A number of surprising articles have appeared in recent days. First, an exposé of sorts about ApeCoin on Coindesk and yesterday a complete crypto manual by the New York Times, of all places. That manual was already dated at the time of publication given the ApeCoin story, but it's a positive move by the fairly crypto-critical New York Times.
There are doubts about Coindesk's independence since its acquisition by Digital Currency Group (DCG), especially when their journalists write about DCG but meanwhile share in DCG's profits via SARS. Personally, I rate Coindesk Chief Content Officer Michael Casey highly, especially as long as Coindesk continues to publish excellent articles.
In 'What is ApeCoin and who is behind it? the new hype ApeCoin is closely analyzed. The main conclusions: Yuga Labs plays a much bigger role in the ApeCoin ecosystem than it wants to make it appear. A crucial passage:
"In that sense, an NFT can act as a license to print money. Again, Yuga Labs does not claim any responsibility for ApeCoin - it just grabs a significant portion of the profits."
In short, Yuga Labs takes the joys, not the burdens. The question is: How does Yuga Labs do this? In a nutshell, Yuga Labs claims the ApeCoin DAO makes all the decisions.
According to Rohan Gray, a law professor at Willamette University and observer of cryptoregulation, the distinction between ApeCoin DAO and Yuga Labs probably also has to do with something called the Hinman test. It is named after former SEC official William Hinman, who now works at Andreessen Horowitz; Hinman's idea was that if a governing body is "sufficiently decentralized," it is free to issue a token without having to register it as securities. ApeCoin DAO is decentralized (at least in name); Yuga Labs is not.
Precisely because of this crucial position of Yuga Labs, another recent Coindesk article on this company is very interesting, titled, "The First NFT Monopoly. But that aside, back to Professor Gray:
"It's the next iteration of the crypto world's attempts to circumvent securities regulation. First it was coins, and then in 2017 with the [SEC's] ICO report they couldn't do that, so they switched to stablecoins, and then that came to an end, so they switched to NFTs."
According to Grey, ApeCoin amounts to an attempt by the crypto industry "to almost glorify 2017 - they were kicked out of the bar with a fake mustache, now they've come back within a week with a fake nose."
It will be interesting to follow whether NFT projects, often in combination with DAOs, manage to pay profits and dividends without falling under SEC regulations related to securities and equities.
Traditional media have a hell of a job to make the crypto and NFT playing field understandable to their readers. So kudos to the New York Times, which yesterday published a comprehensive guide under the wonderful title "The Latecomer's Guide to Crypto. We are waiting for the first update of this guide on projects such as ApeCoin, where an NFT is combined with a DAO, a company and a foundation. Until then, for the Dutch, Gert Jan Lasterie's unsurpassed book on crypto currencies remains the standard work to consult. If only because of its brilliant subtitle:
How you thought you were late getting into crypto but became more successful than people who didn't read this book