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Tuesday, November 2, 2021
Beware: The regulator cometh
There’s a lot happening in the fast-moving world of cryptocurrency nowadays, and two trends highlighted over the last few days underscore why regulators are trying to get ahead of developments in the sector — even if some think they’re already behind the curve.
While bitcoin sucks up the most oxygen in the crypto world, there are other digital coins that investors and policymakers are just starting to wrap their heads around. Last week, with market players transfixed by the rise of Shiba Inu (SHIB), another memecoin based on the hugely popular “Squid Game” Netflix series came from nowhere.
In a matter of days, the squid coin went supernova — then crashed and burned as developers yanked the rug out from aspiring crypto fortune-hunters. To crib a phrase from that chef from Seinfeld, “no soup for you.”
SHIB’s sudden rise and the commensurate drop in squid couldn’t have arrived at a more auspicious time. On Monday, the U.S. government released a long-awaited set of recommendations on how regulators and lawmakers should treat stablecoin, a slice of the digital coin market where values are tied to fiat currencies like U.S. dollars or shorter-dated securities.