PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- BTC ($54,974): +13% / +90%
- ETH ($3,464): +1% / +369%
- XRP ($1.16): +7% / +426%
- UNI ($24.60): -5% / +399%
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.3T): +7% / +199% 
- BTC Dominance: 45%
- ETH Dominance: 18%

STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- Tether ($68B): +1% / +227%
- USDC ($33B): +3% / +754%

NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- NFT project Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) announced plans to launch its own token in Q1 2022. BAYC wants the token to be regulatory compliant and will be partnering with Horizen Labs to construct the token. Link. 

- Bitcoin's market cap passed $1 trillion for the first time since May. It hit $1T for the first time in February of this year. Link. 

- Venture funding for blockchain companies hit an all-time high of $6.5 billion across 339 rounds between July and Sept. This is significantly higher than the $3.8 billion invested in crypto companies throughout all of 2020. FTX, Sorare and Genesis had 3 of the largest funding rounds. Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, and Polychain Capital were the most active funds. Link. 

- Cozomo de' Medici, the NFT collector believed to be Snoop Dogg, purchased Fidenza 938 titled "God Mode" for roughly $8.5 million. Fidenza's were created by generative artist Tyler Hobbs and sold through Art Blocks. Link. Link. 

- Mirror, a decentralized blogging protocol that first launched in December, is opening up its platform to all creators. Previously, creators needed to earn access by finishing in the top 10 in Mirror's weekly WRITE race. Link. 

- The Biden administration is considering an executive order that would charge federal agencies to study and offer recommendations on relevant areas of crypto such as financial regulation, economic innovation, and national security. Link. 

- The SEC is investigating Circle Financial, the company behind the USDC stablecoin. The reason for the investigation isn't known but may have to do with Circle Yield, it's high-interest yield product that launched last month. Coinbase recently shut down the launch of a similar product due to regulatory pushback from the SEC. Link. 

- Sky Mavis, the creator of NFT game Axie Infinity, raised a $152 million Series B round at a $3 billion valuation led by a16z. Axie Infinity is the largest NFT gaming ecosystem, with more than 1.8 million DAUs and total traded volume of over $2 billion. Sky Mavis plans to build its own platform for developers to create blockchain-enabled games on its proprietary Ronin blockchain. Link.  

- Dapper Labs is creating a new business unit called Dapper Collectives to focus on DAOs. Dapper Labs acquired Brud, a startup building virtual communities starting with digital influencer Lil Miquela, to build the platform. Dapper Collectives will be led by Brud's founder Trevor McFedries, who is also the founder of Friends With Benefits ($FWB), a popular social DAO with a market cap of $75 million. Link. 

- Newly launched NFT marketplace Infinity is incentivizing users to move from OpenSea by airdropping 10% of its governance token ($NFT) to OpenSea users. Users earn the airdrop by transacting on the Infinity marketplace in the next 30 days. Link. 

- Crypto on-ramp platform Ramp raised $30 million Series A led by Balderton Capital at a $300 million valuation. Link. 

- Dapper Labs signed a deal with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis to help with KYC and regulatory compliance. Link. 

- MekaVerse, an NFT collection of 8,888 avatars, saw over $53 million of trading volume in the 24 hours after launch. The project had over 172k unique wallets register in a raffle to mint the NFTs, generating $6.3 million in primary sales. Link. 

- Chainalysis acquired Excygent, a cybercrime forensics company, to provide investigative support to government agencies on illicit activity including the growing issue of ransomware. Link. 

- A16z and Coinbase Ventures co-led a $260 million Series C in Indian crypto trading firm CoinSwitch Kuber, valuing the company at $1.9 billion. More than half of CoinSwitch's 10 million registered users are under the age of 28. Link. 

- Vitalik Buterin criticized El Salvador president Nayib Bukele for forcing businesses to accept bitcoin as payment. Buterin called the strategy of pushing bitcoin with no attempt to educate them as "reckless" and "risks a large number of innocent people getting hacked or scammed". Link. 

- 24 hours into its beta, NFT marketplace Visionrare is shutting down and refunding users, saying it will relaunch soon as a free-to-play game. Visionrare allowed users to build fantasy startup portfolios by bidding on fake NFT shares of real startups. Visionrare did not receive permission from the startups to offer those shares. Link. 

- Billionaire investor George Soros' family office has invested in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Link. 

- Investment platform Republic is selling "Security NFTs" which will allow music fans to participate in artists' royalties under US crowdfunding legislation. The first song to be offered is Mona Lisa by rapper Lil Pump featuring Soulja Boy. Link.  

- CAA signed NFT collector "0xb1" to help monetize their NFT collection through licensing and brand partnerships. CAA also recently signed Jenkins the Valet (from BAYC), Micah Johnson, and Mack Flavelle to represent them across books, film, TV and podcast deals. Rival UTA recently signed Larva Labs, whose projects include CryptoPunks, Autoglyphs, and Meebits. Link. 

- The largest public bitcoin mining firms in North America hold over $1.1 billion of BTC. Riot, Marathon, Bitfarms, Hut8, Greenidge, Argo, and HIVE accounted for 7.5% of the total BTC block rewards available in Q3, roughly 82% higher than Q2 driven largely by equipment expansion and waning competition from Chinese miners. Link. 

- Bitcoin mining hardware manufacturer Bitmain is no longer delivering machines to mainland China addresses. China made up 40% of its revenue in the first half of 2018. Link. 

- Stacks, a blockchain that enables smart contracts on the bitcoin blockchain, rose 71% this week after it launched several bitcoin NFT collections. $STX has a market cap of $2.9 billion. Link. 

- The DoJ is forming a "National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team" focused on cybercrime and money laundering. Link. 

- Treeverse, a Runescape-style MMORPG game that allows users to deploy NFTs in an open and interactive world, raised a new round from IdeoCo Labs and Animoca Brands valuing the company at $25 million. Link. 

- ReNFT raised a $1.5 million seed round led by Animoca Brands. ReNFT allows NFT holders to rent out their NFTs in exchange for a rental fee + collateral amount equivalent to the price of the NFT. Link.