PRICE CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- BTC ($60,941): +11% / +110%
- ETH ($3,808): +10% / +416%
- XRP ($1.12): -3% / +408%
- UNI ($26.42): +7% / +436%
- Crypto Market Cap ($2.5T): +8% / +223% 
- BTC Dominance: 47%
- ETH Dominance: 18%

STABLECOIN MARKET CAP CHANGE: WTD/YTD

- Tether ($69B): +1% / +230%
- USDC ($33B): -1% / +743%

NFT 3M TRADING VOLUMES

THIS WEEK IN CRYPTO

- Yuga Labs, the creators of Bored Ape Yacht Club, signed a representation deal with music manager and venture investor Guy Oseary. Link. My tweet storm about it. 

- Coinbase saw over 1.4 million signups for the Coinbase NFT waitlist, just 48 hours after announcing its p2p marketplace that will compete with OpenSea. Link. Link. 

- The SEC greenlighted the first ever bitcoin futures-based ETF, which is expected to list on Monday under the ticker $BITO. It will be the most direct exposure to bitcoin available to investors in the form of an ETF. Bitcoin rallied above $60k on the news. Link. Link. 

- The rally in bitcoin appears to be driven by institutional money as data indicates that retail crypto exchanges are overall net sellers. Link. 

- There is now over $220 billion locked in DeFi protocols, more than double the amount in June. Almost $140 billion is held in projects on Ethereum, $18.5 billion on Binance Smart Chain, and $11.7 billion on Solana. Link. 

- The CFTC fined Tether and Bitfinex $42.5 million for falsely claiming its stablecoin USDT was fully backed by US dollars. The penalty is related to disclosures from more than 2 years ago, and the CFTC says that the issues were fully resolved by February 2019. Link. 

- The US is responsible for over 35% of bitcoin mining activity, passing China as the country with the biggest market share of bitcoin's hash rate. Kazakhstan is next with over 18% market share. Link. 

- Crypto payment startup MoonPay is raising $400M at a $3.4 billion valuation in a round co-led by Tiger Global and Coatue. It is the startups first ever funding round. Link. 

- Stripe is hiring a crypto-focused team to build the future of Web3 payments. Link. Link. 

- Square is considering building a Bitcoin mining system that will be open sourced. Link. 

- Video game platform Steam is banning the use of NFTs and cryptocurrencies from its platform. Space Pirate, the team behind a game called Age of Rust which uses NFTs and blockchain tech in its game, was removed from Steam's platform. Link. 

- ConsenSys is reportedly raising at a $3 billion valuation, just six months after its wallet MetaMask crossed 5 million users and it raised $65 million from investors including JPMorgan, UBS, and Mastercard. Link. 

- CrytoPunk #6046 declined an offer of 2,500 ETH (~$9.5 million) for his NFT. Link. 

- NFT marketplace Recur is working with ViacomCBS to launch NFTs for MTV, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central and their underlying IP and franchise. First launch is expected Q2 2022. Link. 

- Binance is launching a $1 billion fund for growing the Binance Smart Chain (BSC) ecosystem. It will include a $100 million liquidity incentive program, that will reward liquidity providers supporting DeFi on BSC. Link. 

- Futureswap, a decentralized exchange for trading perpetual swaps, raised $12 million from Ribbit Capital. The exchange says it has had over $4.2 billion in trading volume since its launch. Link. 

- Crypto exchange FTX.US is adding support for external Solana-based NFTs to its NFT marketplace. Up until now, the marketplace was limited to buying and selling NFTs that had been minted directly on its site. Link. 

- Art auction house Sotheby's launched 'Sotheby's Metaverse' which will include curated NFTs that can be purchased using cryptocurrencies. The platform is powered by the startup Mojito. Future features will include dynamic auctions and the ability to mint generative art. Link. 

- Just weeks after DeversiFi's error that saw it pay $23.7 million in a single transaction fee (which was luckily later returned by the miner), a user spent $424,000 on a failed transaction trying to participate in the token sale of Strips on SushiSwap's newly launched token sale platform. The user used Flashbots, a communications protocol that lets users pay miners to get priority in newly mined blocks, but an error in the system processed the transaction despite the tokens being sold out. Link. 

- An unknown wallet purchased Ethereum name paradigm.eth for 420 ETH ($1.5 million), the largest ever sale of a domain name. Link.