It matters where you get your news from.

In America, we don’t even pretend to present unbiased media anymore. You can watch and read your news from the right or the left, depending on your whims.

But it’s not just the political ties you need to consider in your news coverage, it’s who owns that news outlet.

And with a crypto exchange purchasing CoinDesk, is the crypto news landscape about to change forever?

Espresso Shots

☕️ Binance’s New CEO

Binance has a new CEO in place, Richard Teng, and he’s trying to keep things compliant.

Just last week, both Binance and Teng’s predecessor, Changpeng Zhao, pled guilty to money laundering.

In Teng’s first official statement as CEO, he promised both to do right by Binance’s customers and to comply with government regulations.

“We have turned the page on Binance’s historical challenges and we are, in fact, stronger today than we have ever been.”

The statement went on, “Over the course of the past two years, Binance has systematically worked to address its past compliance issues through a series of significant efforts.”

Teng has assured the shareholders that he’ll soon develop a snappy nickname just like CZ, but he wishes that his co-workers would stop doing that shaka surfer gesture and telling him to “Hang Teng!”

☕️ COIN Climbs

Bitcoin and Ethereum weren’t the only ones hitting an eighteen-month high on Black Friday, they were joined by Coinbase’s stock price.

Coinbase (COIN) went up to $117 on Friday, and it’s currently even higher, sitting at $119.77 at the time of writing.

Coinbase’s stock has shot up 41% in the past month alone.

This price hike is most likely driven by ETF enthusiasm. Several notable firms, such as BlackRock and Fidelity, have named Coinbase as their custodian in their Bitcoin Spot ETF applications.

It would appear this winter, COIN has landed heads up.

☕️ Tornado Cash Plummets

Binance announced its intention to delist Tornado Cash from its offerings and Tornado Cash subsequently fell 56%.

"We periodically review each digital asset we list to ensure that it continues to meet the high level of standard we expect," reads a press release from Binance.

"When a coin or token no longer meets this standard, or the industry changes, we conduct a more in-depth review and potentially delist it. We believe this best protects all our users."

Binance also plans to delist BitShares, PERL.eco, and Waltonchain tokens on December 7. This is almost certainly an attempt by Binance to clean up their act following the exchange’s recent legal troubles.

The aforementioned tokens also experienced price drops after the Binance announcement. 

Tornado Cash is a crypto mixer, a privacy tool that hides transaction history by mixing multiple users’ histories. Crypto mixers have become somewhat controversial for their money-laundering potential.

Unfortunately, this decision by Binance caused Tornado Cash’s price to swirl down the drain, which we all know is the tornado of the sink.

Spilling the Beans

The Biggest Story No One Is Covering 🚨 😳

As we’ve mentioned, it’s key that you recognize biases in your media.

And generally, it’s not hard to tell. You knew what Tucker Carlson was gonna say about gun control and you’re not waiting for Rachel Maddow to give a glowing endorsement of Trump.

But it gets a little more complicated and nuanced when you stop looking at who’s behind the news desk and start asking who’s behind the studio cameras.

Because it’s the companies, shareholders, and owners of those news outlets that really determine the politics of the news.

Most of us weren’t actively thinking about the Murdochs until Succession made us realize that some problematic rich family has to own Fox.

They say that history is written by the victors, but when you control a massive news outlet, you’re effectively controlling reality for millions of viewers.

But forget about Fox, one of Crypto’s most prominent news publications just traded hands, and it has us a bit worried.

CoinDesk was purchased by Bullish, a digital assets exchange headed by former NYSE President Tom Farley.

Let us be the first to say, we don’t think that there’s anything nefarious going on, but it’s worth noting that CoinDesk is among the few major publications in crypto, and it’s quiet sale barely even made headlines.

CoinDesk’s new owners have made assurances that the publication will remain independent and editorially sound and we have no reason to doubt that.

Though it seems worth noting that the continued existence of CoinBase is now reliant on a crypto exchange, and that doesn’t exactly look great.

When there are so few dedicated news sources, crypto can get into trouble, like we saw when CoinTelegraph incorrectly publish a Bitcoin Spot ETF announcement and move the entire crypto market.

Or when a fake XRP ETF filing caused the token to jump nearly 10% before it was proven to be fake.

And because of the size of the crypto news sphere, CoinDesk’s purchase has a disproportionately large impact on crypto news as a whole.

We here at Coffee & Crypto love being a fun and whimsical newsletter, but we also really rely on (ideally) independent resources like CoinDesk, among others.

We’re only a small part of the crypto news ecosystem, an easy to read aggregate if you will, but recent events have made it clear that there’s a real need for independent, reliable, and verifiable voices in and around crypto.

Just to reiterate, this isn’t a condemnation of the existing crypto news sources, rather, it’s an alarm bell about the amount of sources we have. We need more.

Crypto is a trillion dollar industry that, at times, can fluctuate wildly based on fake tweets from random accounts with 300 followers.

So, by all means keep reading CoinDesk, we certainly will.

But keep reading everything on Crypto Twitter with a massive grain of salt. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

If you can’t find more than one source to verify a claim, it’s probably fake.

And even if it all seems to check out, it’s worth taking a beat to use some common sense before acting on a claim you see posted somewhere.

In the meantime, stick with your friendly neighborhood newsletter.

We’ll be here every step of the way to keep things light and snappy and to make sure all your news passes the smell-test.

Crypto 101

Digital Assets: This broader term encompasses not just traditional cryptocurrency, but also digital art/collectibles, stablecoins, and tokenized real estate.

The Last Sip

The Last Sip: If drains are the tornadoes of the sink, beware the garbage disposal. That’s the eye of the storm. It seems peaceful but be careful. You never know what switch turns it on and which one is just the overhead kitchen light.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.