PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($42,112): +1% / -11%
- ETH ($2,869): -4% / -23%
- XRP ($0.81): +20% / -4%
- UNI ($10.41): -7% / -40%
- Crypto Market Cap ($1.9T): +10% / -15%
- BTC Dominance: 43%
- ETH Dominance: 18%
STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Tether ($78B): +1% / 0%
- USDC ($52B): +3% / +23%
NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Crypto lending platform BlockFi will pay $100 million to settle charges that it sold unregistered securities through its high yield interest-generating accounts. BlockFi, Celsius, and Gemini have become popular with retail investors for paying up to 10% on crypto deposits. Link.
- Most crypto declined late this week as traders reacted to the geopolitical risks emanating from Russia and Ukraine. BTC dropped over 5% in 24 hours. Link.
- The DOJ recovered 94,636 bitcoin (~$3.6 billion) of the 119,754 bitcoin stolen in a 2016 hack of crypto exchange Bitfinex. The BTC stolen was valued at $71 million at the time, but with the rise in BTC's price it is valued at $4.5 billion today. The price of BTC had crashed almost 40% on the news in 2016. Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were charged with money laundering and fraud and face up to 25 years in prison; federal agents had linked the couple with the hacked accounts. Link. Link. Shortly after the arrest, it was revealed that Morgan is a rapper who goes by the stage name Razzlekhan, and was also a Forbes contributor who had written about crypto security. Link. Link. LINK.
- The House Fin Services Committee rejected the Treasury's proposal to regulate stablecoins like banks (including the need for FDIC insurance). Link.
- FTX US plans to launch a stock trading platform. It has begun signing users up to a wait list. Link.
- McDonald's and Panera Bread filed trademarks to build virtual restaurants and sell other digital assets in the metaverse. Link.
- The US Treasury said that miners and stakers will not be taxed as brokers for the purposes of tax reporting, addressing a major concern that came after the Infrastructure Bill left such determinations to the Treasury. Link.
- Coinbase was notified of a major vulnerability in its Advanced Trading Platform that would have allowed users to send Coinbase order books to arbitrary prices, which would have effected other platforms that use Coinbase price feeds as inputs for oracles. Coinbase shut down trading for a few hours while they fixed the bug. Link.
- Polygon raised $450 million in a private token round led by Sequoia Capital India, including investors like SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Tiger Global, Union Square Ventures, Sound Ventures, and DCG. The protocol plans to allocate $100 million to its ecosystem fund and about $10 million to its various scaling products. Over 7k apps are currently building on Polygon. Link. Link.
- Aave launched the alpha for its decentralized social media platform, Lens Protocol, on Polygon. Lens supports a number of social media applications through a shared protocol layer, using profile NFTs as the main primitive. Link.
- Netflix announced it would be working with FYREfest director Chris Smith to tell the story of the couple who allegedly stole $3.6 billion of bitcoin in 2016. Link.
- Governor Greg Abbott is making Texas a hub for bitcoin mining, and using it as a cornerstone of his re-election campaign. Texas already has 27 bitcoin mining companies in the state. Link.
- Web traffic to crypto exchanges fell 8% in January to 427 million. Binance made up 33% of volume, followed by Coinbase and ByBit at 18% and 6.6% respectively. Link.
- Russia plans to recognize digital assets as a form of currency by Feb 18. It's expected that crypto will only be possible to use legally with full ID, through the banking system, or via licensed intermediaries. Link.
- Zynga, the game developer behind FarmVille and Words with Friends, plans to launch an NFT-based game by the end of 2022. It plans to grow its blockchain team from 15 to up to 100, and will likely tailor to crypto whales with some yield-focus. Link.
- Sotheby's is auctioning off 104 CryptoPunks on 2/23/22, its first dedicated live evening auction for NFTs. Sotheby's auctioned 104 Bored Ape NFTs for $19 million back in September. Link.
- Nike is suing StockX for allegedly selling Nike-branded NFTs without its permission. Nike wants StockX to destroy the NFTs it sold and pay for damages. Link.
- Kazakhistan is considering a 5x increase on the taxes crypto miners pay, regardless of whether or not they earn block rewards. The government had cut off many crypto miners from electricity for most of January, as the country faced widespread energy shortage. Kazkakhistan became the 2nd largest source of Bitcoin's hashrate after China cracked down on mining in 2021. Link.
- Terra is spending $40 million LUNA (it's algorithmic USD stablecoin) on a sponsorship deal with a to-be-disclosed baseball team. Link.
- Stablecoin issuer Tether froze an ethereum address that was holding over $715k worth of USDT after it was traced back to hackers who stole $3 million from cross-chain bridge Multichan a month ago. The user who controls the address will no longer be able to move the funds. Link.
- Jamaica is rolling out its central bank digital currency this year after a successful 2021 pilot. The pilot included minting $230 million worth of CBDC and testing p2p and merchant use cases. Link.
- Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber, said Uber would take crypto as a payment method in the future, once environmental concerns and high transaction costs were addressed. Link.
- Crypto infrastructure company Alchemy raised $200 million at a $10.2 billion valuation. Link.
- Revolut is hiring senior engineers for product development and integration of blockchain solutions into existing systems. CoinDesk had reported in September that Revolut plans to launch its own token and crypto exchange. Link.
- OpenSea is launching an Ecosystem Grant Program to back companies and projects across NFTs and Web 3. The startup didn't announce the size of the fund, but recently raised $300 million at a $13.3 billion valuation. Competitor FTX recently committed $2 billion to invest in new crypto startups. Link. Link.
- A new Chainalysis report shows the average size of ransomware payments hit an all-time high of $118k last year, despite overall volumes falling from $692 million in 2020 to $602 million in 2021. Link.
- One River, a $2.5 billion asset manager, announced a new SMA powered by Coinbase. It will allow financial and wealth advisors to offer clients exposure to crypto in their own segregated accounts, similar to how they offer exposure to bonds, stocks, and mutual funds. Link. Link.
- Gucci purchased land in metaverse The Sandbox. Select metaverse fashion items created by Gucci designers will be available for users to buy, own and use in their own Sandbox experience. Link.
- Subscription platform OnlyFans is supporting verified NFT profile pictures. Link.
- Dom Hofmann, co-founder of Vine and NFT project Loot, raised $12 million for his latest venture Blitmap, a decentralized science fiction project where NFT owners decide key features of the story's universe, such as who the enemies are. Tweet. Link.
- L2 protocol Optimism said it had patched a "critical bug" earlier this month, which made it possible to create ETH on Optimism by repeatedly triggering the SELFDESTRUCT opcode on a contract that held an ETH balance. The developer who discovered the bug received a $2 million bug bounty. Link.
- YouTube discussed using Web3 and NFTs to empower creators in a recent blog post. Link.
- KKR is reportedly in talks to increase Animoca Brands' latest fundraising round to $500 million. Link.
- Crypto exchange Binance is investing $200 million in Forbes, the publication it once sued for defamation and then voluntarily dropped that lawsuit. Binance represents half of the $400 million PIPE Forbes is raising prior to going public via SPAC. Link.
- AssangeDAO wont the bid for a Julian Assange x Pak NFT for $53 million, their initial effort to free WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Link.
- BlackRock plans to offer crypto trading to its clients. They also have plans to allow investors to borrow using crypto collateral. Link.
- PayPal formed a 6-member advisory council for its crypto efforts. The council includes Pete Briger (Fortress) and Neha Narula (MIT Media Lab). Link.
- Intel launched a crypto mining initiative, with Argo Blockchain and Jack Dorsey-led Block (SQ) receiving the first mining chips. Link.