Crypto Daily Sentiment, Vibe, Topic of the Day -
Monday, March 21st:
Bitcoin & Eth unable to break resistances. ~ 42k and 3000 respectively
Jerome Powell hawkish speech - potential 50 bps rate hikes incoming
Microsoft might buy Adworld - interesting - rumor
Miladies still the talk of the town - mental illness in vogue
Avax conference - people meeting irl - chart performing stronk
Big day for FTX - FTX Australia, $100M Dave partnership, Naomi Osaka ambassador
DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong gets NFTs hacked - source
Tuesday, March 22nd:
Bitcoin breaks 42k, Eth 3000. Hopeful and bullish energy on the TL
Arthur NFT hack sparks security talks
Lots of CT people meeting irl at Avalanche Summit
Yuga Labs raised a staggering $450 million in a funding round lead by a16z - nutters
ETC on the rise - raises question of what eth miners plan to do next after merge
Will jpeg nfts all start issuing coins similar to Ape. Consequences of Ape success?
Wednesday, March 23rd:
Bitcoin & Eth momentum stalls at resistance. Alts chilling. Just waiting for now.
Gamestop partnership with LRC seems to scorn IMX - source
Luna Foundation confirms 6,000 bitcoin purchase worth $250 million to back its UST stablecoin wallet movement - source - etherscan
Acala $250M incentive fund
Stargate settles ~ $2 for now
Honduras debunks legal tender rumor + delayed El Salvador bitcoin bonds. CZ to get more involved with El Salvador?
Thursday, March 24th:
Bitcoin momentum springs upwards and stalls at resistance
Adworld nft minting - shilling commences on the TL, however miladies still the talk of the town
Thought of the day: Avalanche has a strong community. Lots of positive sentiment coming out of Barcelona convention. Which other ecosystems have this follower cult?
Short term top for Stargate? - one of largest holders sold. Tech still cool, good project, promising
Aptos being discussed - link
Friday, March 25th:
Impulsive bullish moves into heavy resistance. People are expectful and timeline is bullish still.
Adworld reveal
Quiet day vibes. miladies still dominating the TL
Saturday, March 26th:
Market stalled at resistance
Miladies are still blowing up. The talk of the town, pfps everywhere
Stargate still holding up well despite big selling ~3-3.50. Luna cooling off ~ 90. Impulsive move from 200 day ema: Near ~ 12-13 & Cro. Avax price slumping after Barcelona conference ~ 82-85. At 200 day ema: Cosmos ~ 27-30 & Rose ~ .25-.26. Bullish charts - Knc, Rune, Waves, Jpeg, Zec, Ftt, Dfi, Cvx, Xmon, Mxc. Potential - Scrt, Imx, Btrfly, Rbn, Fxs, Jewel, Lrc, Xrp, Xmr,
Coinbase to require recipient information for crypto transfers from users in Canada, Singapore and Japan - regulatory and kyc ongoing narrative. What more will come this year?
Google-metamask security issue, update your chrome browser - source
Terra to gradually lower the 20% yield on Anchor in an attempt to avoid a potential future bank run - source
Anata nfts
Sunday, March 27th:
Stalled at resistance. Bitcoin ~ 45k. Eth ~3100-3200
Quiet weekend vibes, the calm before the storm, bullish resistance feels like
Shitcoins have still been popping off - various pump and dumps throughout the week
We await to see if this is a real rally or another fakeout
Reminiscences of an Anon: Weekend Thoughts
Weekend Epilogue: The crypto markets are on the verge of a breakout. After months of down only & crab and fueled by Luna Foundation multimillion $ bitcoin buys, we await to see the results of these recent bullish moves. Stargate has been stronk in the face of early sellers. Evmos will upgrade testnet this week, mainnet maybe will launch in the second week of April. Terra to gradually lower the 20% yield on Anchor in a move towards sustainability and to avoid a potential future bank run. There's a Chrome browser upgrade you should know about. Avalanche launches a $100 million creator fund with Grimes and a lot of happy vibes seemed to flow out of the Avax conference. Near daily chart showing promise. Jpeg showing strength. You've noticed miladies all over the timeline, yes? Adworld nft minting. Coinbase to track off-platform crypto transfers in Canada, Singapore, Japan - users will need to disclose recipient information. The ApeCoin price is holding up, there’s been gov proposals and upcoming land sales. US Justice Dept. charges 2 in NFT Frosties rugpull - interesting legal precedent. India’s new controversial crypto 30% tax policy. A handful of strong performing charts and a few promising ones. There's many projects hard at work with interweek announcements. Big names entering the metaverse such as: Google, David Beckham, Amazon, Diplo, Liverpool FC, Floyd Mayweather, Top Chef stars, Madonna, Sylvester Stallone, luxury brand Tiffany, Bill Murray, Crypto artist XCOPY, Gucci. There's government and regulatory developments such as with El Salvador and other countries looking at CBDC adoption, taxes, environmental concerns and more. Satoshi Island news. Money continues being raised predominantly towards the metaverse, nfts and gaming sector. There's upcoming sales, mints and launches galore. It's a very exciting time to be in crypto. Each and every single week brings a storm of developments and it can be difficult to keep up, so stopping every now and then to reflect helps make sense of this crazy game we're in. Help share this so it can reach anyone who might find it helpful and I'll see you next week. Stay wary and cautious. The macroeconomic and geopolitical situation may be cooling off for now but the overarching aspects are still concerning..
Midweek Interlude. So far this week we’ve seen: Jerome Powell give a hawkish speech - potential 50 bps rate hikes incoming. We still await to see if crypto markets will finally give a relief bounce. DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong gets NFTs hacked. Luna Foundation Guard to increase its bitcoin reserve to $3 billion and makes big btc buys. Yuga Labs raised a staggering $450 million in a funding round led by a16z. Polkadot’s Acala announces $250M aUSD ecosystem fund. Paradigm invests $8.8M in Ribbon Finance. Avax conference - key announcements, people meeting irl & shenanigans. Gamestop's partnership with LRC seems to scorn IMX. Big week for FTX - FTX Australia, $100M Dave partnership, Naomi Osaka sports ambassador and more. ETC on the rise - mining vs pos implications. Hacker steals customer data from Circle, BlockFi, others. El Salvador seems to delay its 'volcano bonds' launch. There’s all sorts of metaverse developments with big names and brands, partnerships, regulatory and political tidbits and the usual shit ton of money being raised. There’s a whole level of activity going on out there besides price and charts, all of which helps tell a story over time that can help you better navigate these markets by employing the correct mindset. Observe the pieces moving and let it tell you a story.
I’m looking for active crypto people to put our minds together. Apes strong together.
You can reach me on twitter: https://twitter.com/TheoDelarosa_
- Time moves differently in crypto. Crypto is an intricate game filled with various players operating across multiple time frames and with varying agendas. Day in, day out, the pieces are moving all across the board. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. Here’s a glimpse of what has happened so far this week in our little crypto bubble -
Chain News:
The Cosmos EVM network Evmos will upgrade the testnet this week and test it in the next 1-2 weeks. If it goes well, the mainnet will be launched in the second week of April. Whether the mainnet will continue from the height of 58700 or roll back, it is still uncertain - source
Avalanche launches $100 million creator fund with Grimes and web3 social media platform Op3n - source
Anchor Prop 20: Dynamic Earn Rate passes. Changes the Earn Rate on UST deposits based on changes in the Yield Reserve - source
According to Dune Analytics, the Move to Earn Game STEPN hit a new high on March 23, with 98,948.32 SOL deposited for the purchase of running shoes, and GST worth more than $4 million to upgrade or cast running shoes, with a single-day user up to 4812 - source
Coinbase Adds Cardano Staking Rewards. Coinbase says the exchange has additional "plans to continue to scale our staking portfolio" throughout 2022 - source
Update your wallet if you're a Chrome and/or Brave user - source
Leading meme coin DOGE has risen by double digits amid news that Bitcoin of America has added Dogecoin to its crypto ATMs - source
Crypto Robin Hood stole $50 million in Cashio hack and says he’ll donate it to charity. But the victims just want their money back - source
Coinbase to track off-platform crypto transfers in Canada, Singapore, Japan. Certain Coinbase users will need to disclose recipient information when sending cryptocurrencies to non-Coinbase wallets - source
Larry Ellison’s SailGP and NEAR Protocol to Create a DAO for Sports Team Ownership. Members of the DAO will be able to determine athlete selection, team management and team strategy - source
SEC scores a minor victory in legal dispute with Ripple Labs - source
Interlay, a newly appointed Polkadot parachain network, is nearing the completion of a two-year Bitcoin bridge development project on Polkadot, with the launch announcement on its sandbox platform Kusama - source
The Graph announced its R&D Roadmap: improvements to indexing performance with Firehose, new data sources and chain support, work towards a SNARK proof, upgrades to Delegator and Curator mechanisms, layer 2 scaling, more gateways and more - source
Because one of DeFiance Capital's wallet (Arthur) was compromised, it proposed that the Lido DAO freezes the vesting of one address to prevent the hacker from stealing and market-selling Lido for ETH or USD as it vests. The proposal has now been passed - source
According to Samson Mow, the former CSO of Blockstream, the government of El Salvador now operates a Bitcoin Core full node and a node for Bitcoin L2 solution Liquid Network - source
The Bitcoin address (bc1q9d4ywgfnd8h43da5tpcxcn6ajv590cg6d3tg6axemvljvt2k76zs50tv4q) has deposited nearly 24,955 BTC worth more than $1.1 billion. Market suspects it is the address of Luna Foundation, which has raised $2.2 billion for its bitcoin reserves - source
SK Square, the investment company of one of the top ten South Korean consortiums, is launching its own cryptocurrency. The idea is to build a blockchain-based system that connects to metaverse, e-commerce, and content - source
Cardano TVL exceeded 300 million US dollars, most of which were provided by two DEXs, and TVL ranked 24th among all L1s. Currently, ADA worth $23.8 billion is staking in the Cardano network, with a staking rate of 71.64% - source
MEV bots earned $476,000 by targeting large stablecoin swaps - source
Synthetix commence debt pool merger to enhance liquidity and staking capabilities. The merger of L1 and L2 debt pools is just one of a number of upgrades slated for this week within the Synthetix ecosystem - source
Boba Network and Cere Network announce their integration that will bring improved Decentralized Data Cloud solutions to Boba Network builders and users - source
Ethereum Foundation: The difficulty bomb is expected to be felt on the network around June. Shanghai, the next Ethereum upgrade, is being sketched out. EVM upgrades, Beacon Chain Withdrawals, L2 Fee Reductions and more - source
Optimism calldata compression is live on mainnet. 40% transaction fee reductions incoming. Ethereum is scaling - source
The Whirlpools Closed Beta is now live. Concentrated liquidity has arrived on Orca: SOL/USDC, mSOL/USDC and ORCA/USDC Whirlpools are now open to holders of Orcanaut NFTs - source
Dexpools launching on Polygon - source
DeFiner live on Polygon - source
Jump Crypto proposal to make UST BTC redeemable - source
Homora V2 brings leveraged yield farming to Fantom - source
Redacted v2 April 2022 teaser - source
Sense Finance, a permissionless infrastructure for fixed income on Ethereum, live on mainnet - source
Introducing dynamic hedging vaults by Rysk - source
Alkimiya is building permissionless capital markets for blockspace, and is launching on Avalanche mainnet - source
Aurigami, the leading money market on Aurora, presents future roadmap - source
Jupiter Swap API launch which gives developers instant access to all the liquidity sources on Solana with a single HTTP call - source
Cosmos Governance Proposal Notifications Tool with KalpaTech - source
Release a white paper offering the first crypto-native disclosure system for DeFi--and a range of new infrastructures capable of exciting developers and regulators: Disclosure NFTs, Disclosure DAOs, and Disclosure DIDs - source
Launch of sunSBR, the first liquid staking governance derivative on Solana - source
Launching Harmony - Binance Smart Chain Bridge - source
Iron Star introduces tutorialized fork of the Terra Station web app making onboarding new users to Terra easier - source
Buildspace introduces the largest directory of Web3 builders. Quickly browse + filter through 10,000+ profiles and recruit full-stack engs, Solana/EVM devs, game devs, and more - source
From the midweek interlogue:
Stargate bridge attracts $2 billion of liquidity within a week of launch - source
Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) may increase its bitcoin reserve to $3 billion in the near term, with a longer-term goal of $10 billion according to Terraform Labs CEO Do - source
Acala announces $250M aUSD Ecosystem Fund. Acala along with an initial nine Polkadot parachain teams and several venture funds, has launched a fund to support early-stage startups building applications with strong stablecoin use cases on any Polkadot or Kusama parachain - source
Paradigm Invests $8.8M in DeFi’s Ribbon Finance. The protocol automates crypto derivatives strategies for the lay DeFi trader - source
Li Finance (LiFi) protocol users suffered losses amounting to around $600,000, some of them have been reimbursed after a hacker exploited a bug in the project’s smart contract - source
SushiSwap community proposes Swiss legal structure to limit DAO liability. According to the proposer Tangle, the intended foundation will play a key role in limiting the liability for contributors and driving Sushi’s future growth - source
Coinbase Cloud launches Avalanche developer tools suite. The Avalanche ecosystem stands to gain from three tremendous developments announced this week with Coinbase Cloud’s integration, BTC support, and UST trading - source
Lemonade Is Working With Avalanche, Chainlink on Weather Insurance for Farmers. A newly formed DAO backed by the Lemonade Foundation will roll out permissionless weather insurance to African farmers later this year - source
Avalanche Announces New ‘Core’ Wallet, Bitcoin Bridge at AVAX Summit. The pair of product upgrades are meant to boost Avalanche’s DeFi ecosystem - source
Layer Zero & Avax subnets - source
Loopring announced that the GameStop NFT marketplace (beta) is now live, built on Loopring L2. LRC rose nearly 40%. However, GameStop previously announced that it had launched NFT market with Immutable X and sold a lot of IMX - source
Stablecoin Cashio on Solana exploited for $28 million in ‘infinite mint glitch’ - source
Cardano has introduced its updated roadmap. According to the roadmap, the team continued working on finalizing a new transaction workflow to add token minting and burning capabilities - source
OneRing, a Fantom revenue aggregation platform, said that it suffered a flash loan attack by hackers at 02:44:10 UTC+8, and 1454672.244369 USDC were stolen. After the funds were stolen, they were cross-chained from Fantom to Ethereum and then to Tornado Cash - source
MEXC is now a strategic Elrond partner and will dedicate resources to identify exceptional projects building with internet-scale technology, and accelerate their path towards adoption via guidance, funding, and access to new markets - source
OCEAN gains 86.4% in March ahead of Q2 launch of Ocean v4 with a highly anticipated protocol upgrade, combined with a growing partner base and an active grants program - source
Biconomy launches Hyphen 2.0 — the most capital efficient bridge available to users - source
Frontier has announced the integration of the Tezos blockchain in the Frontier mobile app. Users can now create a non-custodial Tezos wallet and send, store, receive $XTZ and FA1.2 & 2.0 tokens on Frontier - source
Clearpool Mainnet to Launch on 23rd March with Wintermute, Amber Group and Folkvang borrower pools who collectively trade billions of dollars across the major crypto exchanges every day - source
Mysten Labs Launches Blockchain Platform Sui. Company founded by ex-Facebook employees designs layer-1 to solve space’s “pain points” - source
Crypto.com Adds FIFA World Cup Sponsorship to Sports Marketing Strategy. The company’s latest deal is part of an effort to develop its brand internationally - source
TRAC price surged 162% as the rollout of OriginTrail v6 and the launch of AidTrust suggest the protocol is prepared for the Web3 migration - source
COTI Launches a $10 Million Fund for Ecosystem Development. The blockchain payment project has introduced COTI Ventures to invest and capitalize on business opportunities in its ecosystem - source
Three Arrows Capital’s address (0x3BA21b6477F48273f41d241AA3722FFb9E07E247) deposited 43,393 ETH into Curve’s ETH/stETH pool - source
Mango DAO Embraces SOL, Rejects BTC With $1M Treasury Investment. The governing body behind Solana’s Mango Markets overwhelmingly rejected calls to invest even a sliver of its nearly $700 million treasury in bitcoin - source
Mercurial will launch DeFi's first dynamic yield infra. The system will consist of 4 main components: Vaults, Yield Optimizer, AMM Module, and Reward Handler. Mercurial is also targeting to launch Mainnet Beta of the system and a litepaper by early Q2 2022 - source
NFT platform VeVe said it was exploited, resulting in a large number of gems being obtained illegally. VeVe has closed the market, and some users' accounts have been restricted. Previously, Marvel and the VeVe platform reached an official cooperation to make NFTs - source
Deribit said it will launch Solana inverse products (options, futures and perpetual); Multicast - low latency market data feed for colo and cross connected clients and Combo books (call spreads, put spreads, futures spreads etc tradable in a single trade) - source
Bitcoin.com announced the issuance of ERC-20-based Token VERSE, with a supply of 210 billion, which will be allocated within 7 years. Bitcoin.com has created 29 million wallets and has more than 5 million monthly active users. The founder is Roger Ver - source
Chainlink launches startup program to provide blockchain resources to early-stage projects - source
Frog Nation's former CFO Sifu successively transferred about 1,000 Ethereum into Tornado Cash. The Wonderland DAO voted to remove Sifu before - source
Metaverse:
The ApeCoin community has issued 5 proposals, including the DAO structure; the voting process; the allocation of the ecological budget; the rules for staking and the allocation of staking pool. More than half of the budget goes to the game development - source
Among the current five proposals of ApeCoin DAO, AIP-4: Staking - Process and AIP-5: Staking Pool Allocation - Ecosystem Fund Allocation have more against votes than In favor votes. Some NFT holders are unhappy with existing staking proposals - source
US Justice Dept. Charges 2 in NFT Money-Laundering, 'Rug Pull' Scheme."They pulled the rug out from under the victims," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said of the creators of the Frosties NFT collection - source
Cool Cats Ethereum NFT Project Signs With CAA for Media, Licensing Push. We could see Cool Cats cartoons, merch, and events after the profile picture project nets a major Hollywood agency - source
Google Files Trademark for ‘Non-Fungible Planet’. The filing details plans for the internet giant’s information campaign on environmental activism - source
David Beckham Tapped by DigitalBits Blockchain to Be Global Ambassador. The retired soccer superstar will also launch a series of NFTs and blockchain-based digital assets on DigitalBits - source
African Digital Art Network Launches Nandi NFT Marketplace on Celo. The new platform aims to be a way for Black artists and creators to showcase their talent—and get paid for their work - source
Amazon has launched a 3D web game where players navigate a virtual city, while helping people solve real tech problems through the cloud. It is an education tool (and sales tool) to teach people how to use its cloud services - source
Grammy Winning DJ Diplo to Sell $99 Tokens in New Single. Diplo is the latest major artist to embrace a token-based approach to music releases, using the platform Royal - source
Taiwan's Red Door Digital Raises $5M to Build AAA-Games for Web 3. Red Door Digital's leadership team includes executives from EA Games, Ubisoft, and Tencent - source
Sotheby’s Expands NFT Arm With Liverpool FC Partnership. The iconic football club becomes the latest English Premier League squad to enter the NFT game - source
Diplo Joins Nas With NFT Drop on Tokenized Royalties Platform Royal. The Grammy-winning DJ will be releasing his new single on the Polygon-powered site - source
Floyd Mayweather’s latest bout with the crypto space will see him enter the Metaverse with a new NFT collection - source
Top Chef Stars Launch Ethereum NFTs to Build a Web3 Culinary Community. Tom Colicchio and Spike Mendelsohn’s CHFTY Pizzas minted this week, with plans to bring in other celebrity chefs and perks ahead - source
Popstar Madonna has acquired Bored Ape valued at more than half a million dollars - source
Sylvester Stallone To Launch NFT Collection Featuring Rocky and Rambo - source
On March 26, the Ukrainian government announced the launch of the NFT War Museum. Each NFT is news since the war, and the funds sold will go directly to the official account of the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation - source
The famous luxury brand Tiffany announced the purchase of the Okapi of the NFT series Rocket Factory and replaced its avatar with this NFT - source
Actor Bill Murray will release an autobiographical collection, Official Bill Murray NFT 1000. Some NFT lots will be dedicated to roles he didn't get. The actor intends to donate the proceeds to charity - source
Crypto Artist XCOPY Sells $23M Worth of Ethereum NFTs in 10 Minutes. XCOPY’s single-edition grails often resell for millions apiece, and his latest open edition on Nifty Gateway saw immense demand - source
Gucci Launches Vault Project for Customizable NFT PFPs. The latest initiative, titled 10KTF Gucci Grail aims to widen the Gucci Vault experience - source
Zilliqa-powered metaverse, Metapolis, announces key brand partnership with creative global talent award marketplace, Agora - source
From the midweek interlogue:
Yuga Labs has secured a virtually unprecedented $450 million in seed funding, bringing the startup to a post-money valuation of $4 billion. The seed round is one of the largest funding deals in the nonfungible token market - source
Time Magazine announced that it will accept payment of APECOIN for digital subscriptions in the coming weeks. Time Magazine just launched its digital NFT magazine with Vitalik as the cover - source
Bored Ape NFT DJ Duo Goes Hollywood With WME Talent Agency. The Bored Ape NFT duo has plans for multiple songs with Dillon Francis and made a music video with rapper Rich the Kid - source
Will Smith, The Weeknd Back NFT Metaverse Land Investor Everyrealm. Celebrities are flocking to the metaverse-centric startup, which also has Paris HIlton, Nas, and Gene Simmons on its cap sheet - source
The Solana NFT protocol NeoNexus said that the project was stopped, the team was disbanded, and it wanted to hand over the project to the community. Previously, NeoNexus raised a total of 25,000 SOL in the NFT MINT stage - source - zachxbt
PUBG Publisher Krafton Partners With Solana Labs. The agreement could bring blockchain integrations and NFTs to the popular battle-royale style game - source
Block Tackle Raises $5M to Develop Solana NFT Skateboarding Game. Coinbase Ventures, Solana Ventures, and Animoca back a new studio of game industry veterans building NFT games on Solana - source
Meta, formerly Facebook, has filed eight trademark applications with the United States Patent and Trademark Office relating to blockchain technology and its proposed metaverse - source
Samsung's Cheil Worldwide claims to be the first advertising company in Korea to enter the NFT market. It will issue NFTs and launch markets. Samsung also launched a program for watching and trading NFT on TVs before - source
South Korean department store Hyundai Duty Free plans to release 255 NFTs on OpenSea and distribute them free of charge to customers as part of a lottery until April 21 - source
FTX Acquires Good Luck Games, Maker of Storybook Brawl. Storybook Brawl’s developers come from previous roles on Magic: The Gathering, Elder Scrolls: Legends, and Hearthstone - source
G2 Esports Files Lawsuit Against Bondly Over Scrapped NFTs on Polygon. Before its recent Solana NFT push, G2 signed with Bondly in 2021 for Polygon NFTs that never materialized - source
NFT-funded racing aims to disrupt sports sponsorships. GT driver Laura-Marie Geissler's career will depend on a decentralized sponsorship model in hopes of leveling the playing field for motorsport athletes - source
According to WWD, Estée Lauder, world's largest cosmetic company, as the exclusive beauty brand partner of Decentraland’s Metaverse Fashion Week, is debuting its first NFT - source
Singer and pop-electronic artist Kiesza performed on the Ellen Degeneres Show with the MilkyWay Pirates band, which also happens to be an NFT collection - source
Paris Saint-Germain F.C. ventures into NFTs and the metaverse with trademark filing - source
SoftBank messaging giant and social media giant LINE will launch the NFT market "LINE NFT" in Japan on April 13. In addition, it will release the global NFT platform "DOSI" on April 19. Users can pay with credit cards or crypto like Bitcoin - source
SportsIcon to Open Metaverse Where Athletes Can Interact With Fans. A public land sale for Sports Metaverse will take place in June, when it officially goes live - source
News:
Janet Yellen Admits Crypto Has Benefits. Says Treasury Working on Crypto Regulation - source
India’s new tax policies, set to become law on March 24, to begin paying a capital gains tax of 30% on crypto transactions could prove fatal for crypto industry. Stakeholders believe it could eradicate small-time traders and derail the thriving industry - source
ANZ Becomes First Bank to Mint Australian Digital Dollar. About $30 million has been minted so far - source
BIS partners with four central banks to develop multi-CBDC platform prototypes - source
El Salvador’s Bukele Shoots Down FUD on Bitcoin Bond, Takes Issue With U.S. Lawmakers. A Reuters report said Bitfinex had been booted from managing the bond sale - source
LG Electronics has added cryptocurrency and blockchain as new business areas in its corporate charter - source
The chair of the State Duma Committee on Energy said Russia would accept Bitcoin for its energy exports—at least from China and Turkey - source
ExxonMobil has reportedly launched a pilot program that will use excess natural gas to power cryptocurrency mining - source
The electronics company of South Korea’s fourth-largest company, LG Corporation, said its new goals include “development and sales of blockchain-based software” and “sales and brokerage of cryptocurrencies.” It launched NFT-enabled TVs last month - source
Bank Leumi (LUMI.TA) will become the first Israeli bank to enable cryptocurrency trading, its digital platform Pepper Invest said on Thursday after partnering with U.S. blockchain firm Paxos. Leumi is one of Israel's two largest banks - source
Bharti Airtel, India’s second largest telecom operator, is preparing to tap the metaverse opportunity with its upcoming 5G network - source
Vanuatu Prime Minister says yes to Satoshi Island crypto project. The Vanuatu government announces its support for Satoshi Island Community Project, a private crypto island where fiat isn't invited - source
Crypto.com to Run Ad During Oscars in Support of Ukraine. Donations will go to the International Red Cross Red Crescent Movement to be shared with Ukrainians and Crypto.com will match the total amount in donations, up to $1 million - source
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’s second-largest city, has just become the first city in Brazil to allow the use of crypto to pay taxes starting in 2023. It also announced the creation of an investment committee to study investing in crypto and creation of local cryptocurrency, Crypto Rio - source
CZ said Binance will open an office in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Binance is very popular in Brazil but is not under government regulation - source
MIT adds the Bank of England to its stable of CBDC digital currency research partners - source
Rio de Janeiro to accept Bitcoin for real estate taxes from 2023 - source
Argentines receive salary in cryptocurrencies to escape exchange control and high inflation. an Argentine with a monthly salary of $1,000 can receive up to 83% more Argentine pesos if they choose to receive cryptocurrencies and convert their remuneration outside the official exchange rate - source
From the midweek interlogue:
Hacker steals $1.7 million in NFTs from DeFiance Capital founder Arthur Cheong. An unknown hacker compromised his device using a technique known as spear phishing - source
FTX announced the establishment of FTX Australia, which holds an Australian Financial Services License and acts as the issuer of the OTC derivatives including options contract, futures contract, contract for difference (CFDs) and leveraged tokens - source
Hacker Steals Customer Data From Circle, BlockFi, Other Big Crypto Firms. Hubspot said data was taken from "fewer than 30 Hubspot portals," but didn't provide a list of which accounts were compromised - source
El Salvador postpones Bitcoin bonds to September. Apart from delaying the issuance of Bitcoin bonds, the Salvadoran government has apparently slowed down the pace of buying new BTC as well - source
Australian Senator proposes landmark Digital Services Act. The new legislative package will address issues in crypto custody, taxation, and DAO operations in order to protect consumers against bad actors in the space - source
FTX Invests $100M in Banking App Dave, Forms Partnership for Crypto Payments. FTX US will serve as the exclusive partner for any crypto offerings offered by Dave - source
FTX announced a long-term partnership with four-time Grand Slam singles champion, Naomi Osaka. In addition to becoming an FTX global ambassador, Osaka will receive an equity stake in FTX Trading Limited and will be receiving compensation in crypto - source
NFL Reverses Course on Blockchain Sponsorships, Keeps Ban on Crypto and Token Deals. The league cited the growing popularity of cryptocurrency and NFTs as part of its reasoning - source
Grayscale’s Latest Fund Focuses on Smart Contract Platforms. The world’s largest digital currency asset manager introduced its 18th investment product - a market capitalization-weighted portfolio that tracks the CoinDesk Smart Contract Platform Select Ex ETH Index - source
Andreessen Horowitz Vet Katie Haun Raises $1.5 Billion for Web3 Fund. Haun left a16z in 2021 to start Haun Ventures - source
According th bitcoin com, the leader of the United People’s Party and member of St. Maarten’s Parliament, Rolando Brison, has started to explore legislation to make bitcoin cash (BCH) legal tender in the country with the guidance from Roger Ver - source
Malaysian comms official calls the state to legalize crypto and NFTs. Malaysia’s finance minister previously warned that crypto payments were illegal as they did not meet the universal characteristics of money - source
GitCoin has voted on a proposal to create a Cayman Islands Foundation, which will become the legal entity of the Gitcoin DAO. It will have DAO voting rights, appointment and removal rights, financial management rights, and public product financing IP - source
Gemini wins Irish electronic money license: report. The crypto exchange is the first fintech firm to secure a license sine 2020, according to The Irish Times - source
The platform, AEX, plans to offer crypto financial derivatives in Vietnam, open an office and support the country’s blockchain ecosystem with the $100 million fund. A recent survey by consumer insights provider Toluna found that the most receptive countries to cryptocurrency were Vietnam, the Philippines, Thailand and India - source
Goldman Sachs completes first OTC crypto options trade with Galaxy. Galaxy Digital previously facilitated the launch of Goldman Sachs’ Bitcoin futures trading product for CME Group in June 2021 - source
Euroclear invests in Fnality to advance digital ledger technology strategy. The firm claims to have settled nearly 1,000 trillion euros worth of securities transactions last year - source
UK Advertising Regulator Issues 'Red Alert' Guidance on Crypto Ads. Companies advertising crypto services have until May 2 to ensure their ads meet the new guidance - source
Expenses fintech Jeeves eyes crypto transfers as it raises $180 million led by Chinese investor Tencent as it looks to implement stablecoin transfers - source
MyEtherWallet partnered with MoonPay to offer additional Ethereum opportunities to its customers - source
Draper University Partners With VeChain to Train Web 3 Founders - source
Thailand Bans Crypto as Means of Payment. The Thai SEC stressed that it is only banning the use of crypto for payments and is not banning crypto trading and digital assets - source
Florida governor says the state will accept bitcoin for tax payments - source
CoinShares has announced a partnership with FTX to launch the Solana ETP, the fourth ETP CoinShares has launched this year, leveraging CoinShare’s Galata platform and FTX’s institutional offerings to provide institutional investors exposure to Solana - source
Investment Bank Cowen Launches Digital Unit, Aims to Compete With Bulge-Bracket Firms. It’s the latest in a trend of traditional finance players spying opportunity in the cryptocurrency sector - source
Figure Technologies Announces Two Crypto-Backed Mortgage Products. Potential customers can now join the waiting list ahead of the launch next month - source
Honduras’ Central Bank Debunks Bitcoin as Legal Tender Rumors however studying the feasibility of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) - source
Raises:
Phi Labs Secures $21M Seed, Led by CoinFund and Hashed - source
Archway, a Cosmos-based protocol, has raised $21 million in a seed funding round co-led by crypto investment firms CoinFund and Hashed - source
Phi Labs, a contributor to Archway, said it raised $21 million in a seed funding round that was co-led by crypto investment firms CoinFund and Hashed. Archway is a Cosmos-based protocol that rewards dapp developers building on the network - source
Binance’s venture arm is betting another $5 million on Ultiverse, a metaverse gaming startup - source
Greenidge plans to triple US bitcoin mining capacity after securing $100 million in new financing - source
Recent fundraises you should know about:
From the midweek interlogue:
Yuga Labs has secured a virtually unprecedented $450 million in seed funding, bringing the startup to a post-money valuation of $4 billion. The raise was led by venture capital firm Andreesen Horowitz (a16z). Other participants included blockchain-based game studio Animoca Brands, The Sandbox, LionTree, Sound Ventures, FTX and MoonPay - source
Digital asset analytics provider The TIE has closed a strategic investment round backed by some of blockchain’s most prominent investors, underscoring heightened demand for crypto data and software services. The TIE raised $9 million in Series A funding at a valuation of $100 million, making it one of the largest crypto analytics services in the market - source
Animoca, Coinbase Ventures Back $5M Seed Round for Metaverse Gaming Studio Block Tackle. The studio’s first release will be SkateX, where players can buy their own skateboard NFTs and vote on decisions about the game - source
Crypto Exchange MEXC Global Leads $150M Fetch.ai Development Fund With Huobi, Bybit. The money will be used to encourage more developers and projects to work on the Fetch.ai ecosystem - source
Polychain Capital Leads $22M Investment in NFT Appraisal Protocol Upshot. The project wants to bridge the worlds of DeFi and NFT - source
Worldcoin to Raise $100M at $3B Token Valuation. The list of investors includes a16z and Khosla Ventures - source
Nexo To Launch $150M Web3 Investment Fund to deploy capital into corners of crypto including NFTs, GameFi and the metaverse - source
Chip supplier Qualcomm creates $100 million metaverse investment fund. Qualcomm hopes to broaden the market for its chips through this new metaverse fund - source
Ex-Polychain Partner Tekin Salimi Launches $125M Crypto Venture Fund. The new fund plans to convert into a decentralized autonomous organization, and involves Terra’s Do Kwon and Avalanche’s Emin Gün Sirer - source
Binance Labs led an $8 million seed funding round of Tea, a new company building an open-source software platform on the blockchain. Additional funding participants include XBTO Humla Ventures, Lattice Capital, DARMA Capital, Coral DeFi, Woodstock, Rocktree, SVK Crypto, and MAKE Group - source
Decentralized Creator Platform Joystream Raises $5.8M. The platform allows creators to sell their videos as NFTs and turn their channels into tokens - source
Calendar:
Macroeconomic Dates:
Some upcoming token unlocks - vestlab.io - source
CPI - April 12th
US Tax return ~ April 18th
FOMC - May 4th
Token sale & NFT Minting - source
ITEUM ($ITEUM) - MaiarLaunchpad (3/25~28)
Gala - The WalkingDead VOX NFT Drop (3/28)
PREMINT - Collector Pass Mint - Registration Closes (3/29) - Mint Date (4/1)
Gharliera - Gene_sis Collectable (TBA)
Attack on Titan - CardPack Sale (in Mar)
UNXD - Dolce & Gabbana NFT Mint (TBA) - Astronomia Metaverso NFT Mint (in Spring)
Warner Bros - DC Comices Trading Card NFT (in Mar)
Yuga Labs - Land Sale (in Mar)
Sushiswap($SUSHI) - Sushimi NFT Mint (Soon)
Data:
According to data from glassnode, the first ETF in North America, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, holds a new high in the number of Bitcoins. Currently, the ETF holds 36,271.8BTC - source
Data shows that with the approaching of Ethereum POW to POS, the price of high-end graphics cards has dropped by nearly 30% from 2 months ago, and by nearly 50% from the highest price point - source
The market capitalization of the algorithmic stablecoin UST has soared in comparison to its longer-running counterpart DAI. Year-to-date, UST market capitalization has increased 55%, while DAI’s has risen 5.7% - source
According to Glassnode, the price of Bitcoin has gradually recovered recently, and the ratio of futures/spot trading volume has slowly declined. Combined with the recent narrative of the LUNA Foundation’s continuous purchase of Bitcoin,the recent rise is driven by spot - source
TVL on the Do Kwon-led chain has doubled since February 1st, going from 13 billion to 26 billion USD - source
From the midweek interlogue:
Since the EIP-1559 in August 2021, Ethereum has burned more than 2 million coins now, which is about 5.7 billion US dollars, and the most burned DAPP is OpenSea's 230,044 ETH. The current annual burning volume is about 3.2 million ETH - source
Derivatives markets are currently pricing in historically low implied volatility, and futures premiums. Such market structure has historically preceded periods of very high volatility, and most often to the upside - source
Current buy side demand appears to be dominated by US and EU markets, with the majority of sell-side sources during Asian trading hours - source
Bitcoin prices have now consolidated between $38k and $45k for over 2-months, and a large volume of $BTC has changed hands - source
New Listings:
Stargate Finance (STG) Gets Listed on KuCoin - source
Biconomy (BICO) gets listed on KuCoin on March 25th - source
Huobi Global will list Merit Circle (MC) on March 24, 2022 - source
Huobi Global will list Crypterium (CRPT) on March 24, 2022 - source
Binance Futures will launch coin-margined APE perpetual contracts with up to 20x leverage at 2022-03-28 - source
From the midweek interlogue:
Binance will list Biswap (BSW) in the Innovation Zone and will open trading for BSW/BNB, BSW/BUSD and BSW/USDT trading pairs at 2022-03-21 13:30 UTC - source
Binance Futures will launch coin-margined RUNE perpetual contracts with up to 20x leverage at 2022-03-23 03:30 UTC = source
Huobi Global will list Onston (ONSTON) on March 23, 2022 - source
Huobi Global will list League of Kingdoms Arena (LOKA) on March 25, 2022 - source
Coinbase & Coinbase Pro will list Mina (MINA) & Crypterium (CRPT) on March 24th - source
Disclaimer: none of this is finanshy advice. These are just my thoughts, observations and things that have crossed my eyes during the past week. Use this as an overview of the market sentiment, always do your own research, practice risk management, remember to stay hydrated and touch grass. How you should read the information contained herein, or anything in crypto for that matter. Doubt everything in crypto. Crypto is a cruel, harsh, zero sum game. A majority of people will lose money. There’s cool tech, cool people and cool visions but there’s criminals, scammers and grifters as well. There’s shilling, hyped narratives, lofty promises and wild overspeculation. Participating in financial markets is brutal. The pieces are pretty much always stacked against you. There are players playing this game with vastly more resources and experience. A vast majority of things around here are going to part people with their money. Accept the game for what it is. Study it, learn from it and make moves accordingly. Protect yourself. Be vigilant. Be wary.