Crypto privacy just scored a legal W

GM. It’s the Daily Squeeze, where the crypto lemons of the day get turned into surprisingly tangy lemonade.

⚖️ A US appeals court ruled that Tornado Cash’s immutable smart contracts can’t be sanctioned by the Treasury.

🍊 News drops: Uniswap’s record-breaking bug bounty, Binance is saying bye to five tokens in December + more

🍍 Market flavor today

#crypto-currencies-table#

Who needs reality TV when the markets are serving this much drama? 🤪 The Fear and Greed Index is chilling at 75 in the “Greed” zone, and Bitcoin took a dip below $91K yesterday – just to keep us all paying attention.

So, what’s stirring the pot? This week, $558.1M left spot Bitcoin ETFs, adding some selling pressure to the mix.

The folks over at IntoTheBlock point out that the pullback can also be blamed on high funding rates. That can be a red flag because it means the market is crowded with leveraged positions, and even a small market shake can force sell-offs, causing prices to drop. The good news, tho’? Funding rates are finally settling back to normal levels, so that leverage flush might be behind us.

CryptoQuant’s Ki Young Ju reminded us that these kinds of price corrections are nothing new – in 2021, when BTC was discovering its price from $17K to $64K, we saw this happen over and over.

Analyst PlanC is actually pleased to see BTC taking a breather – spending some time in the $90Ks could be the best-case scenario for extending this bull run. Sure, the up-only phases are exciting, but these sideways moves are where the real foundation is built.

Looking ahead, macroeconomic factors are expected to impact BTC’s price more. The Fed is confident that inflation is easing and the job market is strong, which opens the door for further interest rate cuts (even if they’re planning to take it nice and slow).

Plus, the Consumer Confidence Index bumped up to 111.7 in November from 109.6 in October. Why does this matter? A confident consumer is more likely to invest in riskier markets like crypto.

All in all, it’s a good time to stay calm, think long-term, and maybe even appreciate the mess – ’cause that’s setting the stage for what’s next 🚀

🏆 W for privacy

Imagine that in some alternate universe there’s a town with a community a bulletin board. It’s got no owner, pretty much just exists there, could’ve been dropped straight from the heavens – who knows.

The townies used it for all the essentials: gossip updates, occasional love confessions, and event flyers. But also, some clowns would put up post-it notes with doodles of… uh, something that rhymes with bricks.

The mayor saw these doodles once, and he was absolutely fuming – so he decided to toss the entire board in the trash.

And that, my friends, is basically the regulatory approach to decentralized platforms. The real question tho’: is it fair to destroy a tool that serves a legit purpose just because a few jerks use it the wrong way? If this question keeps you up at night, you’re gonna love today’s update.

Remember Tornado Cash? Back in 2022, the US Treasury went after the crypto mixer, adding 44 of its smart contracts to the sanctions list. Why? Because some people, including North Korean hackers, used it for money laundering.

But six users, with a little help from Coinbase, said, “Not on our watch!”, and took this case to court.

Well 🥰 A HUGE update to that lawsuit dropped yesterday: the appeals court ruled that the Treasury overstepped its authority with their decision. The argument? Those smart contracts are open-source, immutable code that nobody owns. No ownership = not property. And since the Treasury can only sanction “property,” this move wasn’t following the law.

What that means:

That said, Variant’s chief legal officer Jake Chrevinsky noticed this one detail: the ruling doesn’t say the Treasury shouldn’t sanction crypto, just that they can’t under existing law. Basically, Congress could still rewrite the rules to make it possible. But until they actually do, we’re counting this as a solid W for privacy.

And speaking of Ws, privacy-focused cryptos went nuts after the news came out:

Now, what about the Tornado Cash devs – Alexey Pertsev, Roman Storm, and Roman Semenov? Are they off the hook? Well… prolly not.

The accusations against them revolve around their alleged intent and actions – basically, the claim is they knew shady stuff was going down and still helped bad actors exploit the platform. That’s a separate legal battle from the sanctions issue and remains unresolved.

Anyways, the board is back up. If you’re in the town square, feel free to pin up something useful again – just keep it classy, okay?

🍋 News drops

🦄 Uniswap v4 is almost here, and Uniswap Labs is makin’ it rain for bug hunters. Spot a critical vulnerability? Up to $15.5M in your pocket. High severity bugs score up to $1M, medium ones grab $100K, and the smaller stuff gets handled case by case.

👋 Binance is kicking five tokens out by December, saying they’re not up to industry standards. The unlucky ones? OAX, IRISnet, SelfKey, Gifto, and Ren. Unsurprisingly, their prices decreased by about 40% after the news.

💊 Another $22M in Solana moved from the Pump.fun fee account to Kraken, and people jumped to conclusions about a sell-off. Co-founder Alon hit ’em back with this sassy response: “Did you know that you can send assets to an exchange without intending to sell those assets?”

🏠 A US Treasury study shows that areas with high crypto activity are seeing a spike in mortgages from low-income households. Wen Lambo?.. nah. Wen house?

🇧🇷 Brazil’s Congress is cooking up a plan for a federal Bitcoin Reserve. The idea is to use Bitcoin as a protection from currency swings and geopolitical drama, plus as collateral for their upcoming CBDC.

🍌 Juicy memes