U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Jay Clayton will be the next U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a powerful prosecutorial position. According to a Department of Justice press release published Friday, President Donald Trump nominated Clayton to head the prestigious office, 3 years after he first took on the role of SEC chairman. On Saturday Trump apparently fired U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman, and Berman agreed to step down after reaching an impasse with Attorney General William Barr. Clayton will take on the U.S. Attorney position once the Senate confirms his nomination. Barr did not indicate who might replace Clayton at the helm of the SEC, which regulates securities including cryptocurrencies.
Here is the rest of the week in review:
For Juneteenth, the National Policy Network of Women of Color in Blockchain held a virtual event discussing racial diversity and financial inclusion in the blockchain industry. Isaiah Jackson, founder of KRBE Digital Assets Group, said he believes Black investment in digital assets would create a more resilient system than Black Wall Street, a former Oklahoma business community that was destroyed by white rioters a century ago: "You can't burn down cryptocurrency and blockchain technology." Sinclair Skinner, cofounder of pan-African Bitcoin (BTC) remittance firm BitMari, agreed and argued the ethos of Bitcoin and the Black community are aligned. He added: "But Satoshi was probably a Black woman because a man would have never been able to walk away and not take credit." The event also focused on how to make the blockchain space more diverse in terms of Black and minority voices and representation.
The New York Federal Reserve wrote on Thursday they do not believe Bitcoin is a new kind of money. In a blog post, New York Fed economists Michael Lee and Antoine Martin said: "Bitcoin may be money, but it is not a new type of money." They added that Bitcoin is "just another example of fiat money," citing dollar bills, gigantic limestone wheels, and Bitcoin all as types of fiat money, typically defined as money made legal tender by government decree. But their argument seems to use a definition of fiat money as being an intrinsically worthless object whose sole value derives from the bearer's belief of its ability to pay for goods. Martin and Lee also claim the Bitcoin ecosystem's innovation is its novel exchange mechanism of "electronic transfers without a third party". The economists concluded it is important to clarify what actually is new about Bitcoin for historical reasons.
Crypto prices dipped to $266 billion this week. For the majors, the biggest gainer was Crypto.com Coin (CRO), which jumped 7% and entered the top 10. All the other majors slipped, with Bitcoin SV (BSV) and Binance Coin (BNB) edging down the most. In the top 100, the biggest losers were DigiByte (DGB), down 20%, Horizen (ZEN), down 11%, and Numeraire (NMR), down 10%. The biggest gainers were Aave (LEND), up 76%, Nexo (NEXO), up 41%, and SwissBorg (CHSB), up 37%. Next week traders will watch to see if the crypto markets experience more volatility.
The author owns a small amount of BTC.