Crypto weekly is co-authored by @serdave
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.1T): +2% / +19%
- BTC ($51,669): 0% / +22%
- ETH ($3,117): +7% / +36%
- SOL ($104): -5% / +2%
- UNI ($11.02): +46% / +51%
- MATIC ($0.99): +2% / +3%
- Tether Mkt Cap ($98B): 0% / +7%
- USDC Mkt Cap ($28B): 0% / +15%
- BTC / ETH Dominance: 48% / 18%
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Decentralized exchange Uniswap received a governance proposal to turn on its much debated “fee switch”, which would give staked UNI holders a portion of protocol fees. Currently, only liquidity pool providers receive fees. Link. Proposal.
- A federal bankruptcy court approved a plan by FTX and its creditors to sell its $1 billion stake in Claude AI developer Anthropic. FTX was previously approved to sell its $50 million stake in hardware wallet developer Ledger, as well as $1 billion in SOL, BTC and ETH. Link. Link.
- Yuga Labs CEO Daniel Alegre is stepping down less than a year after he joined the company. He will be replaced by Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano. Link. Link.
- In its IPO filing, Reddit said it had invested some excess cash reserves in Bitcoin and Ethereum. Reddit also bought Polygon tokens to pay for virtual goods. Link. Link.
- Nigeria ordered telecom companies and ISPs to block access to crypto trading platforms, to combat weakening of the local currency. The order affected websites operated by exchanges including Coinbase, Kraken and Binance. Link. Link.
- A Montenegro court said Terra/Luna founder Do Kwon will be extradited to the US instead of his native South Korea, where he is also facing fraud charges. Link.
- A16z announced a $100 million investment in Eigenlayer’s Series B round. Eigenlayer allows staked ETH to be restaked to secure other protocols and networks. Link.
- NFT project Pudgy Penguins announced it’s releasing a second toy line with Walmart. The first collection did $10 million in sales on 750,000 toys. Link.
- Zero knowledge Layer-2 protocol Starknet launched its $STRK token this week, with over 60% of airdropped tokens already claimed. Starknet also announced a new token unlock plan for its early contributors and investors, with 5.8% of tokens unlocking by the end of 2024 as opposed to 20% in the previous unlock schedule. Link. Link.
- Layer 1 protocol Avalanche experienced a 4 hour outage due to a software bug causing excess information to pass between nodes. Link.
- Officials at the UK Treasury said they would have new rules on stablecoins and staking within the next six months, but didn’t provide a timeline for broader crypto legislation. Link.
- Two senior European Central Bank officials published a blog post claiming Bitcoin has failed to become a decentralized reserve currency and has a fair value of 0. The ECB has been a long critic of Bitcoin, having published a blog post in November 2022 claiming the cryptocurrency was on “its last breath.” Link. Blog Post.
- Former president Donald Trump said he could “live with” Bitcoin at a town hall. He said the currency has “taken a life of its own” but would still require some regulation. Link. Clip.
- Crypto exchange Kraken filed a petition to dismiss the SEC’s lawsuit against rival crypto exchange Coinbase. Link. Blog Post.
- Fairshake, a super PAC focused on supporting pro-crypto candidates, raised $5 million from Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the co-founders of Gemini. The group currently has $73 million in cash reserves for the 2024 election. Link.