Morning Minute | 'Ethereum Survives The SEC'

TylerD's Market Summary

🚨 The SEC Drops Its Case Against Consensys

Regulatory clarity seems to be one of the last remaining hurdles keeping crypto from really booming in the U.S.

Well, it looks like we might finally be on the right track towards getting it.

What Happened?

Last night, Consensys announced that the SEC had dropped its investigation into Ethereum 2.0.

The impact - it means the SEC will not bring charges that ETH is a security (and that ETH sales are securities transactions).

According to Consensys, this comes after they sent the SEC a letter on June 7 asking to confirm whether the May ETH ETF approvals were premised on ETH being a commodity.

Instead of responding - they simply closed the case.

It was a huge win for Consensys and broader crypto.

ETH has responded, jumping 3.5% to $3,540 and leading crypto majors (BTC is even on the day for reference).

Consensys isn't out of the woods just yet, as their fight to declare that their wallet MetaMask (via Swaps and Staking) doesn't violate securities laws is still on.

But they've got serious momentum on their side.

Why It Matters

It seems after 3 years of attacks and offense by the SEC against crypto, they might finally be backing off.

In just the past few weeks, we've seen:

• The ETH ETFs get approved
• The SEC's Head of Crypto resign
• The SEC withdraw its case against ETH 2.0

And now both candidates in the U.S. Presidential election are fighting to position themselves as pro-crypto.

The winds are shifting.

The future of crypto is as bright as ever...

💡 Fox News Builds 'Verify' on Polygon

Trust in the media and what we read online may be at all time lows.

But many are working to fix this using blockchain.

And Fox News may be leading the way (along with Polygon and ZK).

What Happened?

Yesterday Polygon dropped the major announcment that Fox News is launching its own L2.

Fox's L2 will be ZK-based and use Polygon CDK, making them the first major enterprise to launch a ZK-powered ETH L2.

And it will be used to build Verify, Fox News' open protocol for media authentication.

In quick summary:

• End users will be able to verify the origins of media through Verify (at verify.fox)
• TIME will be the first 3rd party to leverage the Verify protocol
• Over 106k articles and 300k+ pieces of content have already been registered
• The Verify team is going to release open source smart contracts enabling other publishers to license their content

It's a big deal. And a great use case for blockchain.

Large media companies have historically changed stories / headlines post-publishing, with no formal records for the general public to verify those edits against.

That changes now.

Published stories will have authors, time stamps and point-in-time records. Any changes will be easily trackable, as will be sources.

It's a huge improvement in a time where the trust is becoming increasingly important.

Shoutout to ZK, Polygon and Fox News for pushing this forward.

🚚 What else is happening in NFTs?

Here is the list of other notable headlines from the day in NFTs:

• ETH led NFT trading volume with $7.7M on the day; Polygon was next with $5.5M and then BTC & SOL with $2.5M & $2M 
• ETH NFT leaders were very red as a Pudgy Penguin loan crisis has caused its floor to dip 18% to 7 ETH; BAYC -3% to 8.8 ETH, MAYC -8% to 1.5 ETH, Azuki -11% to 3.1 ETH; Milady -6% at 4.74 ETH
• Parallel Avatars, Plooshies and KaijuKingz were top movers on the day, jumping 20% each
• BTC NFT leaders were mixed; NodeMonkes even at 0.192 BTC, Puppets 7% at 0.119 BTC, OMB -4% at 0.225 and Quantum Cats -1% at 0.256
• The Runes leaders chopped with DOG even at $615M mc, RSIC even at $142M, and BILLION DOLLAR CAT the top mover +25% $72M
• Solana NFTs were mixed; Mad Lads even at 67 SOL, SMB Gen 2 +7% at 2, DeGods -7% at 20
• Garga teased new gameplay in the upcoming Otherside trip "Project Dragon" including guns, grenades and more
• Goblintown teased its "Escape Goblintown" game coming soon on Roblox

💰 Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

Here's a rundown of major token or airdrop news from the day:

🌎 Around Crypto and Web3

A few other Crypto and Web3 headlines that caught my eye:

• Crypto majors are green this morning with ETH leading; BTC even at $65,400; ETH +3.5% at $3,540, SOL +1% at $138.70
• Memecoin majors are more green with DOGE +3.4%, PEPE +9%, WIF +1, BONK +4%; BILLY, PAC, Trump coins outperform
• Fox News is launching its own L2 ZK Chain using the Polygon CDK, to be used to build Verify, an open protocol for content authentication
• Arkham Intelligence offered $150k to anyone who could prove the identify of the DJT (Trump coin) creator which ended up being Martin Shkreli who leaked DMs to Zach featuring Andrew Tate and his plot to launch DJT (DJT falls 50%)
• 9dcc announced the acquisition of web3 e-com platform, 0x Shop, to help accelerate its Networked Product tech
• Ronin will soon allow third-party builders to launch L2 blockchains on Ronin's mainnet

🚀 Memecoin Movers 

• $BILLY (+91%, $57M market cap, SOL)
• $MAGA (+31%, $102M market cap, ETH)
• $tremp (+25%, $72M market cap, SOL)
• $TRUMP (+20%, $379M market cap, ETH)
• $PAC (+18%, $39M market cap, Blast) 

📈 NFT Floor Price Increase (ETH)

• Supreme Kong (100%, 0.65 ETH Floor)
• Parallel Avatars (29%, 0.39 ETH)
• Rektguy (28%, 0.12ETH)
• Plooshies (21%, 0.26 ETH)
• KaijuKingz (20%, 0.14 ETH)

🗓 Upcoming NFT Mints and Reveals

Today is a slower day of mints, mostly in the art sector.

Tristan Rettich is doing the Onchain Summer drop on Prohibition. And David Seven has a drop on Bitcoin with Gamma.

See the full list and dive in for more details with Swizzy's daily mint monitor. 

• Moonrollers (12:00 p.m. ET)
• Tristan Rettich x Prohibition - Onchain Summer (12:00 p.m. ET)
• David Seven x Gamma - Sharp Objects (3:00 p.m. ET)
• Grenier Studio - Rural Views (3:30 p.m. ET)

Enjoy this write-up and/or want to sponsor the Morning Minute? Follow along with me on Twitter @tyler_did_it or reach out via email to tyler.warner@luckytrader.com.