May 16, 2021

05-16-2021

PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

BTC ($47,718): -18% / +65%
ETH ($3,652): -7% / +395%
XRP ($1.48): -4% / +571%
UNI ($37): -6% / +652%
Crypto Market Cap ($2.2T): -10% / +188% 
BTC Dominance: 40%

STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD

Tether ($58B): +5% / +178%
USDC ($14B): 0% / +270%


THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- The total market value of all crypto hit $2.3 trillion for the first time, surpassing the value of all US dollars in circulation —$2.16 trillion. The price of Eth jumped above $4,000 for the first time ever. LinkLink

- Coinbase reached #1 on the Apple App Store on May 10, for the first time since late 2017. Link

- The price of bitcoin fell to a recent low of $46,000 this week after Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla was no longer accepting bitcoin as a payment option because of its environmental impact. Tesla said it would continue to hold the BTC currently on its balance sheet.  Link

- Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin donated more than $1 billion of Shiba Inu coins to the India Covid Relief Fund. The amount represented more than 5% of total coins in circulation, and the memecoin saw its price fall about 50%. Shiba inu was created less than a year ago and is up more than 11,000% in the last 30 days. LinkLink

- An NBA Top Shot user filed a class action lawsuit against Dapper Labs, claiming their NFTs violate securities laws. Link

- Coinbase plans to list Dogecoin (DOGE) in the next 6-8 weeks. Link. Elon Musk also tweeted this week that he was working with Doge developers to improve transaction efficiency. There is speculation that Tesla will add DOGE as a form of payment. Link

- Christie's auction house sold 9 CryptoPunks NFTs for $17 million. CryptoPunk was launched by Larva Labs in 2017 and were limited to 10,000 tokens in total. Link

- Vitalik Buterin proposed that Uniswap's UNI should become an oracle token for DeFi, as an alternative to Chainlink. Price oracles are data feeds that connect Ethereum to off-chain, real world information so that data can be incorporated into smart contracts. Link

- Gary Vee launched an NFT series on Tuesday called VeeFriends with the Nameless platform. It included 10,200 NFTs of characters hand-drawn by Gary and has raised over $30 million of ETH so far. Some of the NFTs include real-world experiences, such as tickets to the VeeCon conference or a meet and greet with Gary. Link

- Ethereum miners are now making more revenue than Bitcoin miners. Eth miners are making $77 million in daily revenue as of Monday, compared to the $67 million Bitcoin miners are earning. Link

- Coinbase generated $1.8 billion in revenue last quarter, +940% from the previous quarter with majority of rev coming from transaction fees. Net profit grew to $771 million. The company reported over 6 million transacting users and 56 million verified users. This was the first earnings report since going public in April. Link. 

- Crypto exchange Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, is under investigation by the IRS and DoJ for money laundering and tax evasion. Chainalysis recently reported that $2.8 billion was laundered on to trading platforms in 2019, and roughly 27% or $756 million, wound up on Binance. Link

- Amazon is now offering Chia crypto mining on AWS. Chia uses 'proof of storage' for mining, a method that is significantly more environmentally friendly than proof of work mining used by bitcoin. Chia mainnet went live in March. Link

- Stablecoin issuer Tether revealed a breakdown of its reserves for the first time since its launch in 2014. Tether held nearly 76% of its reserves in cash and other short-term deposits. The remaining 25% was divided across secured loans, corporate bonds, and other investments. Tether has come under fire in the past for not being transparent about the reserves supporting its USD stablecoin. Tether's on-chain volumes just passed $1 trillion. Link

- Crypto custodian Anchorage is adding 5 DeFi tokens to its custody vaults including 1Inch, SushiSwap, Curve Finance, REN, and BNT. Link

- Brex is launching a crypto rewards program for corporates. Companies will be able to exchange Brex credit card reward points for bitcoin and ether, the same way they'd redeem for miles, gift cards, cash, or travel. Brex's rewards partner, TravelBank, will power the zero-fee rewards redemption program. Link

- EBay is now permitting the sale of NFTs for digital collectibles. Many of the NFTs currently available for sale appear to be on the WAX blockchain, which requires users to create a WAX wallet. Link

- Facebook's Diem (formerly known as Libra) will being piloting its its USD-pegged stablecoin called Diem USD later this year. Diem's issuing and reserves partner will be California charter bank Silvergate. Link

- Microsoft is turning off its corporate Azure Blockchain Service later this year. Clients included JPM, GE, Starbucks and XBox. The service was started 6 years ago in partnership with ConsenSys. Link

- Dfinity, a decentralized blockchain network called the "Internet Computer, is going live. The project was revealed in 2008 and has raised more than $160 million to date. Link

- Blockchain domain name provider Unstoppable Domains is integrating with crypto web browser Brave to provide native browser support for ".crypto" domains. Link

- Dapp data tracker DappRadar raised $5 million in Series A funding from Prosus Ventures and Blockchain.com. It tracks data of over 5,000 Dapps across over 20 blockchains. Link

- Citi bank is considering launching crypto trading, custody and financing services. Link.