This week's newsletter co-authored by @serdave
PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- BTC ($19,153): -2% / -59%
- ETH ($1,293): -2% / -66%
- XRP ($0.48): -10% / -43%
- UNI ($6.10): -8% / -65%
- Crypto Market Cap ($916B): -3% / -57%
- BTC Dominance: 40%
- ETH Dominance: 17%
STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD
- Tether ($68B): 0% / -13%
- USDC ($45B): -2% / +6%
NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES
THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO
- Bitcoin and Ethereum plunged in response to the CPI report which put inflation at 8.2%, slightly higher than the 8.1% forecasted by economists. Link. Link.
- Ethereum became deflationary for the first time since switching to proof-of-stake, meaning more ether was burned verifying transactions than was created. The rate of new ether creation has fallen by 90% since the Merge. Link.
- NFT marketplace Magic Eden is switching to an optional royalty model, following a controversial trend set by the X2Y2 marketplace. Magic Eden also said it would be temporarily waiving its 2% platform fee. Link. Tweet.
- Flashbots, a service used by validators to maximize block rewards, announced SUAVE, an open-sourced version of its offering in response to censorship concerns. Flashbots censors transactions related to Tornado Cash and other sanctioned countries. More than 50% of Ethereum blocks created today are OFAC-compliant. Link. Link.
- Crypto policy non-profit Coin Center filed a lawsuit against OFAC, claiming it unlawfully sanctioned Tornado Cash in August. Link. Post.
- Blockchain venture funding fell 35% in Q3 to $6.2 billion. Link. Report.
- MetaMask adds support for instant ACH purchases directly from its wallet, meaning users can now buy crypto directly from their bank accounts. Fintech firm Sardine is powering the offering, which will allow users to purchase up to $3,000 of crypto per day. Link. Blog Post.
- Decentralized exchange Uniswap Labs raised a $165 million Series B at a $1.66 billion valuation in a round led by Polychain Capital. Link.
- You can now Google Ethereum wallet addresses. Link.
- The BNB chain executed a hard fork after issuing a security patch to close an exploit that cost the chain $560 million last week. The hacker was able to move $100 million before BNB halted the chain and froze the remaining funds in the wallet. Link. Blog Post.
- Roboadviser Betterment is letting clients invest in crypto portfolios, but is recommending not to go above 5% exposure. 2 of the portfolios will focus on metaverse and DeFi projects. Link. Link.
- A bipartisan bill regulating stablecoins and giving the CFTC authority over non-security digital assets could pass in the next 6 months. Link.
- Mango Markets, a Solana-based DeFi platform, suffered a $112 million exploit when a rogue trader artificially inflated the price of the protocol’s MNGO token and then drained its liquidity pool. Link. Link.
- Soon after the exploit, the Mango DAO offered the rogue trader a bug bounty of $47 million. He offered a counterproposal that would require Mango DAO to use the returned funds to settle ‘bad debt’ Mango had accumulated in June. The DAO rejected the counteroffer and passed the original offer of $47 million. Link.
- The SEC is reportedly investigating Yuga Labs over whether it offered unregistered securities. Link. Link.
- Transaction volumes for China’s CBDC grew 14% YTD to $14B, much slower than the 154% growth in the 2H 2021. Link.
- There has been $718 million stolen across 11 different DeFi protocols, bringing the 2022 YTD total lost in hacks to $3 billion. 2022 is on pace to surpass 2021’s record year of $3.2 billion lost in hacks. Link. Chainalysis data.
- Tether confirmed it had eliminated all commercial paper from its reserves. It plans to replace those investments with US Treasury Bills. Link. Report.
- Artist Damien Hirst began burning physical pieces of his 10,000 piece NFT project “The Currency”. Each NFT came with a corresponding physical, and holders were given the option of burning the NFT to redeem the physical piece or keeping the digital version. Roughly 4,800 buyers opted to keep the NFTs. Link.
- NFT artist Beeple is building a digital art studio in South Carolina. Link. Tweet.
- Decentralized exchange Uniswap will soon deploy on privacy-focused Layer 2 solution zkSync 2.0. Link. Governance Proposal.
- Crypto advocates are joining the CFTC case against Ooki DAO, arguing that the CFTC needs to identify and serve members of Ooki DAO directly rather than serving the DAO itself through a website chat bot. Link.
- French authorities arrested 5 people for stealing $2.5 million worth of NFTs. The charges come after reporting from self-proclaimed “on-chain sleuth” @ZachXBT. Link.
- Arbitrum Layer2 developer Offchain Labs is acquiring Prysmatic Labs, a core Ethereum software development team. Link.
- SEC Commissioner Gary Gensler said he supports granting the CFTC regulatory oversight over non-security tokens. Link.
- Solana NFT collection DeGods announced it was removing collection royalties. Link. Tweet.
- CNN is ending Vault by CNN, its web3 initiative that allowed fans to purchase iconic CNN moments as NFTs. Vault plans to distribute ~20% of mint price to NFT owners. Link. Tweet.
- Cross chain application LayerZero will be integrating with Layer 1 blockchain Aptos when it launches towards the end of 2022. Link.
- Coinbase received a license to operate in Singapore, just months after Binance withdrew its application. Link.
- According to a Morgan Stanley report, the crypto ecosystem is becoming increasingly centralized. 60% of Ethereum validators are run by 4 companies and 32% of validators are hosted on AWS. Link.
- Google Cloud is working with Coinbase to allow its users to pay in crypto. Last month Google agreed to run a validator node for the Ronin network. Link. Blog Post.
- The SEC again rejected WisdomTree’s application for a bitcoin spot ETF, ruling they hadn’t demonstrated the ETF would be “designed to prevent fraudulent and manipulative acts and practices” while protecting investors and public interest. Link.
- FTX is launching a new version of its exchange featuring an improved order book that will reduce latency by 50% and double throughput. Link.
- Matter Labs, the company behind layer 2 zkSync, is launching a test environment for its layer 3 network Pathfinder in Q1 2023. Link.
- Crypto exchanges LocalBitcoins, Crypto.com, and Blockchain.com notified their Russian users that they would no longer service them, due to new sanctions from the EU that ban all crypto payments to Russia. Link.
- Polygon’s ZK rollup product zkEVM went live on testnet this week, with leading DeFi platforms Uniswap and Aave deploying on the L2 scaling solution. The product is expected to go live on mainnet in 2023. Link.
- Portugal is considering a 28% tax on crypto assets held for less than a year. Portugal currently doesn’t tax personal crypto holdings. Link.
- Crypto trading firm NYDIG laid off 33% of its staff. CoinDesk estimates 11,708 crypto jobs have been cut across the space as of October. Link. Link.
- OpenSea launches support for Avalanche NFTs. Link.
- Digital banking platform Step will offer crypto investing to the 4 million teens using its services. Link.