{"name":"Beloved People: Gary Gensler","created_by":"Bay Fragile x sgt_slaughtermelon","description":"Even artists who have been trying their hand at tokenized art and crypto for several years now may be unaware of the power games going on around cryptocurrency and how it affects them. An idea of when the tides are going out or coming in can help artists set realistic expectations of what the near future holds, what their potential is, and what issues they might want to be in touch with that profoundly affects their future (at least, their future as cyberpunk artist-types).\n\nGary Gensler, the head of the SEC, has drawn a lot of criticism from crypto enthusiasts. On the one hand, he’s been scorned for seeming out of touch with the economic situation of young people. The SEC published a PSA video where Gensler advises students to save a few dollars a week and does some fast math suggesting they make 8% Annual Percentage Yield on their savings. This video drew outright mockery from crypto circles that pointed out that “high-interest savings” at most banks are below 1% APY. Add to this the recent action wherein the SEC threatened Coinbase over offering even 4% APY to users for their savings. High inflation means that those estimates about the relative worth of your savings may be grossly inaccurate as well. To his credit, however, savings on centralized exchanges have proven to be a bad idea in the last year. Keeping any significant amount of money in centralized exchanges - even supposedly reputable ones like Gemini and Blockfi - has proven to be a risky endeavor.\n\nThe other aspect of Gensler’s leadership that is currently drawing criticism is his regulatory vision for crypto - specifically, its inconsistency and self-serving nature. He doesn’t seem ignorant of how cryptocurrencies work, despite what a lot of the first and most popular comments on Reddit may tell you. His statements on his vision suggest he understands and believes that Bitcoin functions more like a commodity than a security, something bought and sold without any centralized ownership or control. He keeps hinting that anything associated with Ethereum (and by implication, any smart contract focused currency) may be considered a security, but thus far the strategy seems to be to suggest entities register as securities and only enforce and penalize particular ones when it suits the SEC to do so. The case against XRP, the random and weirdly publicized case against Kim Kardashian over some promotional nonsense, and the vague suggestion from Gensler that we need to think about how commodities and securities intermingle in marketplaces and who should regulate them and how… It all seems like he is angling for the SEC to be in charge of a broader sphere of economic policy than their charter indicates. Not only that, but enforcement by lawsuit style leadership can appear capricious: it looks like you’re trying to be the de facto kingmaker of the financial Wild West, and having meetings with Sam Bankman-Fried about just that kind of issue (whether or not Gensler actually had any intention of favoring SBF’s schemes) looks awfully bad. \n\nWhat does any of this mean for artists? Gary Gensler seems to be posturing as the expert policymaker for US crypto regulation. He is the head of the SEC, but art - and by extension art as NFTs - is legally a commodity. That is, ideas and creativity as digital goods without centralized control. These waters get muddied even further when NFT projects like, for example, Mutant Ape Planet, promises utilities like development of a metaverse, additional drops and rewards - all the sorts of things that last year the popular YouTuber Legal Eagle was asking about: what is the legal status of a roadmap? The point here is that if art as art is a commodity, but NFT art that functions as a legally binding promise ends up working more like a security (or some other new thing we haven’t come up with a regulatory label for like a contract), then it may eventually and reasonably fall under the jurisdiction of the SEC. \n\nIn a word: Gensler seems utterly detached from the lack of economic mobility that paycheck-to-paycheck Americans face. He suggests returns on savings that only serve the wealthy. His public stance on cryptocurrency seems to suggest that he’s deliberately blurring lines and making power plays. NFT projects eager to find buyers that aren’t interested in art at all but more in returns on their NFT investments are actively playing into his hands by making more and more complex value propositions that push art NFTs out of the traditional legal assignment of commodity into foggier and more legally dangerous areas of definition. \n\nAs an artist, you may find eventually that your art project that earns future airdrops or rewards for collectors ends up being considered something other than a commodity, and because of that your status as an artist (eventually you may not actually be able to deliver the benefits you wanted to) may become a different status subject to legal accusations of fraud. In addition, you may find that instead of staying in the crypto ecosystem and earning modest interest on your art sales, entities like the SEC may do their best to ban any kind of reasonable returns on your income under the threat of labeling it a security.","attributes":[{"trait_type":"Artist","value":"Bay Fragile x sgt_slaughtermelon"},{"trait_type":"Collection","value":"Beloved People"}],"animation_details":{"bytes":6885614,"format":"MP4","duration":60,"sha256":"1d911a7524df0515af0acb40aa949760ac7cba7813a1d90e8323a51df8998b1f","width":1080,"height":1440,"codecs":["H.265"]},"animation":"https://arweave.net/6jSCVYruv9xWaF3z_j6jCJ8nmWg0ciRBg4UOlL6dXVM","animation_url":"https://arweave.net/6jSCVYruv9xWaF3z_j6jCJ8nmWg0ciRBg4UOlL6dXVM","image_details":{"bytes":554396,"format":"PNG","sha256":"2387d244cd4f18523dc046b179a41aa894c70164c186eed26fbac479d0f3608a","width":1080,"height":1440},"image":"https://arweave.net/qLft50tceik9oaGLa8KuyT6j6s0StD48y5Ji7WvoMDY","image_url":"https://arweave.net/qLft50tceik9oaGLa8KuyT6j6s0StD48y5Ji7WvoMDY"}