Australian Watchdog Sues Meta Platforms
  The biggest crypto news and ideas of the day Mar. 18, 2022 Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here. Supported by 
Welcome to The Node.
In today's newsletter: Meta Platforms (the former Facebook) and Meta Platforms Ireland are being sued. Taiwan's MaiCoin Crypto Exchange is considering selling shares. And Argentina's Senate approved a debt deal of $45 billion.
Today's must-reads Top Shelf CRYPTO SCAMS: Meta Platforms (the former Facebook) and its Meta Platforms Ireland are being sued by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission for engaging in false, misleading and deceptive conduct. The commission says Facebook and Instagram knowingly published scam ads featuring prominent Australian celebrities, but failed to address the issue even after those celebrities complained. The consumer watchdog is seeking declarations, injunctions, penalties, costs and other orders.
ARGENTINA: Argentina's Senate approved a debt deal of $45 billion with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Thursday night. The deal is intended to restructure a $57 billion program the country received in 2018. Nestled within the agreement is a provision entitled "Strengthening financial resilience," which looks to discourage the use of cryptocurrencies in the country. To further safeguard financial stability, the letter of intent signed by the Senate and IMF on March 3 notes "strong bank oversight will continue, especially following the unwinding of pandemic-related regulatory forbearance."
TAIWAN: Taiwan's MaiCoin Crypto Exchange is considering selling shares on Nasdaq within two years. Regulatory challenges from the island's central bank may linger, and could hamper a Taiwan dollar stablecoin project that is being backed by MaiCoin. In the meantime, MaiCoin expects trading revenue to continue rising, inching up by over 70% by 2025. Currently, traders on the exchange can use the Taiwan dollar via domestic bank transfers.
Overheard on CoinDesk TV... Sound Bites  "I made it clear that we should only sanction the people who are on the list of sanctions."
–Kuna Exchange's Michael Chobanian, following Senate Banking Committee hearing, on CoinDesk TV's "First Mover."
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Putting the news into perspective The Takeaway Why Is the IMF So Afraid of Cryptocurrency?
It seems increasingly clear that opposition to cryptocurrency can be considered an official position of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and we can expect anti-crypto restrictions to become a common condition of its loans to economies in crisis.
Most recently, Argentina has agreed to "discourage" the use of cryptocurrency as a condition of a $45 billion loan from the IMF. The announcement comes less than a year after El Salvador's plan to use bitcoin as legal tender met with vocal complaints from the IMF ahead of negotiations on a loan with that country.
Argentina has been mired in a dire economic crisis for years, with fallout including high inflation. The country also carries huge sovereign debt and has a history default, making borrowing on conventional markets more difficult.
Meanwhile, as laid out by The Block, Buenos Aires has become a significant center of blockchain and crypto development, substantially because the country's economic and monetary chaos has pushed residents to seek the relative stability and trustworthiness of crypto like bitcoin. Crypto companies and organizations in the country are still reportedly seeking clarity on what exactly it would mean for their government to "discourage" the use of crypto.
But if Argentines have decided that crypto is a useful way for them to individually cope with economic chaos, why is the IMF trying to stop them?
 What Crypto Can Learn From the Play-to-Earn Economy
While cryptocurrency struggles daily to gain acceptance among merchants and consumers, one corner of the blockchain space is enjoying sevenfold annual growth: play-to-earn. When something is expanding that fast – especially from a low baseline – it can't be assumed that everyone who ought to know about it by now actually does. So let's start with the obvious question: What exactly is play-to-earn?
P2E for short, it's the gaming model where "a platform provides its players with a chance to earn any form of in-game assets that can be transferred to the real world as a valuable resource," according to CoinMarketCap. "It effectively gives players a chance to generate revenue by participating in games."
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