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⌐◪-◪ → The SEC just asked a New York judge to impose a $1.95B fine on Ripple Labs.

For context: This case began in 2020 when the SEC accused Ripple Labs and its executives of violating federal securities laws by selling XRP to both institutional and retail investors.

Last July, a NY judge ruled that the sale of XRP on exchanges did not violate securities laws, only Ripple’s institutional sales of XRP did — a split decision that most considered a win for the crypto industry.

Now the SEC wants a shocking $2B in fines/penalties.

Ripple CLO Stuart Alderoty however sounds pretty confident about the situation, posting on X that the SEC is merely continuing its history of “statements that are false, mischaracterized, and designed to mislead” and that the “Courts will approach the remedies phase fairly.”

2023 was a strong year for Crypto vs. The SEC, and I’m optimistic that our momentum will carry into 2024. Ripple will be a key case here.

⌐◪-◪ → The infamous Do Kwon has officially missed the start of Terraform Labs’ civil trial in New York City.

Do Kwon remains in Montenegro after being released from prison for a forged passport, and it’s unclear whether he’ll be extradited to the US or South Korea.

Today marks day 2 of the trial and the courtrooms are full, just a few floors from where SBF was convicted. The case is a civil fraud case against Do Kwon and Terraform Labs, so there is no jail time associated with this ruling. With that said, the DOJ was seen lingering around the courtroom.

Meanwhile, Do Kwon’s co-founder Kyle Davis tweeted that he’ll be “max bidding” Do’s next project — showing zero remorse for the “half billy” he lost at 3AC. I seriously hate this guy.

On a related note: Polymarket users have bet half a million on how long SBF’s prison sentence will be.

⌐◪-◪ → Magic Eden is dominating the NFT marketplace battle with over $15M in trading revenue over the last 30 days, a 72% market share.

While they’re undoubtedly crushing the competition in terms of trading revenue, things are a lot closer in terms of volume.

For context, here are the top 5 NFT marketplaces by 30 day volume

1. Magic Eden → $791.6M (41%)

2. BLUR → $704.4M (36%)

3. OpenSea → $183M (9%)

4. Tensor → $153.4M (8%)

5. OKX → $100.2M (5%)

As you can see, while Magic Eden has a substantial lead in 30D trading revenue (72% vs OpenSea’s 17%), they only have a small lead in 30D volume (41% vs BLUR’s 36%).

Furthermore, OpenSea only accounts for 9% of 30D volume but commands 17% of 30D revenue.

The story here is pretty clear IMO. The market craves fee-free trading (hence why BLUR is doing so well by volume) but that is trumped by a few premier collections (that dominate overall NFT volume) decision to block fee-free marketplaces (like BLUR).

If you want to dig deeper, here are the charts I used for my analysis.

I’m still skeptical of royalty enforcement from a free-market perspective, but this is the best execution I’ve seen to date.

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