana. I got the Solana sign back there. It's phenomenal. Everybody. Not financial advice, but Solana is where it's at. I think this is fantastic. It'll be really curious to see how this continues to evolve in the coming months with all these ETF's coming up. And last but certainly not least, the SEC closed its investigation into Ethereum 2.0, which is certainly again, a good step in the right direction.

Kyle Lawrence [00:32:44]:
Incremental progress is always a good thing. It doesn't mean that they can't bring another investigation or bring charges later. But again, it's good to see a little bit more pragmatism in some of these actions.

Moish Peltz [00:32:58]:
Yeah, I think the combination of the approval of the Ethereum ETF and the closing of the investigation into ETH two or proof of stake Ethereum is a good sign for, you know, again, like just incremental progress and kind of establishment of what these things are.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:20]:
Great job, Moish.

Moish Peltz [00:33:22]:
Great job, Kyle.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:22]:
That wraps it up for this edition of Block and Order. Please remember to like and subscribe. Follow us on all our socials. The links are down below in the show notes. Please drop a comment below if there's a particular topic you'd like us to cover, or if you take issue with anything we said or didn't say, or, you know, we certainly don't want to be, you know, omitting things that are important to you. Remember, nothing contained on the show is meant to be construed as legal and or financial advice. Please consult your own attorney if you're going to take the plunge. Neither discussion nor the fact that we may own assets or products covered on this show.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:51]:
Wink, wink. Top shot is meant to be an endorsement of said assets.

Moish Peltz [00:33:57]:
My $3.

Kyle Lawrence [00:33:58]:
Hey, hey. That's all fair. Special thanks to producer Chris. Without him, the show would not be possible. Remember, everybody, all's fair in love and crypto. So for blocking order, Kyle Lawrence on behalf of Moish Peltz, take care.

Moish Peltz [00:34:12]:
Take care.