The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has formally sued Binance and Coinbase, accusing both companies of violating securities laws. Coinbase is on the record as saying it is prepared to defend itself against SEC allegations all the way to the Supreme Court, and can demonstrate that it has asked for SEC guidance. If that can be proven in court, Coinbase could save the rest of the crypto industry further headaches by forcing a court to require Congress to pass meaningful legislation before the SEC goes after other crypto businesses. But we're looking at a 2-3 year process as the agencies battle it out. SEC Chair Gary Gensler says fiat currencies are the only digital currencies necessary. This reveals the real reason for the war against crypto. As a spokesman for the Fed, Gensler is essentially on the record for saying the financial establishment doesn't welcome competition. The SEC has gone so far as to attempt to freeze all of Binance's U.S. assets held anywhere in the world. The fact that assets are held someone other than in the U.S. means they should not be considered "U.S." assets. Among the list of altcoins the SEC considers securities, listed in its complaint against Coinbase, include ADA, MATIC, and SOL. Curiously, XRP is not one of them. In its case again Binance, the SEC considers gaming tokens MANA, SAND, and AXS to be securities. In other words, if a token contains a utility that the U.S. dollar does not have, it's a security in the eyes of Gensler. I hope this man's job is on the chopping block during the next election.

Ethereum has a new NFT protocol. ERC-6551s sound pretty cool on the face of it. Essentially, your ERC-721s can each have their own smart contract account, which allows them to hold assets of their own. I can't wait to see what creative uses come from these. Here are 3 use cases I can think of right away:

1. NFT Asset Portfolio - Imagine your NFT as an asset portfolio in and of itself, holding a bucket of digital assets bound to its own wallet.

2. Meme Collection - Got a set of memes you want to hold together in one collection? Turn them into an NFT where each meme is an NFT and the collection itself is its own NFT.

3. Novel Characters - Let' say you want to write a novel but you don't want to sell an NFT for each character in the novel separately. Instead, you create an ERC-6651 to hold the ERC-721 for every character in the novel and sell them as a set.

You can now collect Louis Vuitton's trunk as an NFT.

Legal futurist Artem Afian argues that bitcoin wallets should have rights of their own. I can foresee a day when Web3 wallets could be extended the same set of rights that fictitious persons (aka corporations) have.

How to create value in the metaverse. An incredible read.

Cent, the company behind Valuables and Cent Pages, has bought Tacit and they're issuing a merger token to celebrate.

Aurory and Solcial are collaborating, celebrating with a solcial token airdrop and an Aurory NFT raffle. Does anyone care about airdrops anymore?

The metaverse, AI, and blockchain technology are the trifecta of Web3. A PayPal survey reveals 80 percent of metaverse users also use crypto. Why would anyone think that's surprising?

There's more to Web3 than decentralized finance. Of course, we knew that. It's not all about the crypto.

One man wants to own an NFT sports franchise by purchasing it with NFTs. Well, if we're going this far, why not turn ownership of the franchise into an NFT?

Liberland is advancing as the world's first decentralized autonomous government.

How DAO laws are being used to shield individuals from legal liability.

A French music artist is giving fans ownership of a song launch. AI music tools are doing some really spooky things in Web3.

All About Me

I'm proud to announce that I have become the first sponsor for the Write3 newsletter. Greg Younger writes puts some amazing things into his newsletter every week. I recommend subscribing.

Yesterday, I participated in the Web3 Writers Hour on Twitter spaces. This was a fun nerdy event involving several Web3 writers and myself. We talked about superhero parody, which writers from the past would be Web3 writers today, and where we see/hope Web3 writing goes from here.

Web3 Social Media Sightings

Good reads from some of my favorite Web3 social media platforms.

Hive

@nonameslefttouse is officially retiring from writing posts about Hive. I'm not real familiar with this Hive user, but I followed him after this post. There are too many people on Hive talking about Hive anyway. I'd be willing to bet Hive has the largest and most consistent echo chamber in Web3.

@philnews.xyz celebrates Hive's mention in a Manila Bulletin article. Manila Bulletin is one of the Philippines' largest and longest-running newspapers. Methinks a decentralized congratulations is in order.

@arcange writes some of the best posts on Hive statistics. These are a must-read if you want to know what's going on at Hive.

@pnc discusses 10 new features of HyphaDAO's Organization-in-a-Box beta launch. I'm not sure what an organization in a box is, but it sounds pretty cool. Too bad it's on the EOS blockchain.

@infotariq discusses the best practices for building an online community for luxury fashion brands.

@jemmanuel discusses the forces that distanced him from Web3 platforms.

Mirror

Folklore is launching a community mind called Ark.

The Savvy Travel Historian has made her first Mirror post. And, man, is it a good one!

Publish0x

SimpleSwap showcases the 5 stages of a crypto project.

Web3 Writings is a decentralized newsletter published Wednesdays and Fridays by award-winning journalist and best-selling author Allen Taylor.

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Image credit: Cent

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