This week in crypto: you're fired

If you live in the UK, you’ll know that our government’s “omnishambles” has vastly overshadowed anything going on in crypto this week.

And as we know all too well, events in the real world can have a big impact on the world of crypto.

If you didn’t know, this week the Chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, was at a very important meeting with other government finance types around the world, hosted by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank.

This year, all eyes were on the UK. And, as Axios writes, that is not a good thing:

Every fall in Washington, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank hold annual gatherings of the world's financial elite. Some years feature one country that is in an economic predicament so serious, and so messy, that it dominates hallway conversations.

Think Greece in 2010, the U.S. in 2008 or Argentina in 2002. If you are a finance minister, your basic goal is to make sure your country is not that country. The United Kingdom has failed this test spectacularly.

Kwarteng was in Washington but skipped out on Thursday's Group of 20 finance ministers meeting. By Friday, he was back in London, his five-week run as chancellor having ended prematurely.

I was listening to the radio on Friday morning while Kwarteng was flying over the Atlantic Ocean, having been calld back early to be fired.

And as is customary, all the government representatives the radio could find to interview denied he was about to be fired. They all said they fully agreed with the government’s financial plans and fully supported its supreme leader, Liz Truss.

One hour later, Kwarteng landed, was fired, and all the government lackies were keen to blame the whole mess on him and him alone.

I’m sure the same thing will happen right before Liz Truss steps down/is ousted/has a nervous breakdown.

If there’s one lesson we can take from these events, it’s that if you want to get ahead in UK politics, you need to be skilled at throwing people under the bus.

And by the sound of this short Spectator article, that’s exactly what the next Chancellor (now announce as millionaire, Jeremy Hunt) will do:

Whoever succeeds Kwarteng is going to take a very different approach. They are going to demand control over economic policy and they are going to install their own people in the Treasury and try and build up their own position. They will be acutely aware that if Truss can jettison her closest ideological ally, and one of her best friends, then they will need to take steps to secure their own position.

What are Hunt’s plans for the UK economy? Who knows.

But at least we can be rest assured the TV drama they make about this time in history will be a good one. Whether people will believe it all actually happened is another matter entirely.

Sticking with the UK theme, I saw a great comedy post on Reddit a couple of weeks ago about the value of the pound. It seems more relevant than ever now:

Buy the DIP! New shitcoin £GBP

I just discovered this new coin called GBP, apparently this shit is tanking atm, we might be at the bottom right now so could be a good time to buy the dip and 10x.

Downsides of this project right now:

No real utility, apparently britbongs use it to purchase crumpets and tea, but other than that doesn't have any other usage.

Infinite circulating supply, apparently the project owners can just mint new coins whenever they want, so the coin value is always deprecating in value.

Doesn't appear to be listed on any major exchange.

The CEO, Elizabeth Windsor, died the other week, they paid for her entire funeral with holder's wallets, and the new CEO Charles Windsor has weird hands.

Not on coingecko or coinmarketcap, could be a scam?

Anyone got any information on this project and whether it's worth a buy?

The comments on the post are funny too. If you want to read them, here’s a link.

What about actual crypto news?

Unfortunately, with markets how they are, it’s mainly been bad news this week.

Although, artist who likes to cut things in half, Damien Hirst, did burn 1,000 of his paintings to turn them into NFTs…

From Morning Brew:

Yesterday, British artist Damien Hirst set 1,000 of his paintings on fire as part of an NFT project. We’ll explain: Hirst launched a collection last year of 10,000 NFTs corresponding to 10,000 original artworks. Buyers could choose to trade in their NFT for the physical art, but if they chose to keep the NFT, then Hirst would burn the original artwork, which he began to do yesterday. “A lot of people think I’m burning millions of dollars of art but I’m not, I’m completing the transformation of these physical artworks into nfts by burning the physical versions,” he wrote on Instagram.

I guess no one told him that NFT sales are down by 97% since January.

Here are the crypto stories worth reading this week:

• Bank of England says blockchain roll-out across all markets too challenging

To be fair, the Bank of England has bigger things to worry about right now…

It’s also funny because if you read that article, the Bank of England basically says it doesn’t want to use blockchain because blockchain is too quick and too efficient:

Instantaneous settlement means that cash and securities must be in place at the time a trade is struck, and it was unclear how blockchain based platforms and existing technology would work with each other, he [Bank of England Deputy Governor Jon Cunliffe] said.

"There is simply no time to identify or rectify errors before they are actioned. In short we may not want wholly instantaneous trading and settlement in all markets," Cunliffe told a conference held by financial industry body AFME.

• Commodity Futures Trading Commission Sues a DAO, Raising Legal Questions for DeFi Founders and Users
• Google’s Partnership With Coinbase Is ‘Validation’ for the Crypto Industry: Oppenheimer
• Crypto CEOs Are Quitting, But Do Kwon Can't Quit Twitter
• IOTA gets a €781,617.60 grant from the EU (why is that number so specific?)

Okay, that’s all for this week.

Thanks for reading.

Harry

Full disclosure: At time of writing, I held the following cryptos: Ethereum, IOTA, Radix, Mina Protocol, Aleph Zero.

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