Welcome back to Chain Reaction, a podcast that unpacks and dives deep into the latest trends, drama and news in crypto with some of the biggest names in the industry to break things down block by block for the crypto curious.

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Maria Shen, a general partner on the investment team at Electric Capital, an early-stage venture firm focused on crypto, blockchain, fintech and marketplaces.

Before Electric Capital, Shen was the CTO and co-founder of Bambify, which helped small to medium-sized businesses create more efficient supply chains with manufacturers globally. Prior to that, she worked at Microsoft.

In March 2022, the firm announced that it closed $1 billion for a pair of crypto funds: a $400 million vehicle for making equity investments in startups, and a $600 million fund intended to invest directly in crypto tokens. Its website currently showcases a portfolio with about 75 investments with crypto startups, including Magic Eden, ConsenSys and Bitwise, to name a few.

Earlier this year, Electric Capital put out a report indicating that the number of blockchain developers in the U.S. has declined every year since 2017, dropping to 29% last year from 40% in 2017. We dove into what that report really means and how it will affect the growth of developers domestically and internationally.

“A lot of founders have already moved out of the United States or are looking to move out of the United States,” Shen said. “That also means when we’re looking at investing we are increasingly looking outside the United States for opportunities and interesting founders.”

We also discussed what crypto sectors she’s watching for investments, why she’s betting big on NFTs and the general venture capital market sentiment amid a shaky crypto market. She thinks the ongoing bear market is “going to last a while and is going to be increasingly difficult for companies to fundraise.”

As for VCs, the macro environment has “shifted so much” and firms “are raising less capital and deploying less capital. A lot of firms are almost at the end of their fund lifetimes.”

Overall, Shen said the crypto fundraising environment will probably become worse going into next year. But on a positive note, she sees the current bear market in a better light compared to the previous one in 2018 when “prices were falling off a cliff.” This market cycle feels “completely different,” she said. “A lot of the things we were really dreaming about and talking about theoretically have been shipped now.”

Today, the crypto ecosystem has Ethereum-focused scaling solutions, more stablecoin options, decentralized finance, onchain governance and NFTs, Shen noted. “These things didn’t exist in 2018, 2019, so it’s interesting to see the market maturing beyond transmitting tokens or money to one another.”

Chain Reaction comes out every other Thursday, so be sure to subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest in web3 and crypto. To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

The now-bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius Network and its former CEO and co-founder Alex Mashinsky faced several lawsuits on Thursday morning from three separate American entities: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Bloomberg also reported that Mashinsky was arrested and charged with fraud today, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mashinsky and Celsius’ chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, were charged by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday for allegedly orchestrating a “scheme to defraud customers of Celsius Network,” according to a previously sealed indictment.

The company and Mashinsky raised billions of dollars from investors through “unregistered and fraudulent offers and sales of crypto asset securities,” according to the SEC filing on Thursday. They “falsely promised investors a safe investment with high returns” through its Earn Interest Program that told investors they could make as much as 18% in yield annually.

The SEC also alleged that Celsius’ token CEL and its erstwhile Earn Interest Program are securities, adding to the agency’s recent stance in other filings that a number of cryptocurrencies like BNB, BUSD, SOL, ADA and MATIC are securities.

Celsius filed for bankruptcy in June 2022, a month after freezing customer assets amid turbulence in the crypto market that toppled several crypto firms. A few weeks before the bankruptcy, a Celsius executive wrote in an internal message on May 21, 2022, “we don’t have any profitable services,” according to the SEC filing.

The New Jersey-headquartered startup, which was once valued at $3.25 billion when it extended its “oversubscribed” Series B financing round to $750 million in November 2021, said in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in federal court in New York that it had anywhere between $1 billion and $10 billion in assets and liabilities and more than 100,000 creditors.

In May, a consortium called Fahrenheit announced it acquired Celsius’ assets. The group is made up of bidders led by investment firm Arrington Capital and includes crypto mining firm US Bitcoin Corp., Proof Group, Steven Kokinos and Ravi Kaza. As the name suggests, Arrington Capital is led by Michael Arrington, the founder of TechCrunch. Michael Arrington left TechCrunch in 2011.

The group’s plan is to distribute Celsius’ liquid assets to account holders. Illiquid assets, such as its institutional loan portfolio, mining business and alternative investments, will be managed by a new management team.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

The saga of Ripple Labs, the XRP token and whether the sale of its crypto token constituted a securities law violation in the U.S. advanced today. In a ruling from the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York, Judge Analisa Torres gave a nuanced view on the matter.

In summary, after examining several different sales methods of the XRP token over time, and applying the Howey Test to each, the district judge approved the SEC’s motion for summary judgment with regard to the institutional sale by Ripple of the XRP token. This means XRP is a security when it’s used for institutional sales, according to Torres.

But, in an interesting twist, the judge then denied the SEC’s request for summary judgment as it related to programmatic sales of XRP, among other circumstances, including sales by two of the company’s former and current leaders. This means she ruled XRP is not a security when it’s sold to the broader public.

Basically, the verdict is a double-edged sword, but most of the crypto community is viewing it in a positive light, probably because they are mostly retail investors invested in the non-security side of the ruling.

For context, the SEC case against Ripple has been in court since December 2020, when the agency sued the company and its two executives Brad Garlinghouse and Chris Larsen for raising $1.3 billion in an alleged “unregistered, ongoing digital asset securities offering.”

The SDNY’s ruling comes as the SEC is ramping up enforcement actions against entities that it considers ran afoul of securities law in the United States, filing suits against international players in the crypto market, including Binance, and domestic companies, including Coinbase.

This new ruling makes it clear that beyond the SEC, there are other agencies who view some activity in the crypto world as illegal, even if they do so less broadly than the SEC itself.

In the wake of the mixed ruling, XRP’s value rose 28% to 60 cents at the time of reporting. The last time that the token was worth so much was May 2022.

Why is the value of XRP rising when it did not achieve a complete legal reprieve? The legal risk of today’s ruling for XRP and Ripple Labs may be less than some investors feared, or perhaps an even partial win for XRP was better than anticipated. Either way, for holders of XRP, the judge’s decision is driving profits.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

To get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important crypto stories delivered to your inbox every Thursday at 12 p.m. PT, subscribe here.

Welcome back to Chain Reaction.

Earlier today, the now-bankrupt crypto lending firm Celsius Network and its former CEO and co-founder Alex Mashinsky faced several lawsuits from three separate American entities: The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Bloomberg also reported that Mashinsky was arrested and charged with fraud today, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mashinsky and Celsius’ chief revenue officer, Roni Cohen-Pavon, were charged by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday for allegedly orchestrating a “scheme to defraud customers of Celsius Network,” according to a previously sealed indictment.

These suits come at a time when the SEC, and U.S. agencies in general, are cracking down on the crypto industry. Earlier this week, the U.S. government accused a cybersecurity professional of hacking a cryptocurrency exchange and stealing around $9 million in cryptocurrency, in what looks like a case of an ethical hacker turning rogue, then trying to appear ethical again.

Last month, the SEC sued the two largest crypto exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, for separate reasons, but both lawsuits alleged the companies were violating U.S. securities laws. And in early June, the U.S. Department of Justice charged two Russian nationals for hacking and causing the subsequent collapse of Mt. Gox, once one of the largest and most popular crypto exchanges. Mt. Gox shut down in 2014 after filing for bankruptcy when the theft was revealed, and then was ordered to liquidate.

These are just a few of the charges and suits that come to mind. But there were (and I’m sure will be) plenty more as the U.S. regulators keep a close eye on the crypto industry.

The TLDR? Celsius and Mashinsky are in extremely hot water. And this could be just the beginning of a long series of lawsuits and charges for them and the industry at large.

This week in web3

1. Federal court rules Ripple’s XRP token can be treated as a security…sometimes
2. Google Play changes policy toward blockchain-based apps, opening door to tokenized digital assets, NFTs
3. Coinbase Wallet launches messaging feature so users can interact directly on its platform
4. What does Coinbase Wallet’s latest DM feature mean for the ecosystem?
5. Car-sharing revenue could be a first step to mainstream adoption of web3 in the enterprise
6. Web3 games don’t need to highlight blockchain elements to succeed

The latest pod

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Maria Shen, a general partner on the investment team at Electric Capital, an early-stage venture firm focused on crypto, blockchain, fintech and marketplaces.

Before Electric Capital, Maria was the CTO and co-founder of Bambify, a startup that helped small to medium-sized businesses create more efficient supply chains with manufacturers globally. Prior to that, she worked at Microsoft.

In March 2022, the firm announced that it closed $1 billion for a pair of crypto funds — a $400 million vehicle for making equity investments in startups and a $600 million fund intended to invest directly in crypto tokens. Its website currently showcases a portfolio with about 75 investments with crypto startups like Magic Eden, ConsenSys and Bitwise, to name a few.

More recently, Electric Capital put out a report that showed the number of blockchain developers in the U.S. has declined every year since 2017, dropping to 29% last year from 40% in 2017. We dove into what that report really means and how it will affect the growth of developers domestically and internationally.

We discussed what crypto sectors Maria is watching for investments, why she’s betting big on NFTs and the general venture capital market sentiment.

We also talked about:

• U.S. regulatory impact on investments
• The bear market
• Trends she’s following
• Advice for founders

Subscribe to Chain Reaction on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favorite pod platform to keep up with the latest episodes, and please leave us a review if you like what you hear!

Follow the money

1. Music NFT platform Sound.xyz raised $20 million in a Series A round
2. Ticketing solutions platform Get Protocol raised $4.5 million in a seed round
3. LunarCrush raised $5 million in a Series A to help tailor social media content
4. AwesomeQA raised $2.8 million to provide automated customer support solutions
5. Olympix raised $4.3 million to build crypto cybersecurity with AI tooling

This list was compiled with information from Messari as well as TechCrunch’s own reporting.

What else we’re reading

Want to branch out from the world of web3? Here are some articles on TechCrunch that caught our attention this week:

1. The era of tech layoffs is evolving in an interesting way
2. Feels like you missed the generative AI train? 5 steps for speeding ahead in 90 days
3. Meet the 19-year-old MIT drop-out ‘replacing gunpowder’ for the defense industry

Follow me on Twitter @Jacqmelinek for breaking crypto news, memes and more.

Coinbase Wallet, one of the biggest self-custody crypto wallets globally, is launching a direct messaging feature so users can interact with one another through its platform, the company shared exclusively with TechCrunch.

Prior to the launch, the wallet allowed users to buy and sell crypto, bridge digital assets across networks, collect NFTs and connect with web3 and blockchain-based websites and applications, among other things.

Update: After publication TechCrunch amended this article to state that the Coinbase Wallet messaging service is not, in fact, onchain. Initial context provided by Coinbase’s PR firm included several mentions to the messaging product being onchain and that it would be available to Unstoppable Domains users, which it is not. After more conversation with Coinbase, we better understood the underlying technology and have updated the article. “The messaging is not happening onchain itself, but messages are sent via onchain addresses,” a spokesperson shared. 

Wallet holders can send messages to and from Ethereum accounts including ones with CB.IDs, ENS domains or Lens profiles.

The wallet is available in more than 100 countries, according to Coinbase’s Q1 2023 shareholder letter. This means people can send funds across borders through one application, opposed to wiring funds from one bank to another, waiting days for the funds to go through, said Siddharth Coelho-Prabhu, director of product management at Coinbase.

It will also give NFT and POAP holders the ability to connect with others who own the same asset as them by directly messaging their address. This could open up the door for new connections that may have otherwise been lost. Separately, if you’ve been eyeing an NFT and want to make an offer to a holder, you could message the owner and potentially make a deal there, Coelho-Prabhu said.

To start, the messaging will be rolled out to the Lens protocol community, while anyone can gain access to it through QR codes of active users, Coelho-Prabhu shared. Each inbox is connected to single wallet addresses, so if you’re someone with a bunch of different crypto wallet addresses, you can have a number of inboxes on Coinbase Wallet.

“When you create a wallet in the future, it’ll come with messaging built in, so when you want to message someone, it’s fully activated and ready,” Coelho-Prabhu told TechCrunch. However, he said there’s no specific date available on when it’ll be implemented for all customers.

This new integration could become a pretty big deal for the crypto ecosystem, given that most — if not all — crypto wallets are today solely means to buy, hold, trade and transfer cryptocurrencies. But there was no way to message through wallets, meaning you would have to use a third-party messaging platform to interact with someone, confirm their details, then go back to the wallet to send or receive funds.

The encrypted messaging will be powered by XMTP, an open source messaging network. The inbox is portable, which means it can be taken with wallet holders across applications and will include future messages, interactions, payments and profiles, as well as past ones, Shane Mac, co-founder and CEO of XMTP, told TechCrunch. Chats from any of the applications that use XMTP, like Lenster, Orb and Converse.xyz, can be imported to Coinbase Wallet.

“It’s a fully private inbox inside of Coinbase Wallet, much like WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram inboxes,” Mac said. “But if you want to leave WhatsApp, Telegram, iMessage in today’s world, you can’t take your messages with you, and this gives you portability and interoperability.”

“From my perspective, the convenience for anyone in crypto of having a unified app that allows you to message and transact makes life convenient and simple but also much more safe and secure,” Coelho-Prabhu said. “You won’t have to worry about if you’re actually talking to Punk6529, you can see their balances and transactions — and that level of safety, security and convenience is a big upgrade.”

On the topic of security and safety, its encrypted messaging makes it impossible for XMTP, Coinbase Wallet or anyone for that matter, to access someone’s messages through the wallet, unless they have the individual’s private keys, which decrypts the messages, Mac said.

The wallet also provides warnings to users on how to protect themselves and will also integrate transaction protections over time, in addition to letting wallet holders block malicious accounts, dApps and NFTs.

Coelho-Prabhu sees the adoption in two silos: one for people who want more “trustworthy interactions” to send funds, and for others who are early crypto adopters, native to the ecosystem and are looking for ways to be in touch with creators, leaders and other like-minded players in the space. “Even without crypto transactions, the idea that communication can happen under this paradigm is new.”

“I always say owning your communication can be bigger than owning your assets,” Mac added.

Crypto exchange Coinbase has launched a direct messaging feature on its wallet app, negating the need to copy-paste 42-character wallet addresses to and from other messaging platforms to send or receive digital assets, the company exclusively told TechCrunch+.

The feature also lets NFT and POAP holders connect with others who own the same asset by directly messaging their address.

All messaging is encrypted, Coinbase says, and is powered by XMTP, the open source messaging network. The inbox is also portable, meaning that messages, interactions, transactions and profiles can be transferred to platforms that are compatible with the network.

But that’s just the news. What is this new feature really good for, and how will people use it? We had a few thoughts:

Jacquelyn Melinek: Alex, you’ve been covering crypto for more than a decade now. What does this news mean to you?

Alex Wilhelm: I find it pretty bullish! One complaint that I have had with crypto in general is that it has long felt too financial. As someone who doesn’t really love spending time doing accounts, I have never really wanted an entirely new way to make my life more accounting-based.

I have to say, though, that adding messaging to wallets seems to transform them into something far more? So much so that calling them wallets seems like a bit of a misnomer. Perhaps we should call them identities?

Regardless, I am very curious to know if this is a feature that the crypto community writ large has been asking for or working toward. From my limited vantage point as someone who spends more time in meetings than breathing, it’s de novo!

JM: I think this feature isn’t necessarily something that has been asked for, but it would be helpful. Kind of like when I order takeout, I don’t always think to get cutlery (it’s not always necessary), but when I do, I’m like, “Great! A fork! I don’t have to do dishes!”

Google has updated its mobile software marketplace policy to allow application developers to integrate digital assets like NFTs into their games through its Play app store, the company’s group product manager Joseph Mills announced on Wednesday.

As part of the policy update, Mills stated that apps must be “transparent with users about tokenized digital assets” and developers can’t “promote or glamorize any potential earning from playing or trading activities.”

Apps that aren’t in line with Google Play’s Real-Money Gambling, Games and Contests policy or fit eligibility requirements also can’t accept money for chances to win assets, including NFTs. “This includes, but is not limited to, offering mechanisms to receive randomized blockchain-based items from a purchase such as ‘loot boxes,’” Mills said.

Those limitations could potentially prevent NFT newcomers from being duped into believing that buying these tokenized assets could result in massive gains — an oft-used marketing tactic for some projects in the space.

This new change will also allow apps and games on Google Play to reconceptualize “traditional games with user-owned content to boosting user loyalty through unique NFT rewards,” Mills noted.

The company anticipates users will begin seeing in-app and game experiences later this summer, as a select group of developers are helping to test out the new policy ahead of its wide rollout to all developers on Google Play later this year.

Reddit, which has seen success from its crypto wallets and NFT avatars, partnered with Google to help update their policy, Matt Williamson, senior engineering manager at the social news site, said in the post.

In the future, Google Play plans on working with industry partners on further improving its support of blockchain-based applications, including secondary marketplaces.

While Google is updating its policies, one of the other major app stores, Apple’s, remains steady. In general, Apple has taken a cautious stance on the digital asset ecosystem by putting additional fees on NFT sales, something that most NFT creators would not agree to.

In October, Apple said apps are allowed to list, mint, transfer, and let users view their own existing NFTs. However, their rules prevent the ownership of NFTs from unlocking any more features within the app. Plus, while apps can let users browse other collections, they’re prevented from showing external links, buttons or call to action to purchase NFTs. Users can only purchase NFTs through Apple’s in-app payment system according to the company’s official guidelines.

Going forward, there could be potential for Apple to budge or make new policy updates to grow in the blockchain-based world and match Google’s evolving position — or the company could just say f*** it, and let Google have it. Time will tell.

The U.S. government accused a cybersecurity professional of hacking a cryptocurrency exchange and stealing around $9 million in cryptocurrency, in what looks like a case of an ethical hacker turning rogue, then trying to appear ethical again.

In a press release on Tuesday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of New York announced the indictment of Shakeeb Ahmed, 34, calling him “a senior security engineer for an international technology company whose resume reflected skills in, among other things, reverse engineering smart contracts and blockchain audits, which are some of the specialized skills Ahmed used to execute the attack.”

While the prosecutors did not specify who the victim was, cryptocurrency news website CoinDesk reported that the description and date of the hack match the attack on Crema Finance, a Solana-based exchange, which happened in early July 2022, around the same date — July 2 and 3 — that Ahmed is alleged to have hacked an unnamed exchange.

In that case, the hacker ended up returning around $8 million in crypto and keeping the rest, as it was reported at the time. In its press release, DOJ prosecutors said that Ahmed “had communications with the Crypto Exchange in which he decided to return all of the stolen funds except for $1.5 million if the Crypto Exchange agreed not to refer the attack to law enforcement.”

This is a very common practice in the world of crypto and web3. In the past, hackers who stole crypto and offered to return parts of it by negotiating with the victims directly have sometimes called themselves “white hats,” cybersecurity lingo for hackers who have good intentions. Clearly, these hackers have taken what is a word with a pretty clear and established meaning and co-opted it for a practice that resides — to say the least — in a gray area.

And, as this case shows, returning some of your crypto loot does not mean you will not be prosecuted.

The feds highlighted the fact that Ahmed, who is accused of wire fraud and money laundering, used the chops he learned in his day jobs to carry out the theft.

“Ahmed used his skills as a computer security engineer to steal millions of dollars. He then allegedly tried to hide the stolen funds, but his skills were no match for IRS Criminal Investigation’s Cyber Crimes Unit,” Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher, who works for IRC-CI, the criminal investigation branch of the IRS, is quoted as saying in a press release.

Ahmed allegedly exploited a vulnerability in the exchange and inserted “fake pricing data to fraudulently generate millions of dollars’ worth of inflated fees, which he did not actually earn but was still able to withdraw,” according to the indictment against Ahmed.

Then, according to the feds, Ahmed allegedly laundered the stolen crypto “through a series of transactions,” such as swapping tokens, “bridging” the proceeds from the Solana blockchain to the Ethereum blockchain, among others.

Later, Ahmed also allegedly searched online for information on the hack, “his own criminal liability,” attorneys who had expertise in similar cases, whether law enforcement could investigate such an attack, and “fleeing the United States to avoid criminal charges.”

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Do you have information about this hack, other cyberattacks against crypto projects, or thefts of cryptocurrency? We’d love to hear from you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Wickr, Telegram and Wire @lorenzofb, or email lorenzo@techcrunch.com. You can also contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

Web3 enterprise adoption is possible, but who’s going to create its value?

As the global crypto market capitalization sits around $1.2 trillion, some industry players are looking to build upon enterprise businesses to grow the pool and potentially bring in greater adoption. The key companies, tactics and business models to bring that in is yet to be determined, but that isn’t stopping some web3 startups from diving in together.

“I think a lot of disruptive real-world adoption is not going to come from enterprises, but startups that create new ideas,” Leonard Dorlöchter, co-founder of Peaq network, told TechCrunch+. “We expect a lot of adoption earlier in web3, but in the next five years, tokenization of assets of any kind will happen.”

ELOOP is a token-based car-sharing blockchain project that allows community members to share the revenue of its electric car fleet in Vienna. The cars are Teslas powered on the Polkadot blockchain via Peaq network, which builds applications for vehicles, robots and devices.

Dorlöchter thinks that machines like Teslas should be able to “provide goods and services autonomously.” His company built blockchain infrastructure to help create applications like ELOOP’s, to form decentralized car sharing and onboard Teslas onto its network.

ELOOP has over 90,000 registered users using its fleet of 200 Teslas, with about 100 with Peaq-linked IDs (managed by 487 token holders). The token holders have made a combined $138,000 in revenue from almost 6,700 trips, according to ELOOP’s dashboard.