On the Tenth day of Cryptmas, my true love gave to me: Ten Block Rewards, Nine Twitter Polls, Eight Stablecoins, Seven Trump NFTs,  Six Bitcoin mines, Five Gold Cold Wallets. Four federal inquiries, Three tax incentives, Two failing exchanges, and a Bored Ape and a gas fee. 

It is now the third day of Chanukah.

Espresso Shots

☕️ FTX Needs a Refund 🧾 💵

The legal team overseeing the FTX bankruptcy proceeding has issued a warning that all of the politicians who received donations from SBF or other FTX executives should return the money.

SBF donated an estimated $46.5 million to various politicians and causes in the months leading up to the fall of FTX. 

Some politicians, such as Beto O’Rourke, have already returned the donations, but others, like Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and Sen. John Boozman, opted to give their FTX bucks to charity.

But FTX’s bankruptcy team warns that charitable donations aren’t going to cut it.

“Recipients are cautioned that making a payment or donation to a third party (including a charity) in the amount of any payment received from [FTX] does not prevent FTX Debtors from seeking recovery from the recipient or any subsequent transferee,” read an official statement.

Other recipients, most conspicuously the Biden White House, have remained silent on whether they received donations from FTX or any intention to return them.

It’s widely believed that the remaining recipients of FTX donations intend to cite the ancient legal statute of “no-takesy backsies.”

☕️ Facebook Meta Stock Down Since Name Change  📉 💻

Meta stock has dropped 60% since the company changed its name from Facebook in October of 2021.

Weird to give up that branding when there’s an academy-award winning film about your original platform, but whatever, go off queen.

Reality Labs, the VR division of Meta, lost $3.6 billion in Q3 of 2022, after losing $2.63 billion at the same point in 2021.

CTO of Reality Labs, Andrew Bosworth, took to Meta website to address the posts in a long post entitled, “Why we still believe in the future.”

“Meta began 2022 with a new name and a new vision for the future, and at Reality Labs it’s our job to bring that vision to life,” Bosworth wrote, “We never thought it would be easy or straightforward, but this year was even harder than expected.”

But there is a precedent for economic trouble following a big name change, my great-aunt Mildred told me that her net worth dropped by 93% when she changed her name to “Grasshopper Moonstar” in the late ‘60s.

☕️  Binance Joins Crypto Lobby 🏦 🪙 

Binance has joined the largest U.S. crypto lobbying group, the Chamber of Digital Commerce.

“As an organization at the crux of the industry’s rapid growth and complex regulatory environment, working hand in glove with policymakers, regulatory bodies, and industry groups like the Chamber is imperative for Binance,” said Joanne Kubba, Binance’s VP of Public Affairs.

Binance is in good company, as other notable members of the Chamber include Visa, Mastercard, and Ripple.

There has been no comment on whether this move is in any way tied to the potential criminal charges that the U.S. authorities are considering bringing against Binance, but hey, there’s strength in numbers.

Ironically, “Harry Potter and the Chamber of Digital Commerce,” was the rejected title for a wizarding reboot in which Harry and his 30-something friends try to navigate the magical world of financial literacy.

Spilling the Beans

Fornite’s Billion Dollar Mistake 🕹 💰

Okay, so it wasn’t quite a billion dollar mistake. And it also wasn’t one mistake so much as a series of mistakes that caused a lawsuit.

We’re sorry, but “Fortnite’s $520 Million Sequence of Mistakes” didn't quite fit into the subject line!

Anyway, the FTC has announced a $520 million settlement that Fortnite creator Epic Games will have to pay for deceptive practices and privacy violations in their popular battle royale game.

It’s nice to see the Federal Trade Commission taking a break from going after crypto to focus on the real enemy, gaming.

The settlement focuses on two problematic areas of Fortnite:

• The voice and text default chats exposed the privacy of young players.

•  Intentionally confusing button configurations in Fortnite’s store caused hundreds of millions in accidental charges.

When users would dispute these charges, their accounts were frozen and nothing was resolved.

“Epic used privacy-invasive default settings and deceptive interfaces that tricked Fornite users, including teenagers and children,” said FTC Chair Lina M. Khan, “These enforcement actions make clear to businesses that the FTC is cracking down on these unlawful practices.”

$275 million of the settlement will go to FTC for Epic’s violation of COPPA, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection act. 

The remaining $245 million will be distributed among three groups of Fortnite users. Those lucky winners are:

• Parents whose children made unauthorized credit card purchases in game.

• Fortnite players who were wrongfully charged for unwanted items.

• Users whose accounts were frozen after disputing wrongful charges.

Epic has moved forward with the settlement and issued an official statement:

“No developer creates a game with the intention of ending up here. The video game industry is a place of fast-moving innovation, where player expectations are high and new ideas are paramount…

We accepted this agreement because we want Epic to be at the forefront of consumer protection and provide the best experience for our players.”

They’re sorry, but hey, someone has to be on the cutting edge of limited edition Marvel skins and pay-to-win golden machine guns.

Fortnite taught millions of children and teens how to construct a house in minutes and gave them the ability to perform deadly, spinning headshots from hundreds of virtual yards away.

But at what cost? At what cost?

Well, apparently $520 million.

Meanwhile, we’re still waiting on damages from 2007, when a Runescape grifter convinced us to drop all of our gold and gear in exchange for a, “pretty sick sword.”

Meme of the Day

Bloody hell, Harry! We'll never be able to afford that new broomstick with all these capital gains taxes!

The Last Sip

Sam Bankman-Fried has decided to sign those extradition papers. We know that he was holding out for access to the full indictment, and he either got that or several cartons of coconut-flavored cigarettes (Bahamian jail currency).

Regardless of how he was convinced, our boy’s coming home! And probably to jail!

Stay tuned for what will likely be a painless, easy-to-understand, and uneventful trial.

Stay Caffeinated,

Coffee & Crypto Team

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