Recap of this long and hot boreal summer

(ended only astronomically, but not climatically)

Many things happened, and others didn’t happen or remained on the sidelines:

In mid-July Judge A.L. Torres issues the first summary judgment in the Stock Exchange Commission (SEC) vs. Ripple Labs. Simplifying, this is a half victory for Ripple Labs, as the Solomonic judgment relieves XRP from being a financial security as long as it is sold to private investors, not when sold to financial institutions. We’ll see how the SEC’s appeal goes;
But a few days earlier BlackRock, which with almost 10 T$ (just under the wealth stock of Italy – note, the total wealth not the annual GDP) is the largest asset manager in the world, submitted to the SEC the filing for a Bitcoin ETF fund. Request which, due to a formal error, was rejected. Yes, because it was the first time that BlackRock submitted a filing to the SEC… yes, the first time after the previous +4k. One nasty-minded could think they had done it in a hurry… Obviously it was resubmitted this time correct. The SEC’s decision on this ETF, expected by 1Q24, along with the above regarding XRP, will be decisive on the fate of cryptocurrencies in the USA but not only (and of its president G. Gensler – rubber wall. Big fun for those who want watch the questions before the Congress commissions);
In July, Worldcoin also entered the field (to which a specific post is dedicated), a somewhat lateral topic compared to the Metaverse, but which raises and shuffles the topic of identification on the internet;
At the end of July, the Central Bank of Italy also launched an asset tokenization project relying on Polygon Matic (a layer 2 on the Ethereum BC), confirming its (mild) interest in the topic of blockchain;
XRP, also following the progress of the case, receives a boost in adoption. Some major financial institutions, including AMEX, are starting to use the Ripple blockchain (and therefore XRP) in international transactions;
Rumors have intensified that X (formerly Tweeter) aims to integrate cryptocurrencies into its ecosystem, either by launching a proprietary crypto (an aspect, for what it’s worth, denied several times by Elon Musk) or by resorting to an existing one;
PayPal launches its crypto, a stablecoin (in this specific case pegged to the US dollar) called PSYUD;
The Brazilian Central Bank released the Real Digital (DREX) in August, among the first central banks with an operational project of Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), digital versions of the current currency;
In the last days of September, Brazil, which is proving to be a front runner in the adoption of the technological elements of Web3 and Metaverso, launched the issuance of national identification documents on blockchain in three Federal States, including Rio de Janeiro;
In early October, Ripple Labs scored a new, small or large we’ll see, point in the legal battle with the SEC. Judge Torres (again, now elected by the network as a champion of cryptos) denied an appeal to the SEC and postponed everything to April ’24 (pretrial conference). It is obvious that following this new judicial decision, XRP/Ripple has been the subject of renewed attention, however with a moderate effect on prices, which have not moved significantly from $0.5.

In all this dynamic of events, just as in the famous song only the two unicorns are missing, here only the NFTs are missing. NFTs are indeed the big absentees of the summer. Perhaps the public and operators were tired of seeing bored apes changing hands for penthouse prices at Central Park. But obviously NFTs are much more, but they need time to consolidate.

The Metablog home page is enriched with a new section (in English): The corner of generative AI, with a new question every week. The questions are asked as appropriate to Google Bard or ChapGPT4, or others emerging from time to time. This week the question on the subject of international financial flows: is Ripple a credible competitor to Swift?