Taylor Swift nixed $100m FTX sponsorship deal, a16z tweet rallies Optimism’s OP token

Taylor Swift grilled FTX about potential securities violations before nixing $100m deal

Taylor Swift grilled FTX about securities laws prior to turning down a $100 million dollar sponsorship deal, said the lawyer suing celebrity promoters associated with the crypto firm.

Attorney Adam Moskowitz is currently suing basketball star Shaquille O’Neal, NFL quarterback Tom Brady, and over a dozen other A-list FTX promoters in a class action lawsuit that alleges they promoted sales of unregistered securities.

Moskowitz said his evidence shows that pop star Swift specifically asked FTX whether or not the products she would potentially promote could be classified as unregistered securities.

“The one person I found that did that was Taylor Swift. In our discovery, Taylor Swift actually asked them, ‘Can you tell me that these are not unregistered securities?’” Moskowitz said.

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SEC Chair Gensler avoids calling ETH a security while under Republican microscope

US Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Gary Gensler avoided calling Ethereum’s Ether token a security on Tuesday, while doubling down on his agency’s designation of most crypto tokens as securities.

In a Tuesday session, the House Financial Services Committee’s Republican Chair Patrick McHenry and other Republican lawmakers grilled Gensler on a range of topics such as securities laws, stablecoin legislation, and the SEC’s handling of exchange FTX prior to its collapse.

Throughout the battery of questions, Gensler asserted that the SEC should control the lion’s share of the digital assets market.

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Optimism’s OP token rallies on mysterious a16z tweet

Layer 2 blockchain Optimism’s OP token rallied following a tweet of an orange circle by an engineer at VC firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z).

The circle in the tweet, attached to the phrase “coming soon,” is reminiscent of the blue circle tweet made by exchange Coinbase earlier in the year, when the company teased its upcoming Base layer 2 network.

Following the a16z tweet, the company’s crypto CTO Eddy Lazzarin tweet an orange circle emoji, with the words “not an L2″ attached.

a16z co-led a funding round of $150 million for blockchain Optimism in March of last year.

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VC firm Tribe Capital may take a stab at rebooting FTX

A venture capital firm that lost big in the FTX collapse of 2022 may try to help seed a reboot of the company, according to reports.

Tribe Capital, a firm with investments in a range of crypto companies such as Kraken and Polygon labs, has upwards of $1.6 billion in assets.

Sources say the VC firm will look at taking the reins on a $250 million raise for FTX, of which $100 million would come from Tribe and partners.

More web3 news from around the web…

Fed’s Bowman doubts benefits of US central bank digital currency — Bloomberg

Crypto companies may use a supreme court doctrine to push back against SEC: lawyer — CoinDesk

Tracking zero-knowledge rollups on Ethereum — Blockworks