This week's newsletter co-authored by @serdave
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($19,471): +2% / -59%
- ETH ($1,325): +4% / -64%
- XRP ($0.53): +18% / -37%
- UNI ($6.61): +6% / -62%
- Crypto Market Cap ($945B): +3% / -57%
- BTC Dominance: 40%
- ETH Dominance: 17%
STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Tether ($68B): +1% / -13%
- USDC ($46B): -3% / +9%
NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Bitcoin fell as much as 3.6% on Friday after a strong US jobs report was released. Wages expanded faster than expected and unemployment continued to go down, indicating to investors that the Fed will continue its aggressive rate hike. Link.
- The Binance BNB chain was hacked this week for an estimated $110m. The hacker exploited a bug in the BSC cross-chain bridge to send themselves 2 million BNB tokens. The hack originally stole over $500m, which would’ve been the second largest crypto hack ever, but the majority of the stolen funds were frozen when Binance decided to suspend all on-chain activity. The BNB chain has resumed operation. Link. Link. Blog Post.
- The 30-day correlation between bitcoin and gold reached 0.3, the highest in over a year, as cryptocurrencies decoupled from equities. Historically cryptocurrencies have moved in tandem with equity markets. Link.
- The SEC fined Kim Kardashian $1.2 million for promoting a cryptocurrency on social media without disclosing how much she was compensated for the promotion, despite Kardashian including “#ad” in the promotion. SEC Chair Gary Gensler released a video touting the news. Link. Link. Link.
- Citigroup’s latest research report shows that decentralized crypto exchanges have grown faster than centralized exchanges over the past two years. Citi also noted that increased crypto regulation could drive more usage to decentralized platforms. Link.
- India’s central bank is planning a phased introduction of a central bank digital currency, called the e-rupee. Link.
- Former CEO of bankrupt crypto lender Celsius, Alex Mashinsky, allegedly withdrew $10 million from the company’s account in May, just weeks before freezing customer withdrawals. Link. Link.
- Crypto lender Celsius is having its assets auctioned as part of bankruptcy proceedings on Oct 17. Link. Celsius included usernames and transaction history in its bankruptcy filing. The data, which Celsius pushed back on publishing but was demanded by the judge, exposes previously anonymous crypto wallet addresses. Link.
- New sanctions from the EU ban any crypto payments to Russia. Link.
- South Korean officials canceled Do Kwon’s passport, after the Terra Labs founder refused to turn himself in to authorities even after Interpol issued a Red Notice for his arrest. Link. Link.
- Gary Vee’s VeeFriends will sell plush and vinyl toys in Macy’s and its Toys R Us brand, which is relaunching within all Macy’s locations in the US later this month. The toys are based on 10 VeeFriends characters from Gary’s NFT collection. Link.
- Despite increasing pressures to pass stablecoin and crypto legislation, it appears that Congress will not vote on any new cryptocurrency legislation until next year. Link.
- Flashbots co-founder Stephane Gosselin stepped down last week after disagreements with the team over censorship resistance. The MEV provider’s decision to ignore transactions from sanctioned mixing service Tornado Cash has drawn criticism that Flashbots is enabling censorship on the blockchain. Link.
- Nasdaq said it would wait for greater regulatory clarity and institutional adoption before launching its own crypto exchange. Last month the exchange announced custody services for bitcoin and ethereum to institutional investors. Link.
- Cross-border payment facilitator SWIFT presented a framework for a global central bank digital currency system, and claims to have solved the interoperability challenge of moving assets between different blockchain networks. SWIFT is used by more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries. Link.
- Solana’s latest downtime was caused by a bug in the blockchain’s code and triggered by a hot-spare node activating when it wasn’t supposed to. The blockchain was down Sept 30th for 7 hours and is the 8th time the network has gone down since its inception in 2020. Link.
- Support for Ethereum test networks, Rinkeby and Ropsten, was sunset by Etherscan and Alchemy this week. Developers will now need to use the Goerl and Sepolia testnets. The move comes after Ethereum’s successful shift to proof of stake. Link. Blog Post.
- Fidelity, the asset manager with trillions under management, launched a new Ethereum Index Fund that provides its clients with exposure to ETH. The fund already has $5 million of commitments. Link.
- USDC supply has decreased by $9 billion over the past 90 days, while USDT supply increased by $2 billion over the same time period. Link.
- US Treasury bills account for over 58% of stablecoin issuer Tether's reserves. The firm owns less than $50 million of commercial paper now. Link. Tweet.
- The number of US trademarks related to NFTs and other blockchain products have already tripled in 2022 compared to all of 2021. 2021 saw 2,142 NFT-related trademarks filed. By the end of September 2022, there have been 6,366 trademarks submitted. Link. Tweet.
- MakerDAO, the issuer of the stablecoin DAI, approved allocating $500 million of its reserves into short-term US treasury bonds and investment-grade corporate bonds. DAI is currently the fourth largest stablecoin with a market cap of $6.3 billion. Link. Link.
- Tally Labs, the company behind the novel “Bored and Dangerous” using BAYC IP, delayed the release of its PFP collection Azurbala after its artwork reveal missed the mark. The company said they would redo the art from scratch. The Azurbala mint passes generated $3.6 million in primary sales, but floor prices have dipped more than 50% since the artwork reveal. Link.
- Meta’s metaverse app Horizon Worlds is on “quality lockdown” until the end of the year after Horizon Worlds employees barely used the platform despite department mandates to do so. Link.
- Yuga Labs announced a community council composed of seven Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT holders who are active in its community. The council will focus on gathering and curating community feedback, and spearheading philanthropic efforts. Link. Blog Post.
- NFTs belonging to now defunct Three Arrows Capital through its Starry Night Capital fund are in the process of being liquidated. Starry Night Capital spent tens of millions of dollars acquiring high-value NFTs including Art Blocks, CryptoPunks, and Rare Pepe assets. Pseudonymous NFT collector Vincent Van Dough managed the fund with Three Arrows Capital and will help with the liquidations. Link.
- A Moonbirds DAO is planned to launch in early 2023, and will be seeded with $2.6 million Ethereum and NFTs. Link. Tweet.
- The Middle East and North Africa were the fastest growing markets for crypto adoption over the past year, driven largely by local currencies weakening from high inflation. Link.
- There were $428 million losses in crypto in Q3, down 36% from last quarter and down 63% from Q3 2021. Crypto losses are defined as a combination of hacks and alleged fraud including rug pulls. Link. Immunefi Report (PDF).
- Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, said it may spend more than $1 billion on acquisitions and investments this year despite the crypto winter. The exchange has committed $325 million to 67 projects so far, compared to $140 million across 73 projects in 2021. Link.
- FTX is expanding its Visa debit card to 40 new countries primarily in Latin America. The card was introduced in the US last year and lets users directly tap into the crypto funds in their accounts while shopping. Link. Link. Link.
- Opensea CFO Brian Roberts is leaving the company less than a year after joining as its first finance employee. Link.
- Leading ETH staking service Lido will now support bridging staked ETH to layer 2s Arbitrum and Optimism. To incentivize participation, 150,000 LDO tokens will be available as liquidity pool rewards on L2 DeFi applications Beethoven X, Balancer, Curve Finance, Kyber Network and Velodrome. Link.
- Crypto.com has laid off 30-40% of its staff and walked back major marketing efforts, including its $495 million UEFA Champion League sponsorship and a sponsorship with LA-based soccer team Angel FC. Crypto.com is still planning to be the official sponsor of the 2022 FIFA World Cup, though it has reduced some of its hospitality packages. Link.
- Over $4 billion of illicit funds have been laundered through DEXs, cross-chain bridges, and coin swaps since 2020 according to a new report from Elliptic. Link. Report.
- Flamengo, one of Brazil’s largest football clubs, and Moonpay announced a multi-year partnership to launch Web3 products to its fans. Link.
- The Sushi DAO community elected Jared Grey as its new “Head Chef”. Link. Link.
- Ubisoft and Take-Two Interactive invested in a $40 million Series A round raised by Horizon, the developer behind NFT-driven competitive card game, Skyweaver. Link.
- Crypto index fund manager Bitwise Asset Management launched a Web3 ETF, which includes exposure to five categories of Web3 companies: infrastructure, metaverse and digital worlds, creator economies, and governance. Link.
- Mastercard launched Crypto Secure, a new product designed to help banks and card issuers identify and block suspicious transactions from crypto exchanges. Link.
- Privacy focused Zcash is experiencing a sudden increase in size due to higher transaction volumes, prompting concerns of a potential spam attack. Link.
- Gaming technology startup Improbable is raising $100 million at a valuation of $3 billion. Improbable is working with Yuga Labs to create the “Otherside” metaverse. Link.
- Matt Mazzeo is leaving Coatue Management to start a new investment fund focused on early stage startups. Mazzeo led the firm’s investment into NFT marketplace OpenSea. Link. Link.
- Asian crypto exchange Huobi announced that it is selling a majority stake to Hong Kong based About Capital Management. The change in ownership will have no impact on core operations as the exchange focuses on international business expansion. Link.
- Japan's Prime Minister said the country plans to invest in NFT and metaverse services. Link.