Select observations from the day:
CPI print: YoY: 8.5% CPI MoM: 1.2% - highest since 1981, basically as expected, still caused volatility today with bitcoin struggling to hold the 40k level
Crypto lender Celsius to stop paying interest on new deposits from US customers. Celsius, and competitors like BlockFi and Nexo, have faced increasing scrutiny from US securities regulators. We’re likely to see other similar actions from various projects due to the uncertain regulatory landscape. Same with legal prosecutions for scammers, rugpulls, etc. Governments are stepping in
On the topic of whether or not we’re going to goblin town (current hot topic): what I see day in, day out, week in, week out is a crazy amount of money and interest flowing into this space. Strongly weighted towards the metaverse, NFTs, gamefi, defi sector. A constant flurry of activity and development each and every day. The macroeconomic situation keeps weighing us down but it sure feels like when the headwinds ease, the crypto market is primed to boom. The short term is incredibly hard to call, however the long term direction we’re heading is up
Plus a lot more, as always
Chain News:
Uniswap Labs forms crypto ventures wing in the latest example of crypto companies investing beyond their core business. It has invested in 11 projects, including LayerZero, Tenderly, MakerDAO, Aave, Compound Protocol, PartyDAO - source
IOST Foundation Starts $100M Fund for EVM Developers split into two separate funds: the New Ecosystem Fund, to expand IOST's applications and mainnet infrastructure, and the Accelerator Fund, to provide capital and incentive bonuses to dev teams - source
$439M in Liquidations As BTC Drops Below $40k - source
Coinbase to increase transparency on potential 2022 listings, issued the names of 50 projects that could possibly be listed in the second quarter of 2022. CT wasn’t impressed - source
ETH address that bought hundreds of thousands of dollars of tokens exclusively featured in the Coinbase Asset Listing post about 24 hours before it was published - source
Ichi Plunged 90% After Bad Debt Fiasco on Rari. Cascading liquidations on an overcollateralized pool on Rari led to a sudden price drop - source - official statement
Robinhood Adds SHIB, Solana, Compound and Polygon's MATIC - source
Biconomy and Cere Network has announced their integration that will cut gas fees for Cere Network builders and users - source
The Web3 Foundation, founded by Gavin Wood, has revealed 31 grantees for its 13th grant including provable oracle solutions, innovations in the growing stablecoin space, a no-code platform for the Substrate ecosystem, and more - source
Axie Infinity’s $650M Ronin Bridge hack update: Hacker laundering funds - source
Axie Infinity team launches $1M bounty to stress test the game, wallet, extensions and other vulnerabilities - source
Bastion Lockdrop Phase 2 - Lock your LP Tokens into Bastion for 1 - 12 months for your last chance to get in before TGE - source
Dopex announces the upgrade to the protocol’s core product - the Single Staking Options Vault v3 will be upgraded to v3 gradually - with ETH being the first asset to be launched on v3 - source
Evmos: dApps and deployments live on the testnet now - source
Alchemix Finance - Elixir - The Alchemix Algorithmic Market Operator (AMO) - source
Katana - crab strategy built on power perps and enables users to go short vol on $SOL and earn yield in sideways markets - source
Aurigami - The leading money market on Aurora - The Papermill will open for production right after PLY's Token Genesis (TGE) - source
Multichain (Previously Anyswap) - anyCall is live - a generic cross-chain messaging protocol, for cross-chain Dapps - source
Connext Network: Fast, trustless communication between chains and rollups - announcing Amarok: The first network upgrade of Connext - source
Dopex is live on Vesta. Collateralize DPX to mint VST at 150% collateralization ratio. Utilize your DPX without selling or go leveraged long - source
Mars Protocol - After a successful governance vote ending on April 9, 2022, Anchor Protocol tokens (ANC) are now available for depositing and borrowing on the Red Bank - source
LidoFinance - efforts to decentralize protocol, announce opening a new Node Operator onboarding round for Ethereum. Applications will be accepted from Apr 11 - 30 - source
Introducing: Antimatter Option Vaults built with Opyn. Launch on Avalanche & Ethereum. Vault will open this week and accept orders till Friday 15th of April - source
MakerDAO: some parameter changes will be deployed across several Maker Vault types since the last Executive Vote passed. Stability Fee Decreases, Maximum & Target Debt Ceiling Increases, D3M Borrow Rate Increase - source
Valorem - Permissionless physically settled options, on any ERC20 token. An update on the building - source
Legends of Mitra strategic partnership with Arcader_io will allow LoM players to stream their game on ARD Stream & deliver live streams to a blockchain gaming audience - source
TeddyCash has joined the Openswapdex, $TEDDY accessible to liquidity sources from any chains that the OpenSwap Bridge will support - source
SolunaDAO revealed their plans for the Soluna protocol with their recent roadmap - source
Integritee Network has successfully migrated solochain to Kusama Network parachain - source
VarenFinance now available on Arbitrum, Avalanche & BNBChain - source
Litentry - You can now claim your Litmus crowdloan rewards - source
Karura Swap, an AMM-style decentralized exchange on Kusama, has joined forces with Unique Network to introduce its latest trading combo QTZ/aUSD and QTZ/KAR - source
Aleph.im Network welcomed ProjectLarix to its Indexing family - source
Ripple to Develop NFT Functionality on $XRP Ledger - source
Metaverse News:
NBA’s Crypto Chief Registers Second .Eth Domain, League Files for 4 NFT Trademarks - source
Meta Starts Building a Digital Economy for Creators in Horizon Worlds. A “handful” of creators will be able to sell “virtual items and effects” in their respective worlds - source
Metaverse firm Infinite Reality to buy Esports company ReKT for $470M in stock to add ReKT’s entertainment and esports business to its existing platform, which covers social, gaming, virtual and remote production, NFT minting, content and Metaverse creation - source
Fashion Brand Boohoo Sells Out NFT Collection on Polygon. The company’s first steps into Web3 were a huge success - source
Gary Vaynerchuck-backed Swoops, a basketball strategy game in the daily fantasy sports genre where every player is a tradable NFT, raises $3.5 million for NFT basketball game - source
Forbes expands into Metaverse with the launch of Virtual Billionaires NFT Collection on FTX on April 13 - source
Binance NFT Marketplace Launches “STEPN x ASICS NFT Sneakers” Mystery Box Collection via the Subscription Mechanism - source
Val Kilmer Launches God Panel NFT Project Supported by Galaxis and Chainlink - source
Paramount’s Star Trek NFT Installment Sells Out in Minutes - source
Adidas is consulting the expertise of Ready Player Me to curate AI-generated avatars based on Adidas Originals‘ Ozworld shoe collection - source
News:
Circle Internet Financial, the issuer of USDC, today announced it has entered into an agreement for a $400M funding round with investments from BlackRock, Inc., Fidelity Management and Research, Marshall Wace LLP and Fin Capital - source
IDEG Asset Management Partners With Coinbase Prime to Launch Actively Managed ETH Fund plus additional thematic funds in 2022, with actively managed multi-coin, DeFi yield farming and GameFi/Metaverse P2E strategies being piloted in-house- source
Crypto lender Celsius to stop paying interest on new deposits from US starting on Friday. The move happens as Celsius, as well as competitors like BlockFi and Nexo, have faced increasing scrutiny from US securities regulators - source
Brazilian central bank president confirms CBDC pilot will launch in 2022 - source
Former Ethereum developer Virgil Griffith will serve 63 months in prison and pay a $100,000 fine for helping North Koreans use cryptocurrencies to evade sanctions - source
Raises:
Glow Labs, a white label software on the blockchain that lets creators and brands reward their most loyal customers, announced it has raised $4.1 million in seed funding - source
DeFi Firm BloXroute Raises $70M to Fund Expansion in SoftBank-Led Round - source
$3.5M round for Dapp Cloud Computing Startup Socket Supply Co. which offers cloud computing tools and open source architecture for dapp developers - source
RociFi Labs Raises $2.7M to Enable On-Chain Credit Scoring for DeFi. The P2P lending protocol uses on-chain data, machine learning and decentralized identity information to calculate a non-fungible credit score for potential borrowers - source
Genies, an NFT platform, raised $150 million in its recent funding round led by private equity firm Silver Lake to further its Web 3 ambitions - source
Ignite (formerly Tendermint) is spearheading a $150 million investment in teams building within the Cosmos (ATOM) blockchain ecosystem - source
Pantera Capital plans to close its first Blockchain Fund in the next three to four weeks with about $1.3 billion in committed capital - source
New Listings:
Binance Futures will launch coin-margined KNC perpetual contracts at 2022-04-14 03:30 AM (UTC) and USDT-margined FTT perpetual contracts at 2022-04-15 03:30 AM (UTC) - source
Alpine F1 Team Fan Token (ALPINE) Gets Listed on KuCoin on April 13 - source
VisionGame (VISION) Gets Listed on KuCoin April 14 - source
Huobi Global Will List NPT (Neopin) on April 15 - source
Huobi Global Will List XCUR (Curate) on April 14 - source
Cocos-BCX (COCOS) Gets Listed on KuCoin on April 13 - source